How to structure rel=canonical for a e commerce site
-
Hello,
So I have searched the Q & A , Google, the zen cart forum and at this point I am looking for some one to give a concrete answer on what I should do. There is a lot of different opinions on " rel=canonical" and how to apply it , since there are many other variable in place.
I have a zen cart site. I am using the latest 1.3.9 version. The default setting ( seem to me) uses the rel=canonical to point back to the specific link product or category respectively.
Most of the time I have two scenarios.
1. Main category ---> Sub category----> Product
2. Main Category----> Product
I'll give an example
http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards ---main category
http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards sub category
http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards/slanted-award product
(this example has three sub categories with maybe 12 products in one 4 in the second and 5 in the third)
From looking at the source code for each url it the rel=canonical just points back to its own url.
I want to avoid competing against my self, for the example above keyword "acrylic awards" so should the use of the re=canonical be changes site wide to have products point back to sub categories when they exist and have products point back to main categories when no sub categories exist?
I am very new to seo, specifically eCommerce seo. If you have experience and have done this to a site you manage for a client or your own please advise how to proceed. Also if I'm missing some thing that will give me a better understanding of the bigger seo picture that would be great.
Thanks,
Yevgeny
-
Did you end up removing the rel=canonical tag? I don't see it in your source.
If you did, that is the right move. Canonical link tag should be used as a last resort. And should only really be used if you are currently having canonical issues or the CMS/cart you are using is known to have these problems.
Ideally canonical problems should be fixed from a technical standpoint first.
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
-
Canonicals being ignored
Hi, I've got a site that I'm working with that has 2 ways of viewing the same page - a property details page. Basically one version if the long version: /property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V and the other just the short version with the code only on the end: /6cn99v There is a canonical in place from the short version to the long version, and the sitemap.xml only lists the long version HOWEVER - Google is indexing the short version in the majority of cases (not all but the majority). http://www.website.com/property/Edinburgh/Southside-Newington/6CN99V"> Obviously "www.website.com" contains the URL of the site itself. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | squarecat.ben0 -
Rel Canonical Crawl Notices
Hello, Within the Moz report from the crawl of my site, it shows that I had 89 Rel Canonical notices. I noticed that all the pages on my site have a rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on. Specific example from my site is as follows: http://www.automation-intl.com/resistance-welding-equipment has a Rel Canonical tag <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.automation-intl.com/resistance-welding-equipment" />. Is this self reference harmless and if so why does it create a notice in the crawl? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | TopFloor0 -
REL CANONİCAL
Hi, The Original Page: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-firmalari/ Page 2: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-firmalari/?sayfa=2 Page 3: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-firmalari/?sayfa=3 Page 4:http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-firmalari/?sayfa=4 we added this rel="canonical" href="http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/evden-eve-nakliyat-firmalari/" /> tag all these pages Is it right?
Technical SEO | | iskq0 -
Rel=Canonical Help
The site in question is www.example.com/example. The client has added a rel=canonical tag to this page as . In other words, instead of putting the tag on the pages that are not to be canonical and pointing them to this one, they are doing it backwards and putting the same URL as the canonical one as the page they are putting the tag on. They have done this with thousands of pages. I know this is incorrect, but my question is, until the issue is resolved, are these tags hurting them at all just being there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Moving content from CMS pages to a blog - 301 or rel canonical?
Our site has some useful information buried in out-of-the-way CMS pages, and I feel like this content is more suited to our blog. What's my best method here? 1. Move the content to a blog post, delete the original page, and 301. 2. Move the content to a blog post, leave the original page up, and rel canonical. 3. Rewrite the content so it's not a duplicate, keep original page up, and post rewritten content on the blog. 4. Something else. Some of this content has inbound links and some does not. Quite a bit of it gets long-tail traffic already. It just looks kludgy because it's on pages that really aren't designed for articles. It would look much nicer and be much more readable/shareable/linkable on the blog.
Technical SEO | | CMC-SD0 -
Is the seomoz on-page factor :Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical working properly?
I have a word press site with a rel canonical plug in. The rel="canonical" href= is there and the url in there works and goes to the actual page.So why does the seomoz keep giving the warning: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Technical SEO | | CurtCarroll0 -
Mobile Site Domain/URL Structure
We are currently building a mobile optimised version of our main website and I had some questions with regard to SEO. 1. Is it best to structure the domain as: m.yourdomain.com yourdomain/m 2. It is correct to place rel="cannonical" on the mobile pages and to have only the main site indexed? Thanks in advance and links or books on mobile seo you can direct me to that would be greatly appreciated. Phil
Technical SEO | | Phily0 -
Site Structure Still Old
Ok after my first SEO report from seomoz I re-structured one of my sites. I basically split it into two different sites. I did this way before it was re-crawled on 5/1 and the results still show pages that no longer exist on that domain. What is causing this (user error I am sure but I just need to know what I can do to fix it).
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0