Using Canonicals on category or link pages
-
Hey,
If a site has category or tag pages showing in search results for a particular keyword - sometimes higher than the page you would like to rank - could using canonical redirects on categories and tags be a solution?
Thanks
-
Agreed. Out of curiosity, Eric, what's your opinion of then placing "noindex, follow" on the tag-or-category pages? I've seen cases in which the pages themselves are close enough to look like duplicate content.
-
Sites that allow both category and tags pages to get indexed will definitely run into duplicate content issues. We recommend choosing one--either tags or categories. We prefer to use a select number of categories, and make sure that each category has at least two or most posts associated with each category.
Rather than use the canonical tag, it's much more effective if you just remove all of the tags on the site (if you're only using categories). That will completely remove all the duplicate content on the site.
-
Hi,
This is a problem related to site's architecture i.e you need to expose only those pages to bots that you want to and while doing this, make sure you're not ending up with keyword cannibalization wherein you have more than one pages targeting a single keyword like in this situation.
So, its always better to take this call in the start whether you want to expose tag pages to bots or not? They might be serving exactly same content as your category pages for some keywords. As a result, you might end up with duplicate content and keyword cannibalization situations.
Short answer to your question, yes canonical should be fine here if the content is almost the same and targeting the same keyword. I would recommend you to not do this for individual pages, rather find a pattern and do it for all to avoid the same problem again.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Spam using Hostname so filter not working
Hello, on one of our sites, we have filtered via the hostname. We have done this on other sites quite happily but on this particular new website, when we add in the hostname filter, we still get loads of direct and referral traffic which is junk - and the hostname of these junk referrals are the website's domain. So it seems that this filter is not working or the spam are now using the hostname? Not sure what is going on or how to solve this?
Reporting & Analytics | | AL123al0 -
Why only a few pages of my website are being indexed by google
Our website www.navisyachts.com has in its sitemap over 3000 pages of information, and this is all unique content written by our team. Now Google Webmaster central shows only 100 urls indexed from 3500 submitted. Can you help me understand why and how I can fix this issue? The website has 4 years old, is a Joomla 3.3 up to date. It has part of the content in the Joomla core content systems and part in K2. Thank you. Pablo
Reporting & Analytics | | FWC_SEO0 -
Suspect Links from Yeusaigon.net Causing Server Errors
Good morning, Webmaster Tools is reporting an increase in server errors on our site due to some very suspect links from Yeusaigon.net. After taking a quick look, it appears they are some form of search engine attempting to link to our images by using incomplete URLs. For example: http://yeusaigon.net/search/images.php?q=htc%20one%20max%20phone%20cases&page=1044 Is linking to: http://www.mobilemadhouse.co.uk/caseflex-htc-one-max-real-leather-flip... As this URL is incomplete, it's throwing up a server error. There are currently 139 instances of there errors from the same domain, and is increasing by around 5-10 per day. The domain, however, is linking to some of our pages/images correctly, but I fear Google may look at these as spammy links - they certainly look that way! So, what can we do? I can't find any contact details on Yeusaigon website so I have disavowed the entire domain. Is this the right thing to do? How do I stop the ever-increasing number of sever errors due to incorrect URLs? Cheers, Lewis
Reporting & Analytics | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Does Lightbox Gallery Clicks Count Positively Toward Page Rank?
When a user clicks through a lightbox gallery, are these counted as a click through for page rank? I am using WonderPlugin Grid Gallery on multiple pages with multiple galleries. I do not want these clicks to be wasted. Please advise. Regards, Clever Name SEO www.clevernameseo.com
Reporting & Analytics | | cindymariesilva0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content
Hi Just started use the Moz and got an analytics report today! There about 104 duplicate pages apparently, the problem is that they are not duplicates, but just the way the page has been listed with a description! The site is an Opencart and every page as got the name of the site followed by the product name for the page! How do you correct this issue?? Thank for your help
Reporting & Analytics | | DRSMPR1 -
Installing Google Analytics tracking code on Landing Pages
Hello, I have my landing pages located on a separated subdomain (LP.example.com). I've created a new property in Google Analytics for that subdomain. My question is: where do I have to place the GA tracking code ? in the header ? before I close the tag or before I close the tag ? I have another issue: I've placed the GA Tracking code on some pages in the way below:
Reporting & Analytics | | JonsonSwartz
in the body tag of that Landing page HTML Code I added this line:0 -
Setting up Goals in Analytics when no common 'order confirmation' type page
Hi I'm working on a project/client and have asked them for the common url that shows whenever user finishes the purchase process so i cant set it up as a Goal in GA so we can track conversions etc Since site is dynamically generated it does not have such a page. Dev are suggesting setting up a new goal, generate a URL and script and they will append to a similar call. Does this make sense/sound like it would work ? And is it quite easy to do that in Analytics ? Normally i just add a URL as a goal and jobs done, don't know about scripts etc ! Cheers Dan set up a new Goal and generate a URL and script and send that to us and we'll append this to a similar call we already did for this at your request originally
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
A lot of traffic to one page from Google referral
We recently received a lot of traffic to one page from
Reporting & Analytics | | underthesun808
google.com referral. When I look in analytics it reports that the traffic is
coming from /url that’s not real helpful. Is there a way to get more specific
information as to what the referring url was?0