Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do we need to use the canonical tag on non-indexed pages?
-
Hi there
I have been working in / learning SEO for just over a year, coming from a non dev background, so there are still plenty of the finer points on-page points I am working on. Slowly building up confidence and knowledge with the great SEOMoz as a reference!
We are working on this site http://www.preciseuk.co.uk (we are still tweaking the tags and content by the way- not finished yet!)
Because a lot of the information is within accordians, a page is generated for each tab of the accordian expanded, for example:
http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php is the main page
but then you also have:
http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=0 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=1 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=2 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=3 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=4 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=5
All of which are in the same file.
According to the crawl test, these pages are not indexed.
Because it is all in one file, should we add the canonical tag to it, so that this is replicated in all the tab pages that are generated? eg.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Liz
OneResult
liz@oneresult.co.uk -
Ok, this may be a better option in Webmaster tools, since you need to have added robots txt or "nofollow, noindex" to the pages...which we can't do because they are all one file.
Many thanks everyone
Liz
-
Sounds fine. You could also go into webmaster tools as well and tell them to ignore the 'tab' parameter
Site Configuration > Settings > Parameter Handling
Although if you're changing it to # you shouldn't need to
-
Having talked to the guys and developers, while re-coding the whole site is not feasible for this project, we are going to prevent these pseudo pages being an issue by:
- adding a rel canonical tag to the main pages
- add the # symbol after the .php section of the code so that the search engines ignore it
- request that Google remove the few URLs that may have been indexed
-
Yes on second thoughts the URL structure would only need to be changed if the individual tabs were meant to be different pages, it's just that the coding has split them up, as you say.
-
Yeah, definitely speak to the developers, see what they can do. You'll learn that SEO often requires us to box clever around what developers do
Your url structure isn't bad, it's simply that these tabs shouldn't be seperate pages at all.
-
Hi Barry,
Yeah I use yootheme templates for Joomla and Wordpress and they seem to use some sort of javascript to do it really well, i think its called MOOtools
-
Thanks everyone so far, great stuff.
I did not build this site so I cannot speak for the way it was put together! I am not a developer at all but I can tell it is not the best solution.
So the best course of action seems to be, use the tag and then look into the time and costs associated with converting the URLs to a more friendly structure...
-
Eh, yes, you probably should.
However, why are you building your pages that way and not making the tabs javascript (or similar)?
There has to be a better way of doing it than making each it's own php file, because you're just deliberately giving yourself duplicate content issues. I'm not much of a coder though so perhaps somebody who is can wade in with an actual alternative solution.
If you really have to make it that way, then definitely use the canonical to the non-tabbed version.
-
I think it would be safer to add the tag, although search engines are getting more clever this way you would be making sure search engines recognise the link you want to be indexed. Hope that makes sense.
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
-
Keywords used to land on specific page?
Hi all, Does anyone know if there's anywhere where I can see what keywords are used in search engines to land on a specific page? I have access to the Google Analytics account and linked it to Moz as a campaign, but I can't find this data. I'm curious about this because a very uncommon word is used in a page title for a page I try to optimize. It's the Dutch translation of 'malicious'. And now I wonder if it's better to switch to a word that's used more often. Or if it's better to 'win the battle' on this (probably) rarely used word. I've used Google trends to see how many people use it, but it says there's not enough data to show the interest over time.
On-Page Optimization | | RaoulWB0 -
On Brand Queries Google does not shows my home page first instead of it shows internal pages.
Also on my brand query it doesn't shows sitelinks. What may be the reason?
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Using phrases like 'NO 1' or 'Best' int he title tag
Hi All, Quick question - is it illegal, against any rule etc to use phrases such as 'The No 1 rest of the title tag | Brand Name' on a site?
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
Rel canonical tag question
Im trying to to fix my duplicate content problem with my catagory pages in my shopping cart. I have read about adding a rel canonical tag to the page so it links back to the main catagory page. So if I add a rel canonical tag to the main catagory page it will show up on every other page for that catagory like page 1 page 2 and so on and it will have the tag linking back to the main cat. That should fix it it right? Now that being said I cant seem to add the tag invetween the head tags. I can add it to the body where I can add content. Will the rel canonical tag work outside the head tags? Any other ideas on this fix? I contacted my people that host the cart to see if they have any features to help this will see what they say.
On-Page Optimization | | Dataken0 -
My website is saying I have duplicate page content and page title. How do I fix it?
Hi, I created a website on webstarts.com. After I launched it then ran a scan through SEO it says I have duplicate page content and page title. The 2 pages it is reading are technically the same page. www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com and www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index . I am unsure how to get rid of on of these as it keeps saying this is an error in the SEO scan. Could someone please advise me of what to do from here. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bcarp880 -
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On my site, www.myagingfolks.com, only a small number of my pages appear to be indexed by google or yahoo. I have thousands of pages! Is that due to not having an XML sitemap, keywords, or some other problem?
On-Page Optimization | | Jordanrg0 -
Got loads of pages, but none indexing?
I have a WordPress site with loads of pages on a url like this http://mysite.com.au However, Google has indexed http://www.mysite.com.au and as a result only indexing 2 pages. How do I fix this? Many thanks Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Pokodot0 -
Why home page ranks higher than keyword-optimized page
We have a page that is optimized for the keyword "job scheduling". A search on the keyword "job scheduling" results in this page not ranking at all, while our home page (uc4.com) ranks third. Could you provide some ideas/suggestions as to why this would be the case and how to make our job scheduling page rank higher? Thanks, claudia
On-Page Optimization | | claudmar0