Do I need canonical link on target page?

[CaliB]

I've placed in my head tag on duplicate content pages, but do i need to place it on  the target page such as http://www.example.com/index.html too?

[Anthony_NorthSEO]

Nope, not as far as I know. Just add the tag in the head of the non-canonical URLs:

This is from Google's Webmaster Tools Support section:

If you want http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html to

be the canonical URL for your listing, you can indicate this to search

engines by adding a  element with the attribute rel="canonical"

_ to the section of the non-canonical pages. To do this, create a_

link as follows:

_```
href="http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html">

_Add this extra information to the  section of non-canonical URLs._

_http://example.com/dresses/greendress.html?gclid=ABCDh_

_This tells Google that these URLs all refer to the canonical page at **http://www.example.com/dresses/greendress.html**. _

_**Note**: We recommend __using a link with the attribute `rel="canonical"` to_

_indicate your preferred __URL, but we can't guarantee to follow that preference_

_in all cases._

_[More information about rel="canonical".](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394)_

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Anthony_

[koamit]

Yes you should if you are not using 301 redirection for "non www" with "www" domain.

[Dr-Pete]

I'm a little confused, because you gave different URLs for the target of your canonical tag and your "target page", so I just want to make sure we're referring to the same thing here. You don't typically need a canonical tag on the canonical version of the URL. Technically, you shouldn't put one there (Bing has specifically said they don't want that, but Google has eased up on it), but practically, I've rarely seen it cause any problems.

In other words, I wouldn't lose sleep over it

Just make sure that the "target page" doesn't actually represent multiple URLs. I've seen some people get confused on that. Typically, having a canonical tag on your home-page can help sweep up variants you might not think about, so I think it can make sense to have one, even on the target. In most cases, though, it's not necessary.

[CaliB]

Ah yes, I could have been more clear with this. Thanks for the help.

[CaliB]

After implementing my canonical links, I should see my duplicate page warnings go down in the Errors section of Crawl Diagnostics correct? SEOMOZ parses these correct?

[Dr-Pete]

It's not instantaneous, but yes, you should see that number drop over time.