2. TECHNICAL SEO CONTENT REAL RANKINGS & CTR
The first unified suite to drive SEO success in each phase of the
organic search process
3. I would also like to add to this conversation
that we have learned the hard way that if we
use canonicals for pages that aren’t
duplicates or near-duplicates, we have
no impact at best and a ranking
drop at worst. Please don’t get clever
with canonicals in a market that I need to meet
my targets.
4. 45 Million URLs are being tagged with an alternative
incorrect canonical tag. Which confuses Google and
forces the crawl of 45M unnecessary URLs:
When a query URL has a space, the canonical rule will
substitute the "+" character for the encoded character
"%20”
https://www.example.com/a/audi-a4?query=audi+a4
(which has the internal links)
will canonicalize to
https://www. example.com/a/audi-a4?query=audi%20a4
10. Including a rel=canonical link in
your webpage is a strong hint to
search engines about your
preferred version to index
among duplicate pages on the web.
11.
12. rel=canonical Fact File
An “Element” rather than a “Tag”
rel=canonical is a hint, not a directive
rel=‘canonical’ or rel=“canonical” are fine when placed in the <head>
Google processes rel=canonical as a 2nd/3rd step – not during crawl
14. • Circumvents Duplicate Content
• Avoids diluting Link Authority
• Avoids Content Cannibalisation in SERPs
What does rel=canonical offer?
15. Specific cases for rel=canonical
Uppercase/lowercase URL paths, Session IDs, Tracking Codes
Product review pages with /review/product/list/
Multiple versions of category pages derived from dynamic filters
Product Page: Multiple versions
‘Show all’ category pages: if a different URL
Content Syndication
16. The cleaner you can make
your signals, the more
likely we'll use them.
John Mueller
Reddit AMA, April 2018
17.
18. Google chose different canonical
than user – There are many cases
where Google simply gets this wrong.
Are there any methods that would
force Google to honor the canonical
specified by the webmaster?
19. • Redirect to your preferred version
• Make internal links, hreflang, rel=next/prev/etc.
point to the preferred version
• Put it into a sitemap file, etc.
20. 10 Common Issues
Abundance Too many pages Canonicalizing to a single page
Code rel=canonical in <body>, multiple declarations, etc.
Content Lack of parity between canonical and canonicalized
Duplication Too little canonicalization
hreflang Canonicalizing pages in a hreflang cluster to one language variant
HTTP Codes Canonicalizing to non-200 HTTP Status codes
Linking More links to canonicalized page rather than canonical
Noindex Noindex present on a canonicalized page
Pagination
Canonicalizing component pages to the first page in a paginated
set
Tracking Parameters generating duplicate URLs
22. 11 Step Canonical Audit
Review GSC Index Coverage Report
Build Data Warehouse Including: Simulated Web Crawl, Logs, JS, GSC, GA/Adobe
Review Duplicate Content Situation
Assess Crawl Budget Impact
Assess Canonical Content Similarity
Check Internal Linking Signals (canonical should receive most internal links)
XML Sitemap Check (should only contain canonical URLs)
Check URLs with canonicals pointing to a 404 or noindex
Check URLs missing a canonical element
Check paginated URLs have a self-referencing canonical
Check hreflang clusters self-referencing canonical
23. Review GSC Index Coverage Report
Use Google’s Index Coverage Report
Valid - Indexed; consider marking as canonical: The URL was indexed. Because it has duplicate URLs, we
recommend explicitly marking this URL as canonical
Excluded - Duplicate page without canonical tag: This page has duplicates, none of which is
marked canonical. We think this page is not the canonical one. You should explicitly mark the
canonical for this page
Google chose different canonical than user: This page is marked as
canonical for a set of pages, but Google thinks another URL makes a better canonical. Google has indexed the page
we consider canonical rather than this one. We recommend that you explicitly mark this page as a duplicate of the
canonical URL
Submitted URL not selected as canonical: difference between this status
and "Google chose different canonical than user" is that, in this case, you explicitly requested indexing.