Canonicals
-
We have a client that has his products listed on 20+ different websites, including 4 of his own. Also, he only has 1 of everything, so once he sells it then the product is gone.
To battle this duplication issue, plus having a short internet lifespan of less than 4 weeks, I was wondering if it would be a good idea to canonical the products back to the category page. Kind of like using canonical tags on your "used blue widget" and "used red widget" pages back to the "used widgets" page.
Would this help with the duplicate content issues?
Is this a proper use of a canonical?
-
It would help to use the canonicals as you describe and it is proper the way you mention, but because the products are up for only 4 weeks, the new pages probably don't even have time to rank. It would be kind of a moo point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLwYpSCrlHU
You need to probably focus on category pages that might point to the items as those will be more static and can build rank. They can point to the "sold" archive item page and then when a new item comes up will already have rank on the related category to make the sale. We have used this on job boards as it works the same. Any given job will be posted for 1 month at the most, but the category page of $type job in $city will rank for that key phrase and then point people towards the ever changing job listings. Not sure what you are selling, but think about how you might be able to setup an evergreen type of topic page that people would search for related to your products and focus on that.
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
-
Rel=canonical - Identical .com and .us Version of Site
We have a .us and a .com version of our site that we direct customers to based on location to servers. This is not changing for the foreseeable future. We had restricted Google from crawling the .us version of the site and all was fine until I started to see the https version of the .us appearing in the SERPs for certain keywords we keep an eye on. The .com still exists and is sometimes directly above or under the .us. It is occasionally a different page on the site with similar content to the query, or sometimes it just returns the exact same page for both the .com and the .us results. This has me worried about duplicate content issues. The question(s): Should I just get the https version of the .us to not be crawled/indexed and leave it at that or should I work to get a rel=canonical set up for the entire .us to .com (making the .com the canonical version)? Are there any major pitfalls I should be aware of in regards to the rel=canonical across the entire domain (both the .us and .com are identical and these newly crawled/indexed .us pages rank pretty nicely sometimes)? Am I better off just correcting it so the .us is no longer crawled and indexed and leaving it at that? Side question: Have any ecommerce guys noticed that Googlebot has started to crawl/index and serve up https version of your URLs in the SERPs even if the only way to get into those versions of the pages are to either append the https:// yourself to the URL or to go through a sign in or check out page? Is Google, in the wake of their https everywhere and potentially making it a ranking signal, forcing the check for the https of any given URL and choosing to index that? I just can't figure out how it is even finding those URLs to index if it isn't seeing http://www.example.com and then adding the https:// itself and checking... Help/insight on either point would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | TLM0 -
When to use mod rewrite / canonical / 301 redirect
Hello, I have taken over the management of a site which has a big problem with duplicate content. The duplicate content is caused by two things: Upper and lower case urls e.g: www.mysite.com/blog and www.mysite.com/Blog The other reason is the use of product filters / pagination which mean you can get to the same 'page' via different filters. The filters generate separate URLs. http://www.mysite.com/casestudy
Technical SEO | | Barques-Design
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy/filter?solution=0&page=1
http://www.mysite.com/casestudy?page=1
http://www.cpio.co.uk/casestudy/filter?solution=0" Am I right to assume that for the case sensitive URLs I should use a 301 redirect because I only want the lower page to be shown? For the issue with dynamic URLs should we implement a mod-rewrite and 301 to one page? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Mat0 -
Need help with rel canonical!
I have a client who's MOZ crawl is coming back with 62 "notices" about rel canonical. Is this bad? On the report, it lists the url, then "Tag Value" as the home page.....what does this mean exactly? Are they pointing all the pages to the home page? I think I have 301 and rel can confused....
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Cross domain canonical, pros, cons, and link popularity?
We have a client who has two well trusted web properties, their insurance site where they sell insurance offerings, and a state specific blog they own where they promote healthy living. They want to improve their traffic/rankings/etc to the main site but they want to keep their blog where its at for PR (it already has a great following). So my quesiton is, if we do set up a secondary blog on the main site and use canonical tags on the more trusted external blog to link to the main site. Will that pass on the link popularity their external blog gets along with all the benefits of the fresh content, etc? I've never actually seen anyone do this yet, keen to try it but not with a client.
Technical SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Regarding Rel Canonical on PhoneTech.dk
Hi All you Seo Experts from seomoz I have a question about one of my webshops where I have the same product listed in different categories where I on the duplicate pages use the Rel Caninical Tag on, that points to the main product url. I just have to verify with you guys that I did it correctly Example on the shop. This is just an example www.phonetech.dk/shop/product1.html - This is Main Duplicates www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3G/product1.html - Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main. www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3g/backcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main. www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3gs/colorbackcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag here also pointing to main Hope you guys can help me that my use of Canonical Tag is correct. Regards Christian - Denmark
Technical SEO | | noerdar0 -
Diagnosing Canonical Errors Is Screaming frog reliable?
Morning from suny & warm wetherby UK 🙂 On this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ screaming frog is citing a canonical error but I'm confused as this piece of code is in place: http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage" /> So my question is please - "Does this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ have a caninical error or is screaming frog useless? Other examples where screaming frog is picking up canonical errors include:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/ Oh forgot to say the preffered version is http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage/ Any insights welcvome 🙂0 -
Problem with Rel Canonical
Background: We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. Clearly I am doing something wrong here, how do I check my various pages to see where the problem lies and how do I go about fixing it?
Technical SEO | | SallySerfas0 -
Confused about rel="canonical"
I'm receiving a duplicate content error in my reports for www.example.com and www.example.com/index.htm. Should I put the rel="canonical" on the index page and point it to www.example.com? And if I have other important pages where rel="canonical" is being suggested do I place the rel="canonical" on that page? For example if www.example/product is an important page would I place on that page?
Technical SEO | | BrandonC-2698870