Is there a way to rel = canonical only part of a page?
-
Hi guys:
I'm doing SEO for a boat accessories store, and for instance they have marine AC systems, many of them, and while the part number, number of BTUs, voltage, and accessories change on some models, the description stays exactly the same across the board on many of them...people often search on Google by model number, and I worry that if I put rel = canonical, then the result for that specific model they're looking for won't come up, just the one that everything is being redirected to. (and people do this much more than entering a site nowadays and searching by product model, it's easier).
Excuse my ignorance on this stuff, I'm good with link building and content creation, but the behind-the-scenes aspects... not so much:
-
Can I "rel=canonical" only part of the page of the repeat models (the long description)? so people can still search by model number, and reach the model they are looking for?
-
Am I misunderstanding something here about rel=canonical
(Interesting thing, I rank very high for these pages with tons of repeat descriptions, number one in many places... but wonder if google attributes a sort of "across the site" penalty for the repeated content... but wouldn't ranking number 1 for these pages mean nothing's wrong?. Thanks)
-
-
Is this still the best advice for this situation? My situation is different but this reply is stale by about three years.
-
Awesome, Dirk, thanks!! Best advice I could have heard
-
A canonical url always applies to a "full page" = content accessible under a specific url so it's not possible to apply the canonical url to only a part of the page.
Duplication of content is not always a reason for "punishment" by Google - check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en : "unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results" that you will get an action from Google. In most cases - "we (=Google) do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results".
You could consider to make one main page for each type of product and then list the specifics for each model number on the same page but it could lead to lower traffic.
You could also try to make for each detailed page a piece of "original" content, but in cases like yours I guess this would be virtually impossible.
Don't think everyone would agree on this advice - but given that your pages are currently ranking quite well and they are answering a certain customer need I wouldn't do touch them. The risk you run seems limited.
Dirk
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
-
Would it work to place H1 (or important page keywords) at the top of your page in HTML and move lower on page with CSS?
I understand that the H1 tag is no longer heavily correlated with stronger ranking signals but it is more important that Keywords or keyphrases are at the top of a page. My question is, if I just put my important keyword (or H1) toward the top of my page in the HTML and move it towards the middle/lower portion with css position elements, will this still be viewed by Googlebot as important keywords toward the top of my page? QCaxMHL
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
Best way to implement canonical tags on an ecommerce site with many filter options?
What would be the best way to add canonical tags to an ecommerce site with many filter options, for example, http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com? Should I include a canonical tag for all filter options under a category even though the pages don't have the same content? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Wordpress - Dynamic pages vs static pages
Hi, Our site has over 48,000 indexed links, with a good mix of pages, posts and dynamic pages. For the purposes of SEO and the recent talk of "fresh content" - would it be better to keep dynamic pages as they are or manually create static pages/ subpages. The one noticable downside with dynamic pages is that they arent picked up by any sitemap plugins, you need to manually create a separate sitemap just for these dynamic links. Any thoughts??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danialniazi1 -
REL canonicals not fixing duplicate issue
I have a ton of querystrings in one of the apps on my site as well as pagination - both of which caused a lot of Duplicate errors on my site. I added rel canonicals as a php condition so every time a specific string (which only exists in these pages) occurs. The rel canonical notification shows up in my campaign now, but all of the duplicate errors are still there. Did I do it right and just need to ignore the duplicate errors? Is there further action to be taken? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Canonical issue with my Home Page
Hi, My site has several canonical issues that should be fixed. http://www.crosscountryallied.com For my Home Page, more links are pointing at www.crosscountryallied.com/ (887) than http:// http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ctAlliedWebSite (27). It is recommended that I implement a 301 redirect to recapture a significant amount of link value. The following lists show the most common canonicalization errors that can be produced when using default settings on my web server: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6 (IIS): http://www.crosscountryallied.com/ http://www.crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp (or .jsp depending on the version) http://crosscountryallied.com/ http://crosscountryallied.com/default.jsp or any combination with different capitalization. Each of these URLs spreads out the value of backlinks to our homepage. Should I just redirect them to: http://www.crosscountryallied.com and add a canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev”
Hey mozzers Would be interested to know if anyone has used the rel=“next” and rel=“prev” attributes more info here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html If you have used it, has it worked and what are your thoughts etc:? And for those that have used it, is it a better way of handling pagination other than the obvious of Google saying so. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0 -
What to call pages
I reckon I've bagged one of the most interesting SEO projects of the year. My new client is selling vibrators. The site is not even in development yet but they want to make it fun and friendly and take away the stigma and "seediness" of the product. Anyway, the owenr has presented a list of "places" within this site which are places where the products are going to be showcased. These are along the lines of, Royal Rabbits Palace, Clitoral Courtyard, Dungeon Dildos, Magical G-arden etc. (there is a bit shreky/fariy tale thing going on) Clearly, these places add a lot to the look and feel of the site but as URL's and Titles, they are clearly not optimal in an SEO sense. What is for the best...making sure we shift the owner back into SEO best practice or hope that having these weird and wonderful names for the pages is going to add enough to the user experience to make it worthwhile to let through. FYI, did you know you can get vibrators that you can plug an ipod into. Man, I've seen some weird things researching this client!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FDC0 -
On Page question
HI folks, I have a warning that I have missing meta tag descriptions on two pages. 1) http://bluetea.com.au/wp-login.php 2) http://bluetea.com.au/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword Is this something I should just ignore? Or is there a best practice I should be implementing? Thank you for your time
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PHDAustralia680