Why do two pages compete while a canonical tag is active?
-
Hi guys,
My SERP analysis show me that two pages compete eachother for the keyword kinderfiets, which should not happen since there is a canonical tag is active.
www.halfords.nl/fiets/kinderfiets/kinderfiets/ Ranks #6 and www.halfords.nl/fiets/kinderfiets/ Ranks #7. The first one is a subcategory which is one step deeper than the second one. I prefer consumers to land on the broader subcategory, because that one shows more products.Furthermore, we already did some SEO tweaking for the #7 page, but did not work on the #6 page. So it is even kind of strange that this page ranks higher.Can somebody help me out?Kind Regards,Tom
-
The canonical tag is meant to tell Google.... "These two pages are the same"
It was not meant to prioritize pages in the rankings.
Because your pages are very different from one another Google is probably ignoring the canonical tag.
"should we just appreciate the fact that Google ranks us twice on the first page for this important keyword? "
Yes. You got two pages in the top ten of Google. When that happens to me, I give thanks.
-
Hi Martijn,
Thanks for your response. Okay, seems logic. So is there an easy way to fix this "problem" so we can boost this category into the top 5 or should we just appreciate the fact that Google ranks us twice on the first page for this important keyword?
Kind regards,
Tom -
Hi Tom,
Likely due to the internal linking structure of the subcategory your page /kinderfiets/kinderfiets is ranking better or it just has some more history/relevance. My guess is that it's likely a close call knowing the Dutch market a bit. You're mentioning that the canonical tag is active, but they're also both unique as they are self-referencing. So basically they don't play a role at all as you're suggesting that they're not the same page and both could rank.
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
-
Pages being flagged in Search Console as having a "no-index" tag, do not have a meta robots tag??
Hi, I am running a technical audit on a site which is causing me a few issues. The site is small and awkwardly built using lots of JS, animations and dynamic URL extensions (bit of a nightmare). I can see that it has only 5 pages being indexed in Google despite having over 25 pages submitted to Google via the sitemap in Search Console. The beta Search Console is telling me that there are 23 Urls marked with a 'noindex' tag, however when i go to view the page source and check the code of these pages, there are no meta robots tags at all - I have also checked the robots.txt file. Also, both Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl tools are failing to pick up these urls so i am a bit of a loss about how to find out whats going on. Inevitably i believe the creative agency who built the site had no idea about general website best practice, and that the dynamic url extensions may have something to do with the no-indexing. Any advice on this would be really appreciated. Are there any other ways of no-indexing pages which the dev / creative team might have implemented by accident? - What am i missing here? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Is my page being indexed?
To put you all in context, here is the situation, I have pages that are only accessible via an intern search tool that shows the best results for the request. Let's say i want to see the result on page 2, the page 2 will have a request in the url like this: ?p=2&s=12&lang=1&seed=3688 The situation is that we've disallowed every URL's that contains a "?" in the robots.txt file which means that Google doesn't crawl the page 2,3,4 and so on. If a page is only accessible via page 2, do you think Google will be able to access it? The url of the page is included in the sitemap. Thank you in advance for the help!
Technical SEO | | alexrbrg0 -
Page title tags and joomla/JCE
I'm working with a joomla/JCE website. At the moment, the 'title' field in articels controls the page title, menu item name and H1 tag. I've read that I can stop this happening so that I can name each separately and get my Page title tag back! Is anyone using joomla/JCE and can give any advice on how to do this? Many thanks. Iain
Technical SEO | | iain0 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
Canonical Issue?
Hi, I was using the On Page Report Card Tool here on SEOMOZ for the following page: http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides and it claims there is a canonical issue or improper use of it. I looked at the element and it seems to be fine: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.priceline.com/eventi-a-kimpton-hotel-new-york-city-new-york-ny-1614979-hd.hotel-reviews-hotel-guides" /> Can you spot the issue and how it would be fixed? Thanks. Eddy
Technical SEO | | workathomecareers0 -
Is it better to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Is it better for SEO to delete web pages that I don't want anymore or should I 301 redirect all of the pages I delete to the homepage or another live page?
Technical SEO | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
Should I include A Description Tag for an article page
Hi, I am wondering if i should include a description tag for an article page where the news on that page will change around five times a day. I am not sure if to fill a description in for local news or to leave it blank so the search engines pick up the latest local news and then the next day they show the latest local news again in the search engines instead of having a static description of the news page. any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860