Some questions on Canonical tag AND 301 redirect

[yacpro13]

Hi everyone, I'm new here - always loved SEOMoz and glad to be part of the Pro community now.

I have 2 questions regarding the Canonical URL tag.

Some background info:

We used to run an OsCommerce store, and recently migrated to Magento. In doing so, we right away created 301 redirects of the old category pages (OsCommerce) to the new category pages (Magento) via the Magento admin. Example:

www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
301 redicrected to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html

In Magento admin, we have enabled the Canonical tag for all product and category pages. Here's how Magento sets up the Canonical tag:

The URL of interest which we want to rank is:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html

However Magento sets up the canonical tag on this page to point to:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html

When using the SEOMoz On Page Report Card, it pick this up as an error because the Canonical tag is pointing to a different URL.

However, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the URL being pointed to
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
has a 301 redirect to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html
which is the URL we wan to rank.

So because we set up a 301 redirect of the old-page to the new-page, on the new-page the canonical tag points to the old-page.

Question 1)
What are you opinions on this? Do you think this method of setting up the Canonical tag is acceptable?

Second question...

We use pagination for category pages, so if we have 50 products in one category, we would have 5 pages of 10 products. The URL's would be:

www.example.com/new-widget-category.html (which is the SAME as ?p=1)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5

Now ALL the URLs above have the canonical tag set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" />

However, the content of each page (page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is different because different products are displayed. So far most what I read regarding the Canonical tag is that it is used for pages that have the same content but different URLs.

I would hope that Google would combine the content of all 5 pages and view the result as a single URL www.example.com/new-widget-category

Question 2) Is using the canonical tag appropriate in the case described above?

Thanks !

[Jinx14678]

Question 1

If i read it right it appears you are using 301 redirect and Canonical, Correct? If this is so,  the use of Canonical is redundant (possibly ignored by Gbot) but could cause issues.

Question 2

From the way it is described.. It would appear the only true canonical is www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1 and should have <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" />

The others depending on differences should not UNLESS

It is the same product, just different colors or something that does not change the product and what it does. But only changes the physical appearance. This would be an "acceptable" difference and "OK" to use canonical

EXAMPLE;

If...
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1  (Product in blue)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2   (Product in Red)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3 (ect...)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4 (ect...)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5 (Ect...)

Then canonical is probably a good fit,

but if....

www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1   (Widget to tell time)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2   (Widget that cooks you breakfast)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3   So on and so forth..
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5

Then I would suggest not using the canonical and make the content on each page different

Hopefully i read your questions right and this helps

w00t!

#STOPSOPA    please

[yacpro13]

Thanks for the info Shane.

Regarding pagination:
let's say we sell staplers.

?p=1 will be the first 10 stapler models
?p=2 will be stapler models 11-20
?p=3 will be stapler models 21-30
...and so on. Each page presents a different set of stapler models.
Keep in mind that each URL has the same Title and Meta Info.

We could choose to show all staplers on a single page and eliminate pagination, but this would affect loading time.

Yes we incidentally use Canonical tags and 301 redirects, which were implemented for different reasons.

The 301 redirect was implemented to redirect from old category URLs on old website (no longer live) which were indexed and had good ranking to the new category URLs on the new website.

The canonical URL on the other hand was implemented in hope of avoiding duplicate content of the new URLs.
For example if you were to navigate to the URL

www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1

You would see the stapler models 1 to 10 of 50 (so 5 pages).
Now you can either go to the next pages, or you can 'filter'.

Let's say you choose to filter by color, because you really want a red stapler, the resulting URL would be

www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?color=red

You could now choose to filter by other characteristics or go to the next page (still with red filter on), so the URL would be

www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?color=red?p=2

Again, since all that's happening here is either changing page or filtering the products, the Title and Meta Info is the same, but the URLs are different, and the selection of products being presented is also different.

[AlanMosley]

Shane is correct in his advice,

Q1

you dont need the canonical, if you did not have a 301 redirect, then the canonical should be on the old page pointing to the new. but as Shane said you dont need it when you have a 301 in place.

Q2

I would canonical to http://www.example.com/new-widget-category for all p1 to p5

As i wonder if the change of the products in the grid is enouth to make the pages unique. If you have sorting it just gets more messy

Your product pages will have this info for each product anyhow.

i would try to make the category page relevant for the catgory.

Rather then use rel=canonical I would use rel=next and rel=previous

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663744

[Jinx14678]

Yeah the 301 looks like it is correctly used, but I personally would not use canonical as well, in respect only to the redirect of "old pages" to "new pages"

In the instance of the products it does appear this is a good example of canonical needed.

All "staplers" pagination would canonical to the "Main" stapler page and so on and so forth.

This gets your users to the page to see the same product in a different color, but tells search engines that this is all the same "product". So for this "product" only the main page will result in search (page in which the canonicals for given product points to)

Hope this helps

once again #STOPSOPA 

[HiveDigitalInc]

Drop the canonical, leave the 301.

Use rel=next and rel=prev for pagination: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

[yacpro13]

Will do.

the 301s will stay because they redirect the old (indexed and ranking) URL's to the new ones.

The Canonical Tags will all be removed.

Then 1 more question:
How do you suggest I deal with URL parameters that cause duplicate content. Some examples:

?color=
?manufacturer=
?width=

etc. We have hundreds of these - they are used to allow customers to filter or sort the product listings.

Should we set them to be ignored via Webmaster tools?

[HiveDigitalInc]

Most likely. Unless the parameters are greatly changing the content on the page, rather than simply sorting, you will want to block them or just use a canonical tag.