Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

Homepage has canonical tag pointing to innerpage

Intermediate & Advanced SEO

519

nerdieb last edited by

Hi,

I'm stuck! This e-commerce site which I'm currently working on has an unusual problem.

So the homepage has a canonical tag pointing to one of its category pages.

Is this okay SEO-wise? Based on what I understand, the homepage is the most important page in a site. And if there is a mirror duplication, it would be better to canonicalise the inner page to the homepage rather than in reverse.

Looking forward to getting some answers.

Cheers!
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
nerdieb @donsilvernail last edited by

Hi Don,

Thank you for your response. The homepage and inner page are an exact duplicate (mirror).

Cheers!
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
donsilvernail last edited by

Hi Nirdieb,

I would remove the canonical tag to the inner page. This was obviously a mistake. The home page is the most important page. Is that inner page a duplicate of the home page? I would think not.

Thanks,

Don Silvernail
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 1

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

Where to point canonical for m-dot site in the wake of Mobile-First Indexing

My client currently use an m-dot URL for their mobile site and while conducting a technical audit for their web properties, we have noticed that their desktop is using a self-referencing rel="canonical" while their mobile m-dot has no rel="canonical" tags. While our initial recommendation is to point the mobile m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="canonical" and the desktop point to the mobile using a rel="alternative," there have been hesitations about mobile first indexing and canonical tags. If Google will use the m-dot for indexing purposes moving forward, is the progressive recommendation to have the desktop point to the m-dot using a rel="canonical" and the m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="alternative" or to maintain the initially stated recommendation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Derek_Hawk

0
My homepage ranks but not my target page.

Hello, I have an issue with one my pages. I have a page about "Bike tours in France+ exclusively that has been existing for almost 8 years. Since day 1 I changed the web address a few times but I have the necessary redirect (actually only 1). I can't find this page (pretty much since day 1) on the keyword "Bike tours France" and I am wondering why ? However, I can find my homepage rank on "Bike tours France" even though it doesn't only talk about "Bike tours in France" instead of my page which is only about "Bike tours in France". I am wondering why only my homepage shows and not the other one. For information, I have about 30 % of my external links that say Bike tours France and that go to my homepage because when I started my website I was only doing "Bike tours in France" Could google say we don't care about your page about "Bike tours in France" because you got so many links to your page with the keywords "Bike tours France" and could it be why I don't see it rank. However, it is index but doesn't show up in search results ? Or could it be the fact that made many content changes over the years on this page and that google is saying I will rank you but it will take years because of so many changes. What can I do to make my page about "Bike tours in France" appear in search results for the keyword "Bike tours in France". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics

0
Href Lang & Canonical Tags

Hi I have 2 issues appearing on my site audit, for a number of pages. I don't think I actually have an issue but just want to make sure. Using this page as an example - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/0-5-l-capacity-round-safety-can-149p210 The errors I get are: 1. Conflicting hreflang and rel=canonical Canonical page points to a different language URL - when using href & canonicals, it states I need a self referential canonical . The page above is a SKU page, so we include a canonical back to the original model page so we don't get lots of duplicate content issues. Our canonical will point to - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/justrite-round-safety-cans 2. No self referencing hreflang. Are these big issues? I'd think the bigger issue would be if I add self referencing canonicals and end up with lots of duplicate content. Any advice would be much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey

0
Multiple hreflang tags pointing to one page from the same country

Hi All, Hypothetically, let’s say a brand established in the UK created the following URL for the Italian market, www.example.com/it/ticket-watch (Ticket watch the made up brand) In this scenario, Ticket Watch is used across multiple services and domains in the UK such as: www.example.com/ticket-watch www.ticketwatch.com/ Essentially, could you point multiple ticket watch pages that live on different domains so that www.example.com/it/ticket-watch could potentially have 4 or 5 tags from the same country (UK), but the self-referencing pages will only have one hreflang tag: canonical and hreflang meta information to be included on www.example.com/it/ticket-watch But the hreflang meta information to be included on www.ticketwatch.com/ will only have one tag I’ve only in included 2 hreflang tags for the for the first example but let’s say there were an additional 2 or 3 GB based ticket watch hreflang tags. Will these tags still be validated? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEONOW123

0
Putting rel=canonical tags on blogpost pointing to product pages

I came across an article mentioning this as a strategy for getting product pages (which are tough to get links for) some link equity. See #21: content flipping: https://www.matthewbarby.com/customer-acquisition-strategies Has anyone done this? Seems like this isn't what the tag is meant for, and Google may see this as deceptive? Any thoughts? Jim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook

0
Pagination Tag and Canonical

Once and for all - I would really like to get a few opinions regarding what is the best method working for you. For most of the all timers in here there's no need to introduce the pagination tag. The big question for me is regarding the canonical tag in those case. There are 2 options, as far as I consider: Options 1 will be implementing canonical tag directing to the main category page: For instance: example.com/shoes example.com/shoes?page=2 example.com/shoes?page=3 In this case all the three URL's will direct to the main category which is example.com/shoes Option 2 - using self-referral canonical for every page. In this case - example.com/shoes?page=2 will direct its canonical tag to example.com/shoes?page=2 and so on. What's the logic behind this? To make sure there are no floating pages onsite. If I'll use canonical that directs to the main category (option 1) then these pages won't get indexed and techniclly there won't be any indexed links to these pages. Your opinion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoperad

0
Two homepage urls

We have two different homepages for our website. One is designed for daytime users (i.e. businesses), whereas the second night version is designed with home consumers in mind. Is this hurting our SEO by having two homepage urls, instead of just building a strong presence around one? We have set up canonical meta on each one: On the night version: domain.com/indexnight.html we have a On the day version: domain.com/index.html we have a It seems to me that we should just choose one of them and set up a permanent 301 redirect from one to the other. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT

0
H2 Tag Backlink - is this safe?

I have found that my site is getting a link from a good site, but my concern is that the link is in a H2 tag in the footer of the front page of the site Would getting a link from a site wrapped in H2 tags be safe? The anchor is my sites brand name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters

0