Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
-
I implemented a canonical tag on each product page for my clients ecommerce site and my rankings tanked. Has this happened to anyone else? If so, when can I expect rank to return?
-
It's always hard to speak in generalities, but my gut reaction is that Alan's right - if the canonical tags were implemented properly, having your rankings tank from this kind of implementation seems very unlikely. A couple of possibilities:
(1) Are your canonical URLs being used in internal links? If you tell Google that one version is canonical but then act as if another version is canonical, it can cause problems.
(2) Are you sending any other, conflicting cues, like 301-redirects or Webmaster Tools parameter handling?
(3) Is it possible that your canonicalization was too broad? In other words, did you end up de-indexing some product variations that were driving long-tail traffic? For example, let's say you had a product in red, blue and green and you canonicalized them all to the "root" product page. In theory, that might be a good thing, but if people were searching for specifics and you had a lot of long-tail rankings ("buy product in red"), then it could be bad.
-
Yes, they were set up site wide and point to the proper URL for each individual product.
-
Okay so to be sure, you simply set up canonical tags to point to your newly identified "proper" URL for each product, correct?
If so, given the lapse in time between the change and the drop, I would need to assume something else has happened. Some other factor would need to be the cause, if your canonical implementation was executed properly and there's not a major flaw at the code level in the results.
While there is a slight chance it's tied to the canonical change even if that was done properly, I'd definitely look at other factors as well.
-
On every product page.
Here's why: when a new product was added to the website it automatically gave it a url like this one, www.website.com/product/productname1234. And whenever it was added to a product category such as "corner desks," a new url and page were created, www.website.com/product/cornerdesks/productname1234. Google was indexing both (or all - in the case they were in multiple categories) thus creating almost 2,000 duplicate product pages.
We added the canonical tag at the end of April and didn't really see a drop in rank until this week.
-
a canonical tag on every product page? Pointing to a different page or pointing to themselves? And what was the reason for doing so?
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
-
No-return tag error
Am receiving a no-return tag error on Search Console for pages in our site that are unrelated. Originating Page: https://www.eginnovations.com/in-the-news/performance-assurance-a-key-to-virtual-desktop-success Alternate URL: https://www.eginnovations.com/fr/ There is a link to the /fr/ page in the language version at the top of the page but I can't figure out why this would be throwing an error from the originating page. Any help would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | eGInnovations0 -
Sitemap for Mobile Version of Site
Hi, I just did a mobile version (http://m.vietnamvisacorp.com) of my site (http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com). And was looking for some guidance on where to put it in the sitemap. Do i need an entirely new sitemap for mobile site, or do i just add to my existing .xml of desktop site. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Trying to SEO a site that used Header Tags for Design
I am trying to SEO a website that was built years ago and uses Header tags for design. The site must have 25 and tags used for design purpose. Is there any way to work around this problem? Perhaps a code that tells Google to ignore these as Headers? The web designers say that they are looking to fix the problem sometime this summer but you never know if that means it a month away or years away. I really want to help this website but I believe that the Header tags are one of the reasons that his site does not show in the top 100 rankings for any keywords. Any help would be great. www.wallybuysell.com Chris.K
On-Page Optimization | | CKerr0 -
Are tags important for SEO?
I just installed a plugin called SEO content control and it is telling me I need to write descriptions for my tags. I haven't been using tags although I did create a list of them. I don't have an endless amount of time on my hands so is this a worthwhile task?
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Should I add canonical tag on these pages?
Hi folks I have some pages that used to rank pretty well..but I believe it is affected due to the content similarities. Here is one the sub category pages http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/98/2/Full-Body-Kits_Duraflex.html the main category page http://www.ilovebodykits.com/category/98/Exterior_Body-Styling_Full-Body-Kits.html These 2 links have very similar contents. The content are dynamic generated by template and I don't think I am able to change content for each individual pages since there are over 2000-3000 of them or more. Should I use canonical tag on the Duraflex.html page to give the main category page all the link juices and credits? There are about 20 other pages like this under this main category. Is it right to canonical all of them? Please let me know if anyone has any suggestion.. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
What are the best eCommerce sites from an SEO perspective?
We're working hard on improving our website right now, and would love to get the community's examples of the best eCommerce sites out there, from an SEO and a general customer-centric design perspective...
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
Hierarchy and consistency in ecommerce URLs
One of the first things I remember reading about SEO and URLs, a long time ago, is that keywords are important, and hierarchy is important, for search engines and for users. Hierarchy in URLs would give the search engines an idea of the structure of the site, and users would be able to edit the URLs to continue navigating. I'm wondering about URLs, hierarchy and usability lately, since I've seen that ASOS uses a new URL structure on their site. At first glance, I thought it was brilliant, so I would like to get all of your opinions as well. For those of you that haven't seen the URLs: for categories, ASOS uses a structure as you would expect it, but for products they don't insert the category in the URL. Instead they insert the brand name as the first part of the URL, followed by the product title. Some examples: Category:
On-Page Optimization | | DocdataCommerce
www.asos.com/women/dresses/... Product:
www.asos.com/french-connection/french-connection-tie-waist-pocket-stripe-dress/... I can see the importance of brand name for a site like ASOS, and like how they stressed this by inserting not the category but the brand for products. I don't know how much ASOS still relies on organic non-ASOS related keyword traffic, but still. Now, for hierarchy, I guess a good internal linking structure will tell the search engines about the hierarchy of a site as well, right? So perhaps hierarchy in the URL isn't that important? Perhaps something like this would be just as good as anything, given a good internal link structure? www.onlinestore.com/category/
www.onlinestore.com/subcategory/
www.onlinestore.com/brand/product-title/ Now, I understand that if you use this structure, you wouldn't be able to have men/shirts and women/shirts, but let's say that you don't have subcategories that use the same names. In this case, how important is hierarchy? And, what do you think about this URL structure for an ecommerce site for which brands are important?0 -
Curious meta-tag
Has anyone met this meta tag? <meta name="ranking" content="Top10, Page=1" /> I imagine it has no effect but I'm curios where did it came from, i saw it on many sites
On-Page Optimization | | seo.academy0