SEO Elements for Canonicalized URLs?
-
I am helping a client with SEO for their ecommerce store. They have around 65 products, but close to 500 URLs all for those same products. Basically they have a bit of an index bloat problem but long story short restructuring was too much of a lift for them, so I got them set up with a canonical URL strategy to ensure all duplicate pages point to one "main" product page.
Getting to the point:
They also need an on-page overhaul. I've created keyword optimized titles, metas, H1s, etc. for each product. Do these elements need to be added to every single one of the 450+ product pages OR do I only need to add them to the 65 "main" product pages that everything else is pointing to, since that will ultimately be the page that gets crawled?
-
Happy to help
-
Thanks for your response! This is how I was leaning as well, but the client is doing the implementation and asked if they needed to update all their URLs, so I wanted to get a second opinion. Maybe this implementation will push them to consolidate
Thanks again!
-
Hiya, my instinct here would be to update both if possible - canonicals are a hint rather than a command, Google will still crawl canonicalised pages and could decide to ignore the canonical if it doesn't think the pages are closely related enough.
Updating the titles etc. on the canonicalised pages can help confirm that they _are _the same content as the pages you're canonicalising them _to. _Plus, worst case, if Google decides to ignore the canonical, the page is at least optimised until you can take stronger action.
If those additional pages really don't have any additional value for visitors I would keep pushing the client to consolidate if you can. Even if they can't do it now, they could be thanking you in a year.
Good luck!
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
-
Big SEO Changes
Firstly, this is quite extensive so thank you to anyone who answers some or all of the below! So this is quite a lengthy ordeal, and I'm going to start by saying that I'm no SEO expert (yet). I've paid for SEO for years and only on the odd occasion has it made any real difference. It has come to the point now where I've spent so much money on SEO over the years with practically no benefit that I can't afford to do it anymore, so I am teaching myself. So, back in July my website was hacked for a total sum of three weeks. My SEO/Hosting company at the time didn't do anything about it, let the hack sit there and didn't even take the site offline. It just so happened that at the time I was changing over to a new site at the time anyway, so I launched the new site (completely different in structure to the old one), did all of the relevant 301 redirects, and my traffic hasn't recovered since. I have gone from around 100-150 daily visits to 0-10. The descriptions, keywords, alt image tags, h1 & 2, meta data, etc. is all much better (a lot of it was empty on the previous site) on the new site than it was on the previous site so I was assuming it would be better, but it isn't. Anyone got any suggestions as to why this might be? Here are some specific questions: Canonical Problem? My site is ecommerce and lists some products in several categories, that has resulted in a high duplicate content rate. Is it expected/accepted by google that this would be the case for an ecommerce website or do I need to sort out some serious canonical urls to fix the issue? The site structure of my website could also be a problem, but I'm not qualified enough to know for sure. If you view a product/sub-category, then remove the category section of that link, the product will still appear. I don't know if this structure is good or not? i.e. if you click both links below, the link will appear all the same. http://thespacecollective.com/space-clothing/nasa-and-space-t-shirts http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-and-space-t-shirts Is this a problem for SEO? Duplicate Product Tag Problem? I have many duplicate product tags appearing on many products, should these be blocked in the robots.txt? i.e. http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/space-flown/apollo-11-flown-cm-meteorite-acrylic http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/space-flown/apollo-11-flown Site Code Structure When choosing the template I would use for my website I did not stop to consider if the code was SEO friendly, this on my part was due to my ignorance on the subject. Is the site structure SEO-friendly or is it hindering my efforts? Website: http://thespacecollective.com Again, thank you to anyone who takes the time to read/care about the issues facing a newbie. My only option now is to learn SEO myself (which is well overdue), so any advice/answers are appreciated!
Technical SEO | | moon-boots0 -
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
When Should You Start SEO?
I am launching a new website (related to IT services) on Monday 6th May 2013. What should be my SEO/SMO/PPC strategy for a brand new website with new domain ? I have a blog within the website as well. Is it better to promote internal blog or should i focus on external bogs like wordpress ?
Technical SEO | | afycon0 -
Webmaster tools...URL Errors
Hi mozzers, Quick question. Whats the best thing to do about URL errors in webmaster tools. They are all 404s that point from external sites. Many of them are junk spam sites. Should I mark them as "fixed" or just leave them. I'm hoping google is aware it's out of my control if spam sites want to link to 404s on my site. Peter
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
Friendly URLs
Hi, I have an important news site and I am trying to implement user friendly URLs. Now, when you click a news in the homepage, it goes to a redirect.php page and then goes to a friendly url. the question is, It is better to have the friendly URL in the first link or it is the same for the robot having this in the finally url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Homepage canonicalized with trailing slash
We were told by a consultant that in SEO it is best practice to canonicalize our homepage URL with the trailing slash. What do you think about doing this for the homepage? Is it important for other site links to have the trailing slash as well
Technical SEO | | fibers0 -
Special characters in URL
Hello everybody, my question focus on special parameters in URL. I i am working for a website that use a lot of special entities in their URLS. For instance: www.mydomain.com/mykeyword1-mykeyword2%2C-1%2Cpage1.html I am about to make 301 redirect rules for all these urls to clean ones. IE: www.mydomain.com/mykeyword1-mykeyword2%2C-1%2Cpage1
Technical SEO | | objectif-mars
would become:
www.mydomain.com/mykeyword1-mykeyword.html I just wanted to know if anybody has already done this kind of "cleanup" and if i could expect a positive boost or not. Thanks0