Question on Breadcrumb and Canonical
-
Hi SEOmozers,
I have another question. =] Thanks in advance.
First question: How important is the breadcrumb for SEO? I know that breadcrumb makes better UX because it shows how the visitor landed on this page and the breadcrumb may show up in the search engine. But other than that, how important is it?
Second Question:
If I have a page that can be found via 2 locations, how should I handle this in regards to breadcrumb?
For example, I have page A. You can access page A via Category A and Category B. Therefore, what I did was list Page A under Category A and when someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it will redirect to the page A that was found via Category A.
The problem is on page A, the breadcrumb is Home > Category A > Page A. So if someone visit Category B and click on Page A, it redirects and the breadcrumb shows Home > Category A > Page A.
What should I do with the breadcrumb for Category B > Page A?
Should I create another page A and just use canonical on it?
Should I create another page A but do not index it?
or leave it as is? 1 Page A, can be access via 2 categories.
Please advise.
Thank you!
-
You are spot on on the question.
I was thinking along the same line as your answer. So now you just confirmed it.
Thank you very much!
-
Hi Tommy,
Not exactly. I think I misunderstood your original question. I thought you had two pages with the same content, and they were accessible via two different categories.
But I think you're saying you have one page, but you can access that one page via the two different categories, but the breadcrumbs are the same no matter which route they took, whether through A or B, they show category A breadcrumbs.
I wouldn't worry so much about the breadcrumbs, I would worry more about duplicate content and urls.
Let's say you're selling a flashlight, and you just have one flashlight product page. But, because of the content of your site, you listed it under two different categories. Let's just say the categories are tools and gadgets.
So if you had two urls:
http://www.site.com/tools/flashlight and http://www.site.com/gadgets/flashlight
but they were technically the same page (same content and everything just different url), this would be bad.
The fix for this would be to pick the url you want to rank, then put that url as the canonical for the other, so when google crawls it, they know you prefer the other url.
However if it were the same url, no matter which category they came from, there is no problem, because there is no duplication.
Now back to the beginning
If you really want the breadcrumbs to reflect which category they came from, instead of just redirecting to category A, then create another page for category B, make it identical to the page for category A. But on the new page, put the url of page A as the canonical on the new page for B.
So users get the same product page (content speaking) with the breadcrumb that reflects their path, but Google will only count one url no matter which one they crawl.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for replying. So you are saying I should create a new Page A and have it list under Category B and use the canonical tag on the one I want to be indexed. So in the end I will have 1 Page A in Google's eye and 2 Page A in users' eye.
-
Breadcrumbs are more for UX like you say, however they do help search engines crawl your site's pages better as well, especially if they're not in main navigation.
I think the canonical issue is the more important one rather than what links appear in the breadcrumb. I would select which page you would prefer to rank, then put that url in the canonical tag of the other page.
So the canonical would be for Google, and the breadcrumb would be for user.
Also, who knows, maybe having the different breadcrumb is better for the user, because they came from a different path to that product in the first place. But Google would count both pages as the same.
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
-
Have Your Thoughts Changed Regarding Canonical Tag Best Practice for Pagination? - Google Ignoring rel= Next/Prev Tagging
Hi there, We have a good-sized eCommerce client that is gearing up for a relaunch. At this point, the staging site follows the previous best practice for pagination (self-referencing canonical tags on each page; rel=next & prev tags referencing the last and next page within the category). Knowing that Google does not support rel=next/prev tags, does that change your thoughts for how to set up canonical tags within a paginated product category? We have some categories that have 500-600 products so creating and canonicalizing to a 'view all' page is not ideal for us. That leaves us with the following options (feel it is worth noting that we are leaving rel=next / prev tags in place): Leave canonical tags as-is, page 2 of the product category will have a canonical tag referencing ?page=2 URL Reference Page 1 of product category on all pages within the category series, page 2 of product category would have canonical tag referencing page 1 (/category/) - this is admittedly what I am leaning toward. Any and all thoughts are appreciated! If this were in relation to an existing website that is not experiencing indexing issues, I wouldn't worry about these. Given we are launching a new site, now is the time to make such a change. Thank you! Joe
Web Design | | Joe_Stoffel1 -
Few Specific Migration Questions
Hi Everyone, We are about ready to do the migration for our website. I've done smaller migrations in the past, but this is a $5 million+ site. We are moving from Magento to Shopify (same domain, different hosting). I read the Moz migration guide, which was great. Any tips from you guys on things that you might have missed when doing a migration? I've Got... All url redirects completed All legacy redirects completed All image url redirects completed All meta data/content moved over It was recommended that I submit the old site's XML Sitemap to Google when the new site goes live so I can get all the redirects indexed. Do you just create an XML sitemap from the old site and upload it to the new site or how is that done? Is there anything from a server/hosting standpoint I need to watch out for? I am using Screaming Frog for the old site to record all data. I was also thinking about Deep Crawl. Any other tools that helped you with your migration? We have many pages that are www.domain.com/page.html?p=2 for example that is a page 2 of a category. Do these need to be redirected as well? Thank you!
Web Design | | vetofunk0 -
To delete or not? That is the question..
In the case of an eCommerce store with a large catalogue of branded goods the inventory is constantly being adjusted as products become discontinued. Each year most fashion brands have 2 or 3 launches. At this same time they will delete some (not all) of previous years collections. Once we have sold through the remaining inventory of last season's products the question is how to proceed? a) delete products to avoid customers landing on page, then only to be disappointed when product is no longer available to purchase.. b) keep products however mark as discontinued / no longer available and show a link to a similar product if applicable.. I am coming around to the opinion that b) provides a better user experience. However will this growing catalogue of old products (pushed to bottom of category page) help keep content of site full and have SEO advantages? If this is the case then that helps confirm b) as best choice??
Web Design | | seanmccauley0 -
Are Breadcrumbs Really Necessary?
An SEO provider suggested we add breadcrumbs to the top of each page about 3 years ago, which we did. 3 years later we are going thru the site and find it really busy with lots of redundant and distracting elements. We would like to remove the breadcrumbs from the top of the pages. Is there any real SEO downside to doing so?
Web Design | | Kingalan1
All URLs are listed on our site map so I don't see why Google would not index all pages. Our domain is www.metro-manhattan.com I have uploaded a sample page with a breadcrumb. Thanks,
Alan kbbpS0 -
Question Concerning HTML5/CSS Templates & Google Mobility Issues
Hi all, Looking for some kind of solution for a responsive update for a site and I am wondering if there are any templates (not Wordpress) that are both great SEO wise and would also pass muster with the impending Google update for responsiveness? I was looking at things like Canvas and Porto ( http://themeforest.net/popular_item/by_category?category=site-templates ) but can't find any discussion on whether or not these things have been addressed with any of these templates. If any of you have suggestions or other places to look for something that could possibly fit the bill (even if temporarily) I would be very appreciative. Thank you so much in advance!
Web Design | | Pixelwik1 -
Keywords in url - specific case question
There are a bunch of questions about keywords in the url and so far what I've gathered is that it's good to have them but keep it simple so it doesn't look stuffed. I'm working on redesigning some sites that were originally setup by a group who had no understanding of SEO (or perhaps I should say a misunderstanding) and spent a lot of time stuffing keywords EVERYWHERE. In some cases they weren't too far off but in others I think they just went overboard. One of the areas I'm trying to fix are the paths which leads to the following concerns. One of the sites has a basketball section and through the use of the Adwords keyword tool they determined that most people are searching for "basketball hoops". My first question is, how reliable are the monthly search numbers in the Adwords keyword tool? Are they accurate enough to warrant forming keyword strategies based on the results? As it relates to the url issue, the current tree for the basketball section of the site looks like this: /basketball (the landing page for the whole section, there are other sport specific pages as well) /basketball/hoops (goes nowhere. not sure why they didn't just go to /basketball-hoops/x for other pages) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards (the systems are split into three different backboard sizes, these pages group them onto one overview page per size) /basketball/hoops/72in-backboards/specific-basketball-goal (the actual basketball goal details page with options to buy and such) So what I'm wondering about this setup is: does having /basketball/hoops take care of having the "basketball hoops" search term or would it be more effective to switch to /basketball-hoops? If it's fine to leave it at /basketball/hoops, do you think it would be beneficial to create an actual page for that path? We found that actually more people search for "basketball basket" than "basketball hoops" so maybe that would be a good page to try to make use of that term and explain maybe why people think "basket" instead of "hoop" and why we call ours "goals" or something. I tend to navigate pages by deleting path arguments and I hate when I land on a nonexistent path so I'm leaning toward changing the paths but just don't know if it's worth it at this point. Additionally, on one of the other sites, we have a domain that is the main keyword we want to rank for: swingsets.com The other company I mentioned then decided to put all of the product pages under: swingsets.com/swing-sets/{category}/{set-height}-{'swing-set'|'playset'|'swingsets'|'play-set'|etc...}/combo{#} So that comes out to look something like this: swingsets.com/swing-sets/outback/5ft-playsets/combo2 I've never liked that path setup. It looks stuffed to me, especially once they start using '5ft-swing-sets' and '6ft-play-set' on other product pages. It's inconsistent which is another issue I have since I tend to surf by path. Another issue with that setup is the final argument of combo{#} but there's nothing I can really do about that because they call the products out as combinations. The only actual product name is the "outback" part. I've been trying to come up with a better path setup for a long time now but again I'm concerned that I may just be wasting my time. The only thing I did do was make the height section consistently {height}-playsets. Is that good enough or should these paths remove /swing-sets from the beginning? The actual /swing-sets page is a good and valuable landing page but then I'm not sure if it remains valuable to keep it in the paths for the product pages afterward. Any insight into this dilemma would be appreciated. I've been stewing over this for a long time and my reasoning always becomes circular since I can see plenty of reasons for keeping them the way they are and simplifying them.
Web Design | | EscaladeSports0 -
H1 tag optimization question
Hey folks, I've got a question about h1 coding. Our H1 tags are currently coded like this: [http://www.rapitup.com/mf-doom](<a href=)" class=" current">MF Doom Do you think this would be better? [http://www.rapitup.com/mf-doom](<a href=)" class=" current"> MF Doom My guess is that the second example would be better, and even if not better we know it's not worse. Thoughts? Thanks!
Web Design | | irvingw0 -
URL question for SEO...
I'm thinking of creating a new url off an existing url and was wondering if there would be any impact. For example I have the URL www.baseball.com and rather than secure a new url for a new product launch such as www.newbaseballproduct.com I want to do newproduct.baseball.com Will this hurt my SEO rankings for this new site? Basically wanting to figure out if this will hurt me or not? Should I get a new url or re-utilize an existing URL... really for a landing page/micro site, etc.,
Web Design | | gritacco0