Rel Canonical issues for two urls sharing same IP address
-
Our client built a wordpress site on url A, then opted for a better url B. Rather than moving all the wordpress files/website over to the new url B, they just contacted GoDaddy, who hosted BOTH urls under the same IP address.
When I do a term target on url B, I'm flagged for rel canonical use. I can only get a B grade for each keyword. (I've also tried using url A, but I get the same flag and B grade results).
I'm not sure if this set-up will thwart our seo efforts for the site, because only the homepage comes up when you type in url B anyway. Every subsequent page displays the original url A. Somewhere, wordpress is also adding a rel canonical link on the homepage source to url A, too, which we can't seem to edit.
So, question is: is it ok to leave this set up as is with both urls hosted on the same IP address, or should we move the whole site over to the desired url B?
Thanks much!
-
Thanks for your answer, John. So, we should have the client 301 the url A to the desired url B. Confirmed!
-
This doesn't sound ideal. So only the home page is under URL B, and the rest of the pages are hosted under URL A? That would seem really strange to me as a user if I entered through URL B, went to another page, and the domain changed completely.
Ideally, you should 301 redirect everything under URL A to URL B rather than using rel=canonical for them. There's no reason to host two identical sites like this. It's fine for multiple sites to be hosted under the same IP. Here's a really good SEOMoz blog post about using 301 redirects vs.canonical tags.
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
-
Ranking issues with my local business website.
Hi, I have local business website "asapgaragedoorrepair.com" which im seeing weird ranking issues during last few months . i would like to share it with you guys and get help from you. first days i have indexed the website ,it was ranking good with google and then after 2-3 weeks i have noticed that none of the pages ranking anymore. i have looked for any issues in the optimization and i fixed them and indexed again. right now i have weird issues. 1- the website was ranking for another page in my website other that the one that i wanted for keyword" Garage Door Repair Pasadena " .(it was ranking with garage door installation page). i changed the content ,optimization on the other page and indexed. still the same issue. then i had no ways other that 301 to the right page . 2- when i check the rankings with "ahrefs" website or "Moz" or other tools that i have, it shows that im ranking for 16th position for " Garage door repair Pasadena ". but when i search it by myself im getting no results. (this is bothering) maybe i dont know something . pls help me 3- in Moz or ahref website shows the ranking like the image i have attached. 2 different results for each keywords. why is that? and why i can not see them when i search them by my self? htPQR
Moz Pro | | Mishel2980 -
PA up for one domain and still no movement on the other two!
Hey guys! Just wanted to see if anyone can help me on this one! I have zenory.co.nz the PA on this is 21 and DA is 10 however my other two domains com and com.au have been stagnant at both PA and DA at 1 - any reason why this might be?
Moz Pro | | edward-may0 -
Are there any free (or paid) tools available online that download Meta Tags for ALL URL's of a website?
Hi, I am looking to run an On-Site audit for a website and I'm wondering if there are any tools available online that take the existing Meta Tags on ALL pages of a website and downloads them to a .CSV or .XLS. Would need Meta Title and Meta Description for all pages at the very least. Any suggestions are appreciated - looking for Free or Paid options. Thanks.
Moz Pro | | SEO5Team0 -
How to choose the best canonical URL
In a duplicate content situation, and assuming that both rel=canonical and a 301 redirect pass link equity (I know there is still some speculation on this), how should you choose the "best" version of the URL to establish as the redirect target or authoritative URL? For example, we have a series of duplicate pages on our site. Typically we choose the "cleanest" or shortest non-trailing-slash version of the URL as the canonical, but what if those pages are already established and have varying page authority/backlink profiles? The URLs are: example.com/stores/locate/index?parameters=tags - PA = 54, Inbound Links = 259 example.com/stores/locate/index - PA = 60, Inbound Links = 302 example.com/stores/ - This is the version that currently ranks. PA = 42, Inbound Links = 3 example.com/stores - PA = 40, Inbound Links = 8 This might not really even matter, but in the interests of conserving as much SEO value as possible, which would you choose as either the 301 redirect target and/or the canonical version? My gut is to go with the URL that's already ranking (example.com/stores/) but curious if PA, backlinks, and trailing slashes should be considered also. We of course would not 301 the URL with the tracking parameters. 🙂 Thanks for your help!
Moz Pro | | Critical_Mass0 -
Getting a URL Unaccessible on the page grader
I'm optimizing a site for a financial advisor, here is the site: http://www.mattkeenancfp.com I am getting the message "that URL is unaccessible" when I try to use the on-page grader. This is an emerald website too, I'm not sure if that has any effect on anything though.
Moz Pro | | ryanbilak0 -
Is www.domain.com/page the same url as www.domain.com/page/ for Google? (extra slash at end of url)
Dear all, in open site explorer there is a difference the url's 'www.domain.com/page' and 'www.domain.com/page/' (extra slash at end). There can be different values in pageauthority etc. in the open site explorer tool, but is this also the case for Google? Thanks for replying, Regards, Ben
Moz Pro | | HMK-NL0 -
Duplicate Content Issue because of root domain and index.html
SEOMoz crawl diagnostics is suggesting that my root domain and the rootdomain/index.html are duplicate content. What can be done to ensure that both are considered as a single age only?
Moz Pro | | h1seo1 -
Is having the company's address in the footer (or header) of each webpage important for SEO?
Is having the company/office's address in the footer (or header) of each webpage important for SEO? Your page for the Geotarget tool says that having the address in this element helps search engines find your location. My question is, how important or relevant is this to SEO? How does knowing the address influence SEO? Is it best SEO practice to put the address in the footer of every webpage? http://www.seomoz.org/geotarget
Moz Pro | | richardstrange0