On page audit throws a rel="canonical" curve ball :-(

[Nightwing]

Good Morning from -3 Degrees C, still  no paths gritted wetherby UK

Following an on page audit one recommendation instructs me to ad:
http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> on the home page of barrett steel. I'm confused, i thought i only had to add this to duplications
the home page which to my knowledge dont exist.

So my question is please: "Why shoul i ad this snippet of code on the home page of http://www.barrettsteel.com http://www.barrettsteel.com/" />

Any insights welcome

[ClickConsult]

Glad we're not the only ones freezing here, it's -3 here in the north west too!

I've just taken a quick look at barrettsteel.com and whilst there aren't any duplicate content issues listed within SERPs currently, there's nothing stopping canonical issues arising in the future. You can currently view the homepage via the following URL's:

http://www.barrettsteel.com/default.aspx

http://www.barrettsteel.com/Default.aspx (you can change the case for any of the letters, as-long as it says default.aspx (EG DEFAULT.aspx also works).

http://www.barrettsteel.com/

If someone links to /default.aspx for example, there's a chance that /default.aspx could get indexed. Therefore it's a good idea to add a canonical tag now before you do run into any issues. It doesn't take much to add it anyway, right?

I also like to implement a canonical tag so that if someone completely rips a page, the benefit will hopefully be given back to the site that the page was ripped from due to the canonical tag.

Also unrelated to your question but I found this within the SERPs: http://barrettsteel.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ Whilst it now has no content, I'd recommend that you 301 redirect all pages from this site to the relevant page on the main site.

[Vahe.Arabian]

The http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> tag should be added on the other versions of the home page which SEO consult has mentioned.

[RobertFisher]

Well done @SEOConsult.

[Nightwing]

Hi @SEOConsult

Thank you so much vgery helpfull indeed....

regarding: "there aren't any duplicate content issues listed within SERPs currently"

Do you do this by entering the url in the search box and simply looking for duplicate content? How do you do this bit please?

Thanks and keep warm

[Nightwing]

Thanks again Vahe:-) I'm right on it

[Nightwing]

If anyone gets the cannce, how can you detect multiple versions of a home page? I mean i had now idea http://www.barrettsteel.com/default.aspx was another version of the home page.

Come on guys tell me your secrets

[ClickConsult]

Anytime, I hope I helped you come to a decision to use it.

I find the best way to check is to simply search for the content on the page with exact match quotes. I usually start with searching for the the meta title with quotes whilst using a site search, like this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&q=site%3Abarrettsteel.com+%22Barrett+Steel+-+Steel+suppliers+steel+stockholders%22&oq=site%3Abarrettsteel.com+%22Barrett+Steel+-+Steel+suppliers+steel+stockholders%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=4116l5275l0l5512l4l4l0l0l0l0l229l608l2.1.1l4l0

As you can see though, for this example there's quite alot of pages with the same meta title so it's then best to take a section of the homepage content and search for that, again within a site search like this:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site%3Abarrettsteel.com+%22As+the+UK's+largest+independent+steel+stockholders+%26+steel+suppliers%2C+it%E2%80%99s+easy+to+see+why+our+customers+become+our+life-long+partners.+Find+out+more+about+the+Barrett+Steel+Group.%22

And then lastly to confirm, search for the obvious with a site command such as :

http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&q=site%3Abarrettsteel.com%2Fdefault.aspx&oq=site%3Abarrettsteel.com%2Fdefault.aspx&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=24290l26571l0l26682l13l12l0l0l0l0l185l679l3.3l6l0

Good luck!

[ClickConsult]

Ah, I'm not too sure if this was what you meant to ask in your reply to our answer - I thought you were wondering how to find out if there are any other versions of the same page within the SERPs. If that was what you meant, sorry!

I found /default.aspx by experience; I saw that your site was an ASP site which is famous for having /default.aspx as the homepage and 9/10 it won't 301 redirect back to the root.

By the way, I see that you're using a CMS called Kentico. There's a good tutorial here that explains pretty well how to add a canonical tag to all pages: http://devnet.kentico.com/Blogs/Martin-Hejtmanek/January-2010/SEO-tip--Canonical-link-elements-in-Kentico-CMS.aspx

[AlanMosley]

I think the idea is, that if your page gets scraped it has the canonical in it.

But you are correct that it is not the correct use, a canonical should not point to itself. Bing does not like it.

http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/10/06/managing-redirects-301s-302s-and-canonicals.aspx

[AlanMosley]

Even a capital letter means a different url

To fix the default.aspx issue

http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/how-to-fix-canonical-issues-involving-the-default-page

Also make sure you dont have internal links to the default.aspx page