Does Canonical Tag passes link juice to the original URL?
-
We are using Canonical tags at almost all the pages of our eCommerce website. We have various sorting options like "High to Low", "Best Sellers", etc., due to this page URLs get change with some dynamic URL parameters. To avoid duplicity, we are using canonical tag on each page which point to the original url.
Also, we are using IBM Coremetrics to track traffic and conversions, but to measure referral traffic in Coremetrics, we have to add tracking parameters in the URL. So, while link building we need to share URLs with Coremetrics tracking parameters in the URL, but the canonical of this page is pointing to the original URL.
Suppose we have a Page that needs to be shared with Coremetrics tag: domain.com/category-name/?cm_mmc=Referral_-xyz--izUPF8VmRng--3
This Page has the canonical tag pointing to the original url: domain.com/category-name/
My question is if the URL: domain.com/category-name?cm_mmc=Referral_-xyz--izUPF8VmRng--3 got shared on other websites, will it pass link juice to the original URL: domain.com/category-name.
-
Can't use a canonical tag if the canonicalized page doesn't resemble the page I want to send link juice to? Why not?
-
Hey there,
The short answer is Yes.
However, if the pages are not alike, the tag shouldn't be used then. But anyway, it's not the case here.
Cheers, Martin
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
-
URL with affiliate ID won't stop outranking our homepage. Time for nuclear option?
We have affiliate links applied to our index URL - https://playon.co - which are not picked up as a duplicate URLs by Google. We've applied a canonical URL, but our homepage is a 301 redirect to a page with a language parameter. So what happens is: https://playon.co/ goes to https://playon.co/en Affiliate links such as https://playon.co/#/?affiliate_token=1390448caccb7d go to https://playon.co/en#/?affiliate_token=1390448caccb7d This gets picked up as rel="canonical" href="https://playon.co/en" which I assumed marked it as a non-canonical page. Nonetheless, we keep seeing this affiliate "page" ranking - even above our own homepage for some terms. Worse, the affiliate URL also contains old cached information of the page. I don't even see how these SERP results should exist, because the affiliate link just ends up at the homepage (https://playon.co/en) My questions: What can we do to remove these affiliate URL versions of our homepage from being ranked? Google doesn't see anything after the hash in the indexed affiliate URLs. If we were to no-index our index URL (https://playon.co/) to completely remove the affiliates links, would our canonical version (https://playon.co/en) assume the top listing, or will we have effectively nuked our entire site? Appreciate any help.
Affiliate Marketing | | jmoreland0 -
Low value link building to sitemap.xml
During some competitive research recently I discovered one of my clients competitors sites had an interesting backlink profile. Looking at the top-pages report in Open Site Explorer the home page was the #1 page (as you'd expect) with 2.5k links from about 500 linking root domains The second page was the sitemap.xml (~1.5k links, 400 linking root domains) and the third was their /feed page (again, ~1.5k links, 350 linking root domains). Links to these two pages aren't something that would happen naturally (particularly the sitemap.xml). There's a whole load of evidence for nasty low quality link building such as over-optimised keyword rich anchor text, comment spam, and even some blog/article based link networks. It's a pretty nasty niche with lots of cut-throat affiliate marketing. My guess here is that someone may have made a mistake using an automated link building too, but I'd be interested in what you might think? Have you seen this before? (Sorry, I can't reveal the domains in question as I'm bound by an NDA.)
Affiliate Marketing | | DougRoberts0 -
Choosing an Affiliate Software & Link SEO-Value
Hello everyone. I'm looking for recommendations for affiliate software. I'm also curious if there is any truth in the "SEO-value" that some softwares are touting as a benefit. Choosing a Software: This Moz Blog Article says to build it yourself. However, I'm inclined to use an out-of-the-box software for advanced features such as real-time analytics for the affiliate, w-9/1099 processing, etc. MozPerks promotes hasoffers.com which seems overly pricey ($230/month with perk discount) and OMNISTAR who just left me on hold for 10 minutes (and still no anwer from their sales department). So I'm still looking. Any recommendations? SEO-value of Links from Affiliates: Here's an example of what OMNISTAR claims about the SEO value of the way they structure the links from affiliate sites to my site. I hear a variation on this pitch from each software and none of them seem to agree. Does Google want me to clearly tag promotional vs. editorial links? Is there SEO-value in promotional links on affiliate sites or is that a load of bologna? Thanks a bunch!
Affiliate Marketing | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Can linking out to a weak site harm my sites SEO?
We have an affiliate that wants us to link to his site to help him get started. His website looks okay and is in the same niche as us. However, he has PR 0 and no Page Trust. We could work in a natural looking link in a news article, but there is no way he could be considered any kind of "authority" link. Can linking to his site harm us?
Affiliate Marketing | | theLotter0 -
Where to look for relevant links
I and many others are targeting keywords such as "free iphone" or "free ps3" as part of incentive marketing schemes that offer rewards for referring new users to businesses. These often seem too good to be true but actually do work (if you don't get caught up in the spam sites). The thing is, what sort of link building should I be looking at once I have my site showing the users how the opportunity works and that it is a legitimate site. I don't want to have free iphone links placed where people may think I'm scamming them, so should I look at press releases, creating infographics or what? I look forward to hearing some of your ideas...
Affiliate Marketing | | GrassRootsSEO0 -
Affiliate links and Panda
Hello all, my question relates to the recent panda changes and the subsequent impact on pages with affiliate links. I have a hub of pages on my website talking about parcel delivery. Each page has unique, quality content and up until about 3 weeks ago they were starting to achieve strong rankings. We then decided to add some affiliate links (just 3) on each of the 5 parcel related pages we have. The rankings for each of these pages have tanked completely; rather than top 20, we're now outside of the top 100 for all of them. When we noticed this we masked the link, changing it to domain.com/index/affiliate; we also no followed the link. Alas this has had minimal effect in restoring the rankings. What i'm now thinking of doing is removing the affiliate links from the parcel landing pages altogether and instead providing users with a no followed link to another page within the site upon which we would have the affiliate links. This page would also be no indexed as well. My question is: Is this a good idea and if so will it restore my previous rankings over time, or have those pages (as a result of the affiliate links) been permanently down graded?? Any assistance would be gratefully received!
Affiliate Marketing | | danielparry0 -
Link juice from my affiliates to my site
I'm setting up an affiliate program through 1shoppingcart. Even though I run 3 different websites, the way their program works is that I have to have 1 domain name that my affiliates get as their affiliate link, with their unique id attached at the end. I can give them multiple links that will redirect to various places on my 3 websites, but those original links that they put on their site will all be to just 1 domain. I'm wondering if I still get link juice to my sites even though the links are obviously being redirected? Does it depend on the redirection method? I was just thinking that getting hundreds of affiliates who run related sites could be a very good seo boost if they're all linking to my site, but I feel like it's going to be wasted because of this redirection thing. Hope this made sense. Thanks very much,
Affiliate Marketing | | philraymond
Phil0 -
Passing link juice via aff links?
Hi All, I know there was a recent post on this subject but I'm wondering if someone could take a look at these links and tell me if there is any SEO value in them at all and if not, what would be a way to improve them that might not be too much trouble for the affiliate? This URL: http://www.premiermodelskin.com/the-products/blemish-treatment has a Purchase button that passes product data (price, quantity, etc) directly to the basket of the host site (the site we want SEO benefit to). Using a form method to this URL: <form method="GET" action="<strong>http://www.monushop.co.uk/products/premier/blemish-treatment.html</strong>"> Qty <select id="add" name="add"> <option value="1" selected="selected">1</option> <option value="2">2</option> <option value="3">3</option> <option value="4">4</option> <option value="5">5</option> <option value="6">6</option> <option value="7">7</option> <option value="8">8</option> <option value="9">9</option> <option value="10">10</option> </select> 15ml £16.25 </form> My question is, does G see that form GET action as a followable link? If not what would be a better method? Any feedback much appreciated.
Affiliate Marketing | | lovealbatross
Cheers
J0