Canonical - unexpected page ranking
-
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for.
Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking?
Any suggestions welcomed.
Ian
-
Thanks Martin, looked at Moz's guide on Canonicals. Have a much clearer view of them now. Thanks for the feedback we will work on the pages we want to rank and monitor them.
Ian
-
Full support for this answer
-
Hi Ian,
Pointing the canonical tag to the right URL that you want to rank won't work like you're hoping for and is not what the canonical tag is at the end meant to do. What I would focus on is optimizing the page that you want to rank, for a start you likely should look into adding a link from the current ranking page to the one that you want to start ranking, if you haven't already done that. At the end that's going to help you with both ranks the right page, but also might help the second page to be visible in the top 10 so you take multiple spots for an increased share of voice.
Martijn.
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
-
Is it best to 301 redirect or use canonical Url when consolidating two pages?
I have build several pages (A and B) with high quantity content. Page A is aged and gets lots of organic traffic, ranks for lots of valuable keywords, and has only internal links to this page. Page B is newer (6 months) and gets little traffic, ranks for no keywords, but has terrific content and many high value external links. As Page A and B are related to a similar theme, I was going to merge content from page B onto page A, but don't know which would be the best approach for handling the links going to page B. For the purposes of keep as much link equity as possible, is it best to us a 301 redirect from B to A or use a canonical URL from B to A?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cutopia0 -
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 | | seoanalytics0 -
Why our page not ranking even searching for exact h1 tag?
Even I search for exact h1 tag heading from our homepage, it's (homepage) not been showing up on TOP of the results. Other websites with partial match of search query are ranking above us; why this is happening? And other website with same text as normal paragraph is ranking on top. But not out h1 tag from homepage? How come normal text of unrelated website is ranking above h1 heading from homepage of own website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Is there any effect on ranking if i disable right click on page??
Hello , I have site, in which client needs right click on All his pages, his traffic is very Good, But worried, if right click hurts its traffic, ?? any expert can help ?? Thx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ieplnupur0 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Google is ranking the wrong page and I don't know why?
I have an E-Commerce store and to make things easy, let's say I am selling shoes. There is: Category named 'Shoes' and 3 products 'Sport shoes', 'Hiking shoes' and 'Dancing shoes' My problem: For the keyword 'Shoes' Google is showing the product result 'Sport shoes'. This makes no sense from user perspective. (It's like searching for 'iPhone' and getting a result for 'iPhone 4s' instead of a general overview.) Now what are the specifics of my category page (Which I want Google to rank): It has more external links with higher quality It has more internal links It has much higher page authority It has useful text to guide the user for the keyword It is a category instead of a product All this given, I just don't know how I can signal Google that this page makes sense to show in SERPs? Hope you can help with this!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
What happen if a canonical tag points to a noindex page?
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
I have question. We have hundreds of affiliates that have implemented our datafeed on their websites, and to avoid duplicate content issues we are requiring them to put a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to our own original product page. So, for example, if an affiliate has a page about our Product 101, they will have to add a canonical tag pointing to the corresponding product page on our own website: www.ourwebsite.com/products/product101 Now, since many of our product pages have defined a "noindex" tag (due to Panda issues), may that be a problem? In other words: what kind of problems could cause having our affiliates defining a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to the original product page on our website which have a "noindex" met tag defined? Maybe it is a stupid question we shouldn't worry about, but any thoughts about this scenario are very welcome! Thank you in advance.0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0