Canonical Confusion
-
So I have products appearing in several categories, all of which have the correct canonical url. But Moz is flagging up pages I never knew existed, and I don't understand why they exist at all and more so why my canonical fix isn't occurring for them, as below:
SEO Friendly URL: http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-pin-sets/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2
Weird URL to same product: http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=themecontrol/product&product_id=159
Is this a developer problem rather than an SEO problem?
-
I understand , you may need an opencart professional to fix the problem.
-
Hello Vijay,
As discussed previously I already use an extension and the problem is still occurring. I was hopeful with the solution in your 2nd link, tried it, and as with most things gave me an error and took down my site. I'm sure this error is a problem that a good developer could fix but alas I don't have one.
-
THIs is the common issue with all open cart sites, if you discuss this issue with the developer, he will be able to fix it… no big deal!
-
Hi spacecollective,
Firstly, I love the site and I'll be buying a gift for my dad's birthday from here!
There are definitely some issues with canonical tag and redirect chains here. I'd say it's an issue with the development of the site that is now causing SEO issues - so it's an issue for both!
I'll use the product you mentioned in my example:
http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=themecontrol/product&product_id=159
canonicalizes to
http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2/
which redirects to
http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-pin-sets/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2
which canonicalizes to
http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/nasa-pin-sets/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2/All of these URLs should have the same canonical URL. I always prefer to canonicalize products that appear under multiple categories to the root level (it's also what Magento does by default and it works very well).
So, in this example, all variations would have a canonical tag pointing to
http://thespacecollective.com/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2/However, in your OpenCart CMS, it may be easier to canonicalize these to the final URL in the chain (http://thespacecollective.com/space-memorabilia/nasa-pin-sets/nasa-shuttle-mission-pin-set-no2/) as this is also the URL that is listed in the XML sitemap.
If you choose to canonicalize to the root level, you will need to make sure that the sitemap is updated to only include this new canonical URLs.
Hope this helps. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any further questions
Cheers,
David
-
Hi There,
I checked your website, it uses Opencart as a platform for e-commerce. You can search and use an extension from here http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension&filter_search=product canonical url seo
Or this can help you through https://isenselabs.com/posts/how-to-solve-the-duplicate-content-issue-in-opencart
I hope this helps, please feel free to ask further questions.
Regards,
Vijay
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
-
302 to a page and rel=canonical back to the original (to preserve url juice)?
Bit of a weird case, but let me explain. We use unbounce.com to create our landing pages, which are on a separate sub-domain (get.domain.com).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dragonlawhq
Some of these landing pages have a substantial amount of useful information and are part of our content building strategy (our content marketers are able to deploy them without going through the dev team cycle). We'd like to make sure the seo page-juice is counting towards our primary domain and not the subdomain.
(It would also help if we one day stop using unbounce and just migrate our landing page content to our primary website). Would it be an SEO faux-pas to do the following:
domain.com/awesome-page ---[302]---> get.domain.com/awesome-page
get.domain.com/awesome-page ---[rel=canonical]---> domain.com/awesome-page My understanding is that our primary domain would hold all the "page juice" whilst sending users to the unbounce landing page - and the day we stop using unbounce, we just kill the redirect and host the content on our primary domain.0 -
301 or Canonical - Ecommerce Site Question
We are making a change to our Navigation and this includes having to change the URL structure of a few pages of our site. Due to issues with the CMS (that are out of my control) we are unable to keep the current URL structure of two of our highest ranking pages. Our site is an E-commerce Site The Structure is changing from..... www.domain.com/page/highrankingpage <----OLD PAGE RANKED WELL to www.domain.com/category/highrankingpage <----NEW PAGE Generally I would have 301 'd this page but I found out that our Tech team added a Canonical to this page instead....(showing the high ranking page to the Search Engines) and on our site the visitors are able to browse the website getting the new page. BOTH PAGES ARE BASICALLY IDENTICAL (Same Content) http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical# Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMcMullen0 -
Use Canonical or Robots.txt for Map View URL without Backlink Potential
I have a Page X with lots of unique content. This page has a "Map view" option, which displays some of the info from Page X, but a lot is ommitted. Questions: Should I add canonical even though Map View URL does not display a lot of info from Page X or adding to robots.txt or noindex, follow? I don't see any back links coming to Map View URL Should Map View page have unique H1, title tag, meta des?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags
Given that google have stated that duplicate content is not penalised is this really something that will give sufficient benefits for the time involved?Also, reading some of the articles on moz.com they seem very ambivalent about its use – for example http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questionsWill any page with a canonical link normally NOT be indexed by google?Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
Pagination, Canonical Tag & Best Practices
I have an eCommerce site that dynamically creates category pages, which produce canonical tags in the header. For multiple page categories, it adds the page number to the URL. For example, this category has 3 pages.... Because most categories have too many products, I can't follow Googles suggestion of creating a "view all" page. Furthermore since all these pages use the same template, I'm unable to insert a NOINDEX tag in all the pages after the first page. Also, in this scenario, I'm unable to insert the discreet code for Next/Previous, which is also suggested by Google. My only option for maintaining these dynamically generated category pages would be to hardcode the first conical tag in the template, which would then be produced on all subsequent paginated pages. Consequently, every paginated page in this category would have the same canonical tag pointing to the first page. Would this incur the wrath of Google and would I'd be better off leaving the pagination they way it is?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Confusing 301 / Canonical Redirect Issue - Wizard Needed
I had two pages on my site with identical content. What I did was 301 redirect one page to the other. I also added canonical redirect code to the page that held the 301 code. Here is what I have: www.careersinmusic.com/music-colleges.aspx - this page was a duplicate and I needed it to resolve to:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 4Buck
www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx Here is the code I used: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX music-colleges.aspx
<%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="music-colleges.aspx.vb" Inherits="music_colleges" %>
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> http://www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx"/> XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
music-colleges.aspx.vb
Partial Class music_colleges
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader("Location", "http://www.careersinmusic.com/music-schools.aspx")
End Sub
End Class XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The problem:
For some reason, when the search “music colleges” is done in Google, I am #7. When the term “music schools” is done, I am around 119. I MUST be getting a penalty for some reason, I just cannot figure the reason. When perform well for one term and terrible for the next? All I can come up with is a duplicate content penalty or something along those lines. Also, music-colleges.aspx seems to still be in Googles index, even though the above 301 happened months ago. Thoughts? site:www.careersinmusic.com/music-colleges.aspx Any insight into this would be GREATLY appreciated. Many Thanks!0 -
Cross Sub Domain Canonical Links
I currently have 1 website, but am planning on dividing it into sub-domains specific to geographic locations such as xxx.co.uk, xxx.it, xxx.es, etc... We are working on creating original content for the sub-sites, however upon launch many will be duplicate pages. Is there a problem with cross sub-domain canonical links? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Confusion about domain extension.
Hi, need bit suggestions from you guys. After researchi found a KW that have some good Lcoal search volume.. My question is should i buy the CLD as it has good LS volume or i should go for .com , .net etc. Becasue as i know that LS means that number of people searching form that location(based on IP) not number of people searching in that local version of google. So no need to go for CLD as it vl help only in local version.. Bit confused waiting for reply thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Big_Zee0