100's of versions of the same page. Is rel=canonical the solution???
-
Hi,
I am currently working with an eCommerce site that has a goofy set up for their contact form.
Basically, their are hundreds of "contact us" pages that look exactly the same but have different URLs and are used to help the store owner determine which product the user contacted them about. So almost every product has it's own "contact us" URL.
The obvious solution is to do away with this set up but if that is not an option, would a rel=canonical tag linked back to the actually "contact us" page be a possible solution? Or is the canonical tag only used to show the difference between www vs non-www?
Thanks!
-
I understand that you got some parameters in the url since you need them to recognize the product.
Just put a canonical to the generic contact us page and you're done.
Be sure that those parameters will be not carried over in other pages. In that sennse you'll better set up a self referring canonical on all pages so you'll avoid any dupe issue in the future.
-
Yup, use the canonical tag to tell the search engines which URL should be designated as the "correct" page to index. Here is some more information from Google - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
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
-
Hide Cross Domain Rel=Canonical
Hi Guys I was just wondering what will be the best way to hide a rel=canonical on the server side, my sites rankings got switched exactly with my competitor and the problem is we use the same web designer/marketing people. so they have full access to both websites just found it weird for the rankings to switch so quickly.
Industry News | | johan80 -
How can i discover how many of my pages have been indexed by google?
I am currently in the process of trying to produce a report for my corporation and this is a metric that i cannot seem to find on OpenSiteExplorer. Could anyone help?
Industry News | | CF20150 -
What are other SEO's calling themselves now?
I am piggy backing off of Rand's latest Whiteboard Friday: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-we-cant-just-be-seos-anymore-whiteboard-friday (It is an awesome post if you haven't checked it out yet.) I just want to hear some feedback from other industry professionals. Have you started defining/communicating your business as more than just, I do SEO? If so, what are you calling yourselves now and why? How has that been working out for you?
Industry News | | VentaMarketing1 -
Personal Goal Reached: Top 100
Today I've reached a personal goal of mine in the SEOmoz community. I've breached the SEOmoz Top 100 in Community Ranking. By participating in comments on the YOUmoz and SEO blogs and by answering questions here in the Q&A forum I've been able to accumulate 599 mozPoints. That's a long way from the 28 points I had when I sat down to write this post. Hopefully my participation in the Q&A forums has been helpful and continues to be helpful as I push for my next goal of becoming an Authority. Thanks for the great community everyone!
Industry News | | GeorgeAndrews1 -
Looking for Freelance SEO'ers
Hi, I wouldn't normally post a request for freelancers here, but I noticed someone else has done it and its not against the rules! so here goes... We are looking for Freelancers to help with our work load. In particular we are searching for Link Builders who can establish links on various websites through the use of article writing/blog content posting and other methods. Also, we require general SEOs who can perform the usual technical tasks such as creating 301's, canonicals and SEO audit reports on client websites. Ideally we only want UK based, white hatters with at least 2 years SEO experience. Please pm me if this interests you. Thanks Aran
Industry News | | Chiefblob0 -
Is a canonical to itself a link juice leak
Duane Forrester from Bing said that you should not have a canonical pointing back to the same page as it confuses Bingbot,
Industry News | | AlanMosley
“A lot of websites have rel=canonicals in place as placeholders within their page code. Its best to leave them blank rather than point them at themselves. Pointing a rel=canonical at the page it is installed in essentially tells us “this page is a copy of itself. Please pass any value from itself to itself.” No need for that.” He also stated that a canonical is much like a 301 except that it does not physically move the user to the canonical page. This leads me to think that having such a tag may leak link juice. “Please pass any value from itself to itself”
Google has stated that GoogleBot can handle such a tag, but this still does not mean that it is not leaking link juice.0 -
My websites Internal page is not ranking.
Hi, I had "x1", "x2","x3" keywords ranked for my websites internal page that is "www.somesite.com/internal-page.htm" i was fairly doing well for my keywords mostly in top 5, but now the case is from last couple of weeks, my internal page url is gone & replaced with home page. And I don't see internal page anywhere mostly in top 1000, is that penalty to internal page ?If yes how can i troubleshoot this ? I see my other pages in top 20-30 but that specific page is not anywhere. Please let me know. -Sunny.
Industry News | | sunny.popali0