There are a lot of great posts and resources about the rel canonical tag, but they can be hard to identify with a simple search. Even if you break through the clutter and find something truly useful, the current information can be hard to separate from the old. The web has been missing a current top-to-bottom resource on the rel canonical tag. In this post, I’ll do my best to cover it all and update you on
the latest.
Learn why and how to use the rel canonical tag, when not to use it, the various opinions of experienced SEOs, and other bits and pieces that you need to know to use it correctly.
Let us start with the basics, then we’ll get into some more advanced ideas and issues.
What is the canonical tag?
First of all, we can't seem to agree on what to call it. Rest assured that 'rel canonical', 'rel=canonical', 'rel canonical tag', 'canonical url tag', 'link canonical tag' and simply 'canonical tag' all refer to the same thing.
The canonical tag is a page level meta tag that is placed in the HTML header of a webpage. It tells the search engines which URL is the canonical version of the page being displayed. It's purpose is to keep duplicate content out of the search engine index while consolidating your page’s strength into one ‘canonical’ page.
How is the canonical tag used?
The canonical tag is a relatively quick solution to resolve duplicate content. If your website generates and displays the same (or very similar) content on multiple URLs, the canonical tag could be used to bucket them together and assign one master (canonical) version. Lets look at a list of common duplicate content URLs.
- https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm (the main page)
- https://www.example.com/quality-wrenches.htm (oops! all pages also resolve with the www sub-domain)
- https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?ref=crazy-blog-lady (this looks like a way to track referral sources)
- https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?sort=price (how users view the products by lowest to highest price)
- https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm/print (the ad-free and graphic light print version)
A canonical tag that references the main page, https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm, could be placed in the header of all of the above pages.
How is it implemented?
The canonical tag is part of the HTML header on a webpage. This is the same place where we put other fun SEO stuff like the title tag, meta description tag and the robots tag. The code, as in my example above, would look like this.
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm"/>
Oh look, here's one in action!
Easy, right?! Companies with expensive development cycles love the canonical tag solution because it can be implemented relatively easily. It is often one straight-forward development project instead of dozens of more complicated ones.
This is all very exciting, I know, but there are some things you need to know.
There is usually a better solution
The canonical tag is not a replacement for a solid site architecture that doesn’t create duplicate content in the first place. There is almost always a superior solution to the canonical tag from a pure SEO best practice perspective.
Lets go through some of the URL examples I provided above, this time we'll talk about how to fix them without the canonical tag.
Example 1: https://www.example.com/quality-wrenches.htm
This is a duplicate version because our example website resolves with both the www version and the non-www version. If the canonical tag was used to pull the www version out of the index (keeping the non-www version as the canonical one) both versions would still resolve in the browser. With both versions still resolving, both versions can still continue to generate links.
A canonical tag, as with a 301 redirect, does not pass all of the link value from one page to another. It passes most of it, but not all. We estimate that the link value loss with either of these solutions is 1-10%. In this way, a 301 redirect and a canonical tag are the same.
I'd recommend a 301 redirect instead of a canonical tag.
Why, you ask? A 301 redirect takes the link value loss hit once. Once a 301 is in place, a user never lands on the duplicate URL version. They are redirected to the canonical version. If they decide to link to the page, they are going to provide that link to the canonical version. No link love lost. Compare that to the canonical tag solution which keeps both URLs resolving and perpetuates the link value loss.
Example 2: https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?ref=crazy-blog-lady
I get it. You want to know if it was worthwhile to send a sample wrench to the crazy blog lady for review. What happens when another blogger clicks through her link and then makes her own post about your products USING THE SAME URL? Your fancy tracking trick isn't so effective anymore, is it?
You'd be much better off to record that referral and then do a 301 redirect to the canonical URL version. Other web surfers will link to and share the appropriate URL and you won't be losing that 1-10% of your hard earned link love on an ongoing basis.
Example 3: https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?sort=price
URLs like these occur when a webpage allows the user to sort search results based on various elements, such as price. For the purpose of this example, I'm going to assume that this search result page is more like a high quality landing page with some search results embedded. This way I don't have to get into the whole 'search results in search results' issue. :)
Rather than using the canonical tag here, I'd use the meta robots 'noindex' tag (which really means 'noindex,follow' because follow is implied as the default). This allows the search engines prioritized access to some of the most important pages linked from this one. By using the 'noindex' robots meta tag, the page will stay out of the search index but any link value will be passed through to the pages that are linked from this one.
Example 4: https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm/print
If your website's print pages include a link back to the original page, you can use the meta robots 'noindex' tag here too. The page stays out of the index and any link value will be passed back to the original, canonical, web version of the page.
See how that works? I challenge you to hand me any duplicate content scenario and I'll be able to find you a solution that is better for your SEO program, at least from a pure SEO best practices standpoint, than the canonical tag.
I just know somebody is going to bring up the robots.txt file as a duplicate content solution. Before you do, remember that the robots.txt file is intended to block certain pages or directories from search engine indexing. It doesn't consolidate link juice, basically creates a dead end. Before you even think about using the robots.txt file for anything but a place to point to your XML Sitemap, you should check out my recent post on the topic, Serious Robots.txt Misuse & High Impact Solutions.
Still want to go with the canonical tag, because of reasons other than pure SEO? Perhaps your IT department isn't sitting on their thumbs waiting for your next massive SEO project?
A word, or two, of caution
1. Search Engine Support is Spotty, at Best
The level of search engine support for the canonical tag varies greatly. Google supports it on both single domains and across multiple domains. Bing considers the canonical tag a 'hint' and I haven't heard of any canonical tag implementations that have impacted the Bing index. Have you? Surely there has to be one...
2. There are Better Duplicate Content Fixes
Correcting the systems that generate duplicate content in the first place is the best solution. If that isn't possible, look to other solutions like 301 redirects and the meta noindex tag instead.
3. Incorrect Implementation can be a Disaster
If you are going to implement the rel canonical tag, please, please make sure it is correct before you launch. Take a look at Dr. Pete's recent post, Catastrophic Canonicalization, to read about his test. Not every website is as lucky as Dr. Pete in their recovery after a failed canonical tag implementation. We see examples of it all the time in Q&A.
Here are a few posts in favor of steering clear.
- Ian Laurie's Why I Still Hate Rel Canonical
- Stephan Spencer's Canonical Tag Not Yet Reliable
- Adam Audette's Link Canonical is Breaking Sites
What Now?
The rel canonical tag has it's place. It is a big time saver for development. The solution isn't as solid as some of your other options but if it means being able to take action now to combat duplicate content instead of waiting until 2014, you should go for it. In other cases, your hosting solution may not allow you to implement 301 redirects at all and your hands are tied.
If you go the route of the rel canonical, please be careful with it! Test, test, test. If you have the choice and the resources to work through a more effective solution, perhaps you should go that route instead.
More Reading
If you haven't had enough on the rel canonical tag for one day, check out these useful links. As always, watch the dates on these!
- Canonical URL Tag – The Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps, Rand Fishkin.
- SEO Advice – URL Canonical, Matt Cutts
- Specify Your Canonical, Webmaster Central Blog
- About rel=”canonical”, Matt Cutts [video]
- Google, Yahoo & Microsoft Unite On “Canonical Tag” To Reduce Duplicate Content Clutter, Vanessa Fox
- Learn about the Canonical Link Element in 5 minutes, Matt Cutts
Happy Optimizing!
P.S. Keyphraseology, my SEO consulting business, is looking for a great cause to help out with a pro bono site audit and some consulting hours. If you're a non-profit that could use some assistance with your search engine visibility, apply here.
image of the question mark fellow provided by Shutterstock
Hey Lindsay. What a super resource for rel canonical. Thanks for such a solid post. I have a small handful of "bible" articles for various things SEO, and this is now included in my "Canonical" bible file.
[note: that's bible with a small "b"]
Thanks for all information and links. The article is great
You're recommendation of 301 permanent redirects is right on the money. It's easy for non-SEO to get confused and that's why it's important for us to train our clients on the differences. Even the smallest of changes can have the largest impact.
Thanks for a great read!
Great point about how 301-redirects prevent future non-canonical inbound links. One thing I see a lot with duplicate content is where people implement a solution but then still have an internal link structure that exacerbates the duplicates. It may be something as simple as linking to both "www" and non-www versions of pages within the same site. The Canonical Tag may patch that problem, but you're still telling Google (and visitors) every day to visit both sites. When you send those kinds of mixed signals, the problem is never really going to go away.
I think that is a key point from this post, too. The canonical tag is a scotch-tape fix. The duplicate content problem can continue to grow even after an entirely successful canonical tag implementation.
Thanks a lot!
But one question left. How do you detect the canonical? I'm looking for a firefox-Addon to show instant the canonical-Tag of each site I'm visiting. Like the "nofollow"-Modus of the moz-bar.
Yes, I can look with the "Analyse Page"-Button. But "instant" would be great. You know such an addon? I could't find one...
eric
@eric Search status is a firefox add on that shows if the rel=canonical is in use. You can find it here https://bit.ly/bY2SGj
Thanks Eric! I used to run search status, but dropped it a year or so ago. I'll have to give it another try!
Thanks just now refreshed my Outdated info regarding canonical tags!!! Awesome post ..Mam!!!
Finally, a post that helps me get a better grip on the maniacal canonical (and makes me say "DOH!"). Thank you!
Finally someone took the time to make an in-depth post on the canonical tag. Really good post, I think the only thing that was missing was how to pronounce it correctly (definitely took me a few tries :) ).
I’ve seen a few ecommerce sites that could make use of the canonical tag for how they serve up their product pages. For example:
.com/product/slinkies
.com/search/product/slinkies
.com/specials/slinkies
Proper use of the canonical tag in this instance would make sure that the best product page is displayed in the SERPS, which could lead to drastically higher slinky sales.
I'm not sure if I've gotten the pronunciation correct, but I've always said it like "Can non nickel pipe last as long as nickel pipe?"
WTF?!
edit: Jennita, feel free to delete this short comment of mine as totally unuseless, but I felt the urgency to say that to GNC.
ROTFL Totally worth commenting just to make you spit the coffee out of your mouth Gianluca!
To clarify, I pronounce canonical "can non nik ul" I put it in a sentence using the word nickel 'cuz I thought it would be easier to understand. But as your comment has attested, perhaps I was mistaken. :-)
Now go clean up the coffee all over your keyboard.
I say "cannon nickel" cause if you get it wrong, you can blow apart your site like a cannon full of nickels.
I'd argue that the best solution for an ecommerce site who's products reside in multiple categories is to choose one URL and stick with it (in the information architecture). A site can have many paths to one destination. Just keep the URL the same on that final landing page. The breadcrumbs can even be customized to reflect the path taken. There is no reason why the end node URL must reflect the path taken to get there. I have yet to see an ecommerce site that has pulled this off, but it would be a rock solid implementation.
Very helpful and easy to read/understand article, thank you for sharing! Now off to read your post on ROBOTS :)
Thanks so much for putting this into better perspective...
One question: my sites have the duplicate content issue where both the www and non-www pages are indexing. Is there a best practice to eliminate this problem as an index level solution rather than on a page by page basis?
Lindsay,
Great post. I've been looking for some clearer answers to some canonical vs 301 issues and wasn't able to figure it out until your post.
I'm dealing with a large e-commerce site that has a handful of domains they bought where they mirror the site. They are using canonical elements pointing to the main site, but my concern was that they weren't getting the link metric benefits on the main site from those mirrored domains so was considering 301s. Now I see that it looks like they are still getting the link metric benefits of a 301 for existing links, but it looks like it makes more sense to 301 for the future inbound links as any new links will point directly to the main site and thus, not lose any value through the canonical.
Thanks for a great post!
This blog hit home! I've noticed the trend within the larger enterprise environments that maintain a complex development cycle to use the Rel Canonical tag. Great information! I totally agree that the Rel Canonical is not a panacea for addressing the best solution for avoiding duplicate content and titles~ avoid it :) ~ David
I have used 301 redirects on my blog, because I had some duplicates, but in Google Webmaster Tools i still see duplicate meta descriptions and titles even after 2 weeks. Maybe the refresh rate is slow, or i just messed up something...
When I have done 301 directs and had duplicate content notices in my Google Webmaster Tools, I find it usually takes more than 2 weeks for that to go away.
very good information for me. Actually i have read about canonical tag first time here.So tyhe concept of canonical tag is clear for me now.
I have a question regarding Example 2. We have a banner ad on another site that links to our site, but the url that the banner ad takes you to contains referral information so that in Google Analytics we can track how many visits we received from the banner ad. So how would we capture the data in Analytics and then 301 redirect the page. Doesn't the 301 redirect happen before the page can load any javascript, therefore Google Analytics would not have time to capture the referral url page before it is redirected?
Any advice on how to go about this? Thanks!
Hi Lindsay,
As an example, I have listings that doesn't all fit in 1 page. Therefore, I implemented pagination.
https://www.example.com/handbags
https://www.example.com/handbags?page=2
https://www.example.com/handbags?page=3
The question is:
1. Do I want to canonical page 2 to page 1. If I do this, am i telling Google not to waste its time to crawl the products on page 2?
2. Do i want to canonical page 2 to page 2
Thanks!
"you won't be losing that 1-10% of your hard earned link love on an ongoing basis."
Do you mind elaborating on that?
If you use a canonical tag to consolidate page authority, it is a work-around. Both pages will still resolve in the browser. Both pages will still get links of their own. The links to the page that wasn't chosen as the canonical will lose some value because of the canonical tag handover. If you 301'd the page in the first place, people will stop linking to it because it doesn't resolve in the browser... it is redirected to the other URL.
Does that make sense?
Hi,
Still, I have some doubts. Suppose my website home page has 100 internal linking and out of those 12 links found duplicate. Should I use rel="canonical' for those 12 duplicate links?
Very helpful guide Lindsay! Thanks.
Hi, Lindsay Nice Article,
Can I add a rel=canonical tag in the header of my landing page, for our website https://www.emlsearch.com , it is complete dynamic website from development point of view, the landing page with additional arguments , used with function calls to display results on another dynamic page.
My question is if I put rel=canonical tag on my landing page as you have shown, will it effect the future ranking of my site?
I would be desperately waiting for your answer as till now whatever I am getting in answers lies in grey area, not clear to me!
Regards,
Eml
Thanks I am not clear still I use all in one seo plugin now what can I do simply put my page link inside given column My Website.
[Link removed by editor.]
Hi there! You may be able to find answers to your questions in the Moz Q&A forum. :)
Hey, great article!
I just have an issue with the one part where is shows the canonical tag example:
"The code, as in my example above, would look like this."
It looks to me that the example of the tag has the last quotation mark misplaced just before the forward slash in the URL leaving that forward slash to kinda of "float" in the tag (or maybe not work at all). Just a friendly heads up.
Hi guys is it okay to implement for canonical like this: link rel='canonical' href='/'on the head section?
Hi Lindsay,
That is a really great post and it has made me clear on canonical tag. But i am still not clear on few things:
1. I have a site www.xyz.com and it has country specific domains www.uk.xyz.com and www.india.xyz.com. These sub domains have the same content as it is on the www.xyz.com
so as per my knowledge both sub domains are considered as separate domains to www.xyz.com. hence, it cant be content duplication, as for search engines it is 3 different domains. But I am not sure if search engine will take it as content duplication.
so if it is content duplication then how do i do rel canonical as my main page is on www.xyz.com and the duplicate pages are on www.uk.xyz.com and www.india.xyz.com.
Please let me know on this! Your help is much appreciated.
Many Thanks
Thanks for the insightful article.
James Platteborze
This was extremely helpful. I'm new to SEO and I'm absorbing as much information as I can. Some of it is hard to grasp. But this was very detailed and walked you through the steps.
Hi Lindsay,
I've noticed that some website owners use canonical tags even when there may be no duplicate issues.
For example www.examplesite.com has a canonical tag.......https://www.examplesite.com/" />
www.examplesite.com/bluewidget has a canonical tag.......https://www.examplesite.com/bluewidget/" />
Is this recommended or helpful to do this?
[removed links -dan]
It looks like they are canonicalizing the trailing slash. It would be better to publish pages only one way, with or without the trailing slash. If that isn't possible, a 301 from one to the other would be a good solution. If that isn't possible, a canonical tag is a reasonable alternative.
Great solution!
Hello:
Can you answer a couple questions for me that I'm a little confused about. I have two url's that are similar:
https://www.abc.com/dog-fleas.html
https://www.abc.com/flea-and-tick.html
Both offer information about fleas, ticks, etc. but aren't completely exact. Should I use a canonicalization code so that Google only looks at the most important page of the two?
Also, when you add this code, do the other pages still stay indexed?
Thank you.
Perplexed....
Janie
Lindsay, huge thumbs up for compiling the resource. I'm definitely a proponent of the 301 and only using canonical when you can't access the .htaccess. Have a happy work Halloween!
I agree that a 301 redirect is usually a better solution than a canonical tag, but why not both?
Implement 301 wherever possible but also include canonical tags site-wide (on both canonical and non-canonical versions of the URL) to eliminate any confusion and possibly catch a few cases that you may have missed, or to prevent future goof-ups if the marketing division creates a splash page or starts giving out new referring strings without the SEO's knowledge (it happens...). Also with tracking tags common in CoreMetrics and Omniture, 301s often aren't possible, so having the 301 when you can and canonical tag everything else approach seems like a good two-prong strategy to eliminate pretty much all duplicate content issues on a large site.
I think you are right. Why not taking the best of both worlds? you are practically saying.
This is something surely correct, but with 301 you walk a secured path, as it is a command... when, instead, Canonical tag is a suggestion to Search Engines, which could or couldn't follow.
The not-paying-attention-to-the-Canonical-tag-by-Google was something that came up at a least a couple of time during this last Pro SEO in London, but unfortunately I have not the PDF of the session now with me in order to give you the exact examples shown there (I will try to present them later).
Well put!
On the tracking code side of things, I do have some direct experience here... at least with Omniture. I worked in-house a while back for a business that was able to use the tracking code with Omniture and use a 301 redirect. What we did was record the referral once a user hit the site with the tracking code and immediately dropped a cookie client-side to track the visitor all the way through their session to keep an eye on converstions.
Awesome solution. Guess it all depends on ability/willingness of IT to implement something that complex :)
we're planning to do both at our company.
Great post, and I completely agree that 90% of the time there is a deeper problem that can only be band-aided with rel=canonical.
However, I don't necessairly agree that using "noindex,follow" is an approproate workaround in the given examples. Please forgive me if I'm incorrect here, but I am under the assumption that Google doesn't keep pagerank for pages that aren't in it's index, and that if you keep Google from indexing a page, either with a meta tag or robots.txt, that you won't receive credit for incoming links to this page.The "follow" in "noindex,follow" only affects whether the spider continues to crawl pages linked from the no-indexed page, not whether pagerank flows from those links.
So, if we "noindex,follow" all of our printer friendly pages (for example), then we're throwing away all potential inlinks to these pages. Is this not correct?
Does anybody have any evidence of a noindex, follow tag working to canonicalize a URL with a parameter? I'm a little hesitant of proceding with that suggestion.
'noindex,follow' can certainly work on URLs with a parameter. Just make sure that you can specific the meta tag for the parameterized page specifically, and that you don't accidentally 'noindex' the master version, too.
Thanks for the reply! It's a good idea, and seems pretty easy to implement. something to the effect of
if currentl url contains ?tracking_Id
then display noindex, follow
In the past I've stripped everything past the parameters for user-agents but this seems like a better approach.
Hi Lindsay,
One questions about using noindex for URLs with parametes..
Adding of "noindex" onto URL with parameter might help to tell search engines that the URL is not the correct URL that you want to get indexed. But do you think it will helps to convey to the search engine where is the actual URL to pass the link values to?
Thanks!
Thanks for a great post, the canonical works really well especially when you don't have the access rights to the server to use a 301.
Why has someone been busy with the thumbs down on all these comments? very confused, can an Admin person look into it, looks a bit spammy.
Hi Lindsay!
I love that post - very clear, informative and helpful.
Since I read about the canonical tag, one thing came into my mind from the beginning of its existance: You have to put the canonical tag on the duplicate pages. Why they didn't "invent" it the way around - I mean to implement it in the main page ... the search spiders are able to spot all the duplicates pages anyway and can relate them to the main page with the canonical tag. And like that the webmasters would have less work :-)
This is a great guide. I've seen this word thrown around a lot lately with no real understanding of what it actually meant so I'm glad to see that someone took the time to do this. Thanks!
Great article by the way. I see the why especially for various page sorts or searches on a dynamic site. What I do not understand is why so many are nervous about 301's. I know if you make a mistake it can be disaster on the surface but if we are talking about a simple .htaccess file all you need to do is back up the old and if the new is a mess rename it htaccess.txt. I do alot of complex redirecting and have never had a disasterous problem. Brad B.
Hi Lindsay,I have question regarding using the "noindex" tag over the "canonical" tag.You propose to use the "noindex" tag for the URL "https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?sort=price".
Can we say that using the noindex tag should be used on a case by case basis?
Let's say the URL was instead "https://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?color=silver". It would be in our best interest to show up in the SERPs for the query "silver wrenches", but using the noindex tag would negate that.....is that what you were getting at when you said "This way I don't have to get into the whole 'search results in search results' issue."
Thanks for the post and I look forward to hearing your response.
a decent read thanks. I recently went through all of my sites checking the canonical tags and sorting out the htaccess files, so perfect timing for this post thank you.
Also, are SEOmoz struggling with Spam detection again or something.
"WOW Lindsay, AmAzing post. Check out my site (add link here)"
C'Mon son! Please sort it out SEOmoz. I enjoy reading some of the very informative comments just as much as I enjoy reading the posts.
Fantastic post, nice and clear, bookmarked and shared with clients :-)
In Example 2, when you say "Record" and then 301 are you referring to a one off implementation of two separate instructions are are you referring to something a little more manual i.e. where you wait for crazy blog lady to submit her review and then you 301 the page?
Google supports it on both single domains and across multiple domains? Do you mean you can now point a page to a page on a different domain?
Great article. I have used the canonical tag recently and have had great results in Google and also seen this reflected in webmaster tools as well. However i completely agree that if possible you should try to rule out the isseu in the first place. I am now working more closely with our development team to iron out issue before sites go live however i am now of the thinking that implementing the canonical tag along with doing everything else up front is the best plan.
Side note be careful with the NoIndex tag i messed up with that too and lost a large protion of content - lifes never simple.
You make an excellent point that the 'noindex' tag is not fool-proof. This can certainly be implemented incorrectly with disasterous effects. Hey, maybe we can get Dr. Pete to test this one on his domain too. :)
With your recent canonical implementation, do you have any results to share regarding how Bing's index responded?
Wow!! Good points shared in this post.
Thanks for sharing!!
Superb post. Every once in a while, you come across something of real value. Thank you.
Does anyone know of a Google Analytics plugin or hack that will consolidate pages with appended strings? For example, these two (cannonically identical) pages show up as two different pageviews in GA:
Would love to find a way to display them as two page views to the same page.
Definitely one to bookmark. Thumbs up!
- Jenni
Thanks for the crystal clear post on conical. I've always thought 301 was a better soluiton when you could not fix the link structures.
Ciao Lindzie,
your post is really illuminating, especially because is quite easy to get confused about the Canonical Tag (or at least that was my first impression when I started to study it)... and the worst is that also the official Search Engines papers about how to use it can be quite confusing.
Exactly because of the insecurity I feel about Canonical Tag, I too tend to rely on "old classic" SEO practices if they can solve a canonicalisation problem.
But there is a client side issue, more common than you can imagine, that makes Canonical Tag estremely handy.
This issue is about the security level barriers some Webmasters create and impose to you when working. It is quite usual that things like 301 redirections are not possible to be made because of the security stubborness paranoia of some clients: therefore, in those occasions, to use the Canonical Tag in order to show to the search engines also that www.domain.com is the canonical version of our site is the only option you have.
At least is the first E.R. action an SEO can do, while negotiating a security policy reconsideration with the client's webmaster.
I hear ya. The canonical tag is an excellent work-around when superior options aren't possible. Thanks for the comments. Always love to hear from you here. :)
I used canonical to fix an issue recently but found that Google didn't do anything with it for quite a while.
Basically, I have a page that has an IFRAME with a store inside (not astore as it happens). The store, which I don't want visible without the wrapper, was ranking higher than the promoted page on my own site. So, I added a canonical tag listing my own domains URL that was wrapping the IFRAME. Didn't seem to matter, Googlebot came and went, external subdomain page was still outranking me.
Then added <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, noarchive"> mainly so that I could remove the page from Google index (or at least apply for it's removal on the basis of having "noindex" on there).
So, the page still appears on Google and still ranks higher than my own URL. In the end I added a javascript redirect to check for a fragment in the URL and redirect to my own site if it's not found.
Took about a month for Google to change the behaviour. I wasn't happy.
I wonder what is the security concern over using 301 redirect? I assume that webmaster has total control over httaccess file so what could go wrong? Or I am missing some big security problem with redirects?
Or is it because webmaster don't like SEO analyst telling what to do, so they draw "security card" which really means "I am too lazy" or "I don't give $hit about SEO".
The security problems is that there are some system engineers that do not love .htaccess claiming security possible break-ins.
Thanks Lindsay, example 2 will be taken under advisement.
Great tips and easy to understand. Thanks for this guide.
I always use canonical tag for the easy to use but if the 301 redirection worth the time, I think I will change my mind hehe :)
301 rocks. I agree why over complicate with rel canonical, when 301 has been around forever and observed by all the se's
To understand the context: "my" classified website has several millions pages if you include the search/browse/detail pages. :)
The solution for "Example 3" raises the issue of "allocated bot attention". NoIndex means that the bot needs to crawl this page. So it means that the crawl of this "duplicate" decrease the probability and increase the latency of a new/updated page to be crawled.
Is it really a problem? Am I wrong? Is there an other solution in this context?
Thanks.
This sounds black hat but its an honest question and something I have never really managed to get an answer on, when I read this I thought it was worth asking here.
I have 2 domains a main one and one I registered years ago, the main name is my branded site and the not so main one (domain 2 from here) has very little content on there but is an exact match URL for a high volumen search term related to my business and the main site.
Domain 2 ranks at #1 for the exact match search and no amount of SEO on the main site seems to be able to move it from #1 with the main site living at #3. I use domain 2 to give some information and link to domain 1.
I have been tempted to 301 domain 2 to domain 1 for a few months now but never felt confident enough to take the plunge.
Would using cross site canonical tag site wide pointing all of domain 2's pages to domain 1 pass the credit aquired by been an exact match URL or would it only pass the value of links and content? If this is the case then it would be a mistake as the reason that the site ranks is purely on the exact match, the link profile to domain 2 is very light and the content isnt even that great/detailed.
Ive asked this in a few placed but as far as I can tell its a real grey area?
I don't think what you are talking about is grey hat. I'd be worried about that number two spot, though. First work to get your branded domain into position two and then use a 301 from the exact match domain. We'd be able to help you out more with a specific question like this in the PRO Q&A Forum.
Very nice info I just learned about the canonical tag and I am using it on my site with all the bad things I heard about 301s I decided to use the tag to redirect to www.kvwebsolutions.com/ rather than kvwebsolutions.com. I hope I am making the right choice.
Howdy Chris! You heard more bad things about the 301 then you did about the canonical tag? I'd love to hear what your concerns are.