Rel Canonical on Home Page
-
I have a client who says they can't implement a 301 on their home page. They have tow different urls for their home page that are live and do not redirect. I know that the best solution would be to redirect one to the main URL but they say this isn't possible. So they implemented the rel canonical instead. Is this the second best solution for them if they can't redirect? Will the link juice be passed through the rel canonical?
Thanks!
-
For Example: You have two version of home page (1) http version (2) https then in that case you have implement Canonical on home page. Many big sites who does financial transaction use the same approach.
-
Yes. One additional thing you can try to do to help Google get the correct page is to make sure all your internal links from both domains point to the target domain that you want to have in the index. For example, if your sites are mydomain1.com and mydomain2.com, and you want to canonicalize everything to mydomain1.com, then any links on mydomain2.com that point to the homepage should point to http://www.mydomain1.com/index.html not to http://www.mydomain1.com/index.html
-
Yes, that works. Essentially, I think a canonical is a better solution. So it's perfect. After a couple days, check the 2 URLs in Google using cache:url1.com and cache:url2.com and see if Google detects them both as the one you are using in your canonical tag.
-
Yes, I believe this is probably the best solution. Regarding the passing of rank, etc, nothing will really change from how it is now, except that one page will clearly be defined as the original content. This may help boost the page authority of the page with the canonical tag. Whatever authority that original content page has should pass to other pages the same as it is now.
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
-
Advice needed on canonical paginated pages
Hi there. I use Genesis and StudioPress themes. I recently noticed that the canonical link for blog pages points to the first page on all paginated pages, which I understand is an SEO no-no. I found some code here that adds a unique canonical link to each paginated page but for categories only. It works fine. I only have one category for my site. My question is: is there a downside (or even upside) to not having a blog page and placing a link to my category page in the navigation bar instead, using the category page as the blog page? It looks good and works. What do you think? I find it odd that this seems to be an issue across the Internet and the only solution that comes up relies on the Yoast plugin, which I don't want to use (don't want to use a plugin for SEO). Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Many pages small unique content vs 1 page with big content
Dear all, I am redesigning some areas of our website, eurasmus.com and we do not have clear what is the best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
option to follow. In our site, we have a city area i.e: www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla which we are going
to redesign and a guide area where we explain about the city, etc...http://eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla/guide/
all with unique content. The thing is that at this point due to lack of resources, our guide is not really deep and we believe like this it does not
add extra value for users creating a page with 500 characters text for every area (transport...). It is not also really user friendly.
On the other hand, this pages, in long tail are getting some results though is not our keyword target (i.e. transport in sevilla)
our keyword target would be (erasmus sevilla). When redesigning the city, we have to choose between:
a)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> with all the content one one page about 2500 characters unique.
b)www.eurasmus.com/en/erasmus-sevilla -> With better amount of content and a nice redesign but keeping
the guide pages. What would you choose? Let me know what you think. Thanks!0 -
What are the SEO issues we should consider on a plug in that creates a custom home page based on zip code or GPS location.
We are developing a plug in the changes the home page relative to a users location or zip code. We believe this will provide users with a more personalized experience. We are concerned about how this might affect SEO. We are also wondering if we should partner with one of the SEO ply in developers. We were thinking about Yoast. Is there another partner that might be better? I would appreciate any feedback people can give.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ron_McCabe0 -
Getting a Home Page to Rank
Hi Mozzers, My question specifically has to do with optimizing a home page for specific keywords, but still keeping the design clean and not cluttered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
How do you guys prefer to go about it? Currently our home page only really gets traffic for branded keywords (though we do have some rankings for real keywords showing in GWT which I can't really explain). I know how to write content for specific long-tail keywords, but we want to keep our homepage very clean, not filled with gobs of text. Right now my main plan is to display content under a "Read More.." button.
What do you pros suggest? Thanks!0 -
Can use of the id attribute to anchor t text down a page cause page duplication issues?
I am producing a long glossary of terms and want to make it easier to jump down to various terms. I am using the<a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p=""></a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">Does anyone know whether Google will pick this up as separate duplicate pages?</a> <a id="anchor-text" ="" attribute="" so="" am="" appending="" #anchor-text="" to="" a="" url="" reach="" the="" correct="" spot<="" p="">If so any ideas on what I can do? Apart from not do it to start with? I am thinking 301s won't work as I want the URL to work. And rel=canonical won't work as there is no actual page code to add it to. Many thanks for your help Wendy</a>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
Non-home page ranking higher, very odd
One of my new clients has an eCommerce site selling chair mats, that ranks first page for their primary keyword ("chair mats"), but the serp is not showing their home page... It is an odd "resources" page that mostly just has outbound links. I've never seen this. Also, there are no external inbound links to this particular page. How can this be ranking higher than the home page... weeeeird. Update: I haven't done any optimization yet... and yes, I know the site is outdated 🙂 My location is set to San Diego. If I change it (New York City), the Resources2.htm page goes away from the page 1 ranking, and I get a page 2 home page ranking. This is so strange 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
What is the proper syntax for rel="canonical" ??
I believe the proper syntax is like this [taken from the SEOMoz homepage]: However, one of the sites I am working on has all of their canonical tags set up like this: I should clarify, not all of their canonicals are identical to this one, they simply use this naming convention, which appears to be relative URLs instead of absolute. Doesn't the entire URL need to be in the tag? If that is correct, can you also provide me with an explanation that I can give to management please? They hate it when I say "Because I said so!" LOL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
High number of items per page or low number with more category pages?
In SEO terms, what would be the best method: High number of items per page or low number with more pages? For example, this category listing here: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/90/fsx-civil-aircraft/ It has 10 items per page. Would there be any benefit of changing a listing like that to 20 items in order to decrease the number of pages in the category? Also, what other ways could you increase the SEO of category listings like that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640