Canonical URLs and SEO
-
After publishing my new wordpress website my on page analysis shows two canonical urls on my homepage. In checking the source code the Yoast SEO plugin states my canoncial url is www.homepage.ca/ This is the only one showing. Having said this I do not add the trailing slash to anything on my url structure. Could this be why the on page analysis tool says there are 2? If so is there any way to resolve this?
-
-
no it is not checked
-
Ah I think I may have found it.
Under Permalinks on the Yoast menu on the left do you have
"Enforce a trailing slash on all category and tag URL's" ticked or not?
-
They do not have the slash but the Yoast SEO package has it in the automatic rel=canonical which I cannot find to change
-
Oh I see, you've got a specialised set-up. Okay.
In which case the actual place you want to be checking is under Settings > General and look at your Wordpress and website address to see if those have a trailing backslash or not.
-
all done through the widgets per attached example
-
And can you show me the screen/section when you're editing the homepage text?
(we will get to the bottom of this one, it's just taking time).
-
-
Can you take some screenshots so I can see what you're seeing?
Can you post firstly the page you see when you are editing the home page content? (not the layout/design).
-
i created the home page through the appearance/widgets menu using an agentpress theme built on the genesis framework. there is no "home page" appearing as either a page or post in these menus (unless I am missing something)
-
Don't open up the Yoast SEO on it's own. Go edit the home page text as you would do normally. It will be under 'Pages' or 'Posts' depending on which way you created your home page.
Then edit the page/post in the normal way and then the Yoast box is under the normal editing window.
If it's not there make sure you're running the most up-to-date version of Wordpress and Yoast SEO and re-try
-
Hi Martin, I must be looking in the wrong place. When I open up Yoast SEO I can find menus for dashboard, titles&meta, social, sitemaps, permalinks, internal links, rss, import&export and edit files (which gives me acess to htaccess). I can find the advanced tab for all pages but the home page. Where do I find it? thanks
-
In which case I suggest you do the following:-
- Edit your home page as normal through the WP back end
- In the 'Wordpress SEO by Yoast' box under the editor select the 'Advanced' tab
- Enter your Canonical URL without the backslash there.
Publish and refresh the 'live' page and it all should marry up.
You're still probably not losing out with or without the trailing backslash, but it definitely makes it cleaner if your incoming links are precisely the same as your canonical definition.
Let me know if this works out for you.
-
Using the SEOmoz on page analysis tool. The source code shows rel canonical for www.homepage.ca/ yet my site url is www.homepage.ca with all redirects there
-
What tool are you using for your on-page analysis?
Have you done a Google search for : site:www.homepage.ca and see if two URLs are listed?
If the source code is only giving you one rel canonical tag then regardless of your analysis there's only one canonical URL so I don't think you have anything to worry about, so long as you agree with the URL given in that tag
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
-
Product URL
Hey Mozzers, Nice quick and simple one for you. Which of these 2 options is better for SEO and userbility and why domain.co.uk/productname.html
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
domain.co.uk/shop/category/product.html The top one stops stops any funky problems with magento making 2 paths to the same product but the second option feels more natural and helpful to the user. I feel both a valid but I would like some opinions please0 -
Less Tags better for SEO?
I am currently reviewing my strategy when it comes to categories and tags on my site. Having been no-indexed for some time, and having many tags with just one entry I am thinking that this is not optimal for SEO purposes. This is what I am planning: Categories - Change these to Index, but only after adding a hundred words or so by way of introduction (see this example - https://www.besthostnews.com/news/hosting/a-small-orange-news/). With the categories I am thinking of highlighting key articles as well to improve link juice distribution to older articles that are important. Tags - About half my tags have only 1 entry, with a few more just having 2 entries. I am thinking of deleting all tags with just one entry, and trying to merge those with just two or 3 entries where it makes sense to do so. I will keep these as no-index, but I think this will mean more optimal distribution of link juice within the site. I would appreciate your thoughts \ suggestions on the best practices here.
On-Page Optimization | | TheWebMastercom0 -
I'm using Canonical URL but still receiving message - Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Hello, I checked my site and it looks like everything is setup correctly for canonical url but I keep getting the message that it's not. Am I doing something wrong? SORRY I FIGURED IT OUT! THANK YOU! HOW DO I DELETE THIS?
On-Page Optimization | | seohlp440 -
Best URL structure for my page
Hey everyone, I am wondering what is the best URL structure for my activity booking page in Bali. http://www.thingstodoinbali.com/bali/sports/water-sports/rafting/ or http://www.thingstodoinbali.com/bali/sports/water-sports/rafting-bali/ or would you recommend something else? Most people would google for "activity bali" in this case "rafting bali". Please advice. Thanks for your time and help in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | c.eiermann0 -
Can Sitemap Be Used to Manage Canonical URLs?
We have a duplicate content challenge that likely has contributed to us loosing SERPs especially for generic keywords such as "audiobook," "audiobooks," "audio book," and "audio books." Our duplicate content is on two levels. 1. The first level is at our web store, www.audiobooksonline.com. Audiobooks are sometimes published in abridged, unabridged, on compact discs, on MP3 CD by the same publisher. In this case we use the publisher description of the story for each "flavor" = duplicate content. Can we use our sitemap to identify only one "flavor" so that a spider doesn't index the others? 2. The second level is that most online merchants of the same publisher's audio book use the same description of the story = lots of duplicate content on the Web. In that we have 11,000+ audio book titles offered at our Web store, I expect Google sees us as having lots of duplicated (on the Web) content and devalues our site. Some of our competitors who rank very high for our generic keywords use the same publisher's description. Any suggestions on how we could make our individual audio book title pages unique will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen0 -
URL Length
I know a URL should "technically" shorter than 75 characters. Does that include the http://www.domainname.com ? Thank you 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Libra0130 -
IFRAMES - SEO Question
If 30 websites IFRAM my website, is there any SEO advantage for me? Does google register time on site, metrics on how far in to my site the user goes? I have a real estate site with listings (homes for sale). Agents want to use my listing feed on their sites via an iframe. The clients would be scrolling through my listings through an iframe. SEO advantages for me? Disadvantages for the real estate agent using my listings?
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Canonical tag help
Hi, We have a product which is marketed by affiliates . Affiliates send referrals to our sale page by adding their affiliate IDs to our product page like http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345. We want to avoid the content duplication impression to Google by using canonical tags but we are not clear about its use. Should we use it on http://www.mysite.com/products.php ( actual page) or we should create temporary pages for each referral id i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php?ref= 12345 and then add canonical tags to all those pages linking to proper page i.e http://www.mysite.com/products.php ? Thanks, shaz
On-Page Optimization | | shaz_lhr0