Regarding Rel Canonical on PhoneTech.dk
-
Hi All you Seo Experts from seomoz
I have a question about one of my webshops where I have the same product listed in different categories where I on the duplicate pages use the Rel Caninical Tag on, that points to the main product url. I just have to verify with you guys that I did it correctly
Example on the shop. This is just an example
www.phonetech.dk/shop/product1.html - This is Main
Duplicates
www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3G/product1.html - Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main.
www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3g/backcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main.
www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3gs/colorbackcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag here also pointing to main
Hope you guys can help me that my use of Canonical Tag is correct.
Regards
Christian - Denmark
-
Are these pages identical, but just reached via different paths (based on category/sub-category navigation)? If so, the canonical tag is definitely a good choice here. Ideally, it's best not to create duplicate paths, as it can cause long-term problems, but in lieu of that, canonical is probably your best defense.
-
It was just an example, its now live url's
-
It's fine to not include the canonical on the main/target page. As @donford said, it's fine to have a self-reference canonical, but it's definitely not necessary.
-
Are these live pages, or did something page (I can't seem to access them). Looking at the URLs, it seems like these are slightly different products, so I'm not clear if the canonical tag is appropriate.
-
Rel canonical tags should be on the pages that they are dealing with.
In my example above a rel canonical tag would be fine all the pages
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L&Gender=FOn each of the pages the tag would be
href="http://www.awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14"/>
You would not put it on the page
awebsite.com/t-shirts/ or awebsite.com
Hope that clarifies it for you.
-
Ok but its ok if it not included on the main page?
-
It doesn't need to be, but given the way the tag works, it does not hurt if the page you're on, is the path of the rel canonical.
Since the tag deals with dynamic pages it is very normal for the root page to have the tag as well as the dynamic pages.
-
Ok, but the canonical tag shall not be on the main right?
-
Hi Christian that is basically what the REL canonical is for, typically it is used to deal with dynamic urls like
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L&Gender=FI have seen some ecommerce shops that allow you to copy products from one category to another, if you do this, then yes REL canonical is how I would deal with this myself.
Hope it helps,
Don
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
-
Ecommerce site product reviews, canonicals – which option to choose?
Recently, I discovered that only the first 4 reviews on our product pages are crawled and indexed. Example: http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/253432 I'm assuming it's due to the canonical that's on the product page http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/253432" />. When you click on page 2 of the reviews, the url does not change, but the next batch of reviews appears on the product page. Same with page 3, etc… The problem is the additional pages are not being crawled and indexed. We have to have the canonical on the product page because our platform creates multiple urls for each product page by including each category where the product resides, related link parameters, etc in the product url (example: http://www.improvementscatalog.com/eucalyptus-deep-seat-furniture-group/patio-furniture/outdoor-furniture/253432) – trust me, it gets ugly! I've researched other Moz answers and I've found that there appears to be a couple of ways to fix the issue. Any ideas/help/guidance/examples on the below options is greatly appreciated!!!! Show only 4 reviews on the first page and place the remaining reviews on a new page by themselves (similar to how Amazon does it). However, I would rather keep all of the reviews on the product page if possible. Add page 2, page 3, etc parameters to the url to display the remaining reviews and adding rel=prev/next. If we chose option 2, would each product page have a different canonical? If so, would it create a duplicate content issue since the above-the-fold content, title tag and meta descriptions would all be the same? Also, would you include each additional page in the sitemap? We had a similar issue with our category pages and we implemented the "viewall" in the canonical. Would that work for our reviews? Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Improvements0 -
Why put rel=canonical to the same url ?
Hi all. I've heard that it's good to put the link rel canonical in your header even when there is no other important or prefered version of that url. If you take a look at moz.com and see the code, you'll see that they put the <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://moz.com" /> ... pointing at the same url ! But if you go to http://moz.com/products/pricing for example, they have no canonical there ! WHY ? Thanks in advance !
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
IP canonization
Hi, I need your opinions about IP canonization. Site www.peoplemaps.com is on 78.136.30.112 IP. Now we redirect that IP to the main page (because of possible duplicate content). But, we have more sites on the same IP address. How can that affect on their SEO? Before redirecting, when we visit that IP address, the browser showed mainpage of www.peoplemaps.com, not any other site. Thanks, Milan edit: We have used 301 redirect.
Technical SEO | | MilanB.0 -
Duplicate Page content / Rel=Cannonical
My SEO Moz crawl is showing duplicate content on my site. What is showing up are two articles I submitted to Submit your article (article submission service). I put their code in to my pages i.e. " <noscript><b>This article will only display in JavaScript enabled browsers.</b></noscript> " So do I need to delete these blog posts since they are showing up as dup content? I am having a difficult time understanding rel=cannonical. Isn't this for dup content on within one site? So I could not use rel="cannonical" in this instance? What is the best way to feature an article or press release written for another site, but that you want your clients to see? Rewritting seem ridiculous for a small business like ours. Can we just present the link? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Rel Canonical errors after seomoz crawling
Hi to all, I can not find which are the errors in my web pages with the tag cannonical ref. I have to many errors over 500 after seomoz crawling my domain and I don't know how to fix it. I share my URL for root page: http://www.vour.gr My rel canonical tag for this page is: http://www.vour.gr"/> Can anyone help me why i get error for this page? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | edreamis0 -
Rel = prev next AND canonical?
I have product category pages that correctly have the prev next but the moz crawl is giving me duplicate content errors. I would not think I also need to have canonical - but do I ?
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
Blank Canonical URL
So my devs have the canonical URL loaded up on pages automatically, and in most cases this gets done correctly. However we ran across a bug that left some of these blank like so: Does anyone know what effect that would have? I am trying to provide a priority for this so I can say "FIX IT NOW" or "Fix it after the other 'FIX IT NOW' type of items". Let me know if you have any ideas. I just want to be sure I am not telling google that all of these pages are like the home page. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SL_SEM0 -
Canonical for non-exist URL ?
Hi I have a website what has parameter URL. For example www.example.com/index.php?page_id=1&no=2 I want that search engine see my page URL as; www.example.com/toys/cars But this URL is not exist in my website. And when i externally enter this page it goes to 404 page. If i add canonical url as www.example.com/toys/cars to the page www.example.com/index.php?page_id=1&no=2, what happened ? Is the url at the serp change as www.example.com/toys/cars ?
Technical SEO | | SEMTurkey0