Help with Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical

[bilsonx]

Whenever i enable Canonical URL through the 3DCart Control panel I get this Critical Factor error when running the on page report card:

Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical

Moderate fix

<dl>

<dt>Canonical URL</dt>

<dd>"http://rcnitroshop.com/Nitro-Monster-Truck"</dd>

<dt>Explanation</dt>

<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>

<dt>Recommendation</dt>

<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>

</dl>

Now if I disable Canonical URL then run the on page report card again the critical error goes away but I get this Optional Factor error instead:

Canonical URL Tag Usage

Moderate fix

<dl>

<dt>Number of Canonical tags</dt>

<dd>0</dd>

<dt>Explanation</dt>

<dd>Although the canonical URL tag is generally thought of as a way to solve duplicate content problems, it can be extremely wise to use it on every (unique) page of a site to help prevent any query strings, session IDs, scraped versions, licensing deals or future developments to potentially create a secondary version and pull link juice or other metrics away from the original. We believe the canonical URL tag is a best practice to help prevent future problems, even if nothing is specifically duplicate/problematic today.</dd>

<dt>Recommendation</dt>

<dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page.</dd>

</dl>

So basically I disabled it because obviously a Critical error is much worse then an optional error. Is there a way I can get rid of both errors?

[bilsonx]

Someone has had to run into this before : /

[zigojacko]

Potentially an issue with 3dCart's canonical URL feature?

I think there is potentially a bigger issue with your site / URL structure causing this maybe. Have you recently changed whether your website makes use of www / non www in the URL's? Instances of both versions are indexed in Google currently - did you enter the canonical URL in 3dCart with the www or without. And if you use Google Webmaster Tools, is this set to display URL's with or without the www?

There is currently a www redirect from non www to www however, so one would presume www is preferred - so just ensure any settings in 3dCart's admin panel that include your domain, are inserted with the www included.

Maybe on this page.

Hope this helps initially.

[bilsonx]

I figured it out. Thanks for the response!

[zigojacko]

No problem Bill, glad you sorted it - what was the cause in the end?

[bilsonx]

Well in 3DCarts control panel I noticed that in Settings>Store Settings all the way at the bottom it says Store URL : The URL was "rcnitroshop.com". I just added "www." in front of that. BTW after listening to what you told me about my website I did some redesigning if you want to check it out. I added a phone number at the top, decreased white space, added some images on the sidebars to gain some trust, overall I feel I made the site a little more trustworthy and hopefully will be a little more efficient. I'm just going to stick with 3DCart for a little while until I feel like putting a week into switch all of my products over. I will just try to make the best of it for now lol. Still got a lot of work to do though.

From You:

Conversions

• Design is not fluid.
• Too much whitespace.
• Everything just appears in one wide column, needs to be split into easily digestible sections with call to actions.
• There is nothing catching my attention and no existing call to actions.
• Ask yourself - Why should people buy from you?

[zigojacko]

Glad you identified the setting, thought it looked something like that.

Site is looking a little better, is there any way you can change the layout of the product pages, perhaps putting the price and options alongside the image gallery or anything similar to that? Any kind of layout options available from the admin panel?

Appreciate your decision to stick it out with 3dCart for now, can sometimes prove a daunting task migrating to a new ecommerce provider - it should be a relatively smooth transition if you hire the right person/company if you decide to do so in the future though.

Happy to advise on your current site as required based on what the platform will allow you to do though.

[bilsonx]

It will not let me change that part. I wish I could. It would look a lot better.

I didn't really think about hiring someone to do it. Is there anyone you would recommend talking to about doing something like that (Switching over to Magento).

[zigojacko]

We are a creative design and development agency as well as a search marketing agency, we can build and develop ecommerce websites and look after all migration, hosting and configuration - we can manage everything basically. We are based in the UK though so unsure if you are looking for someone a bit nearer to you.

I also appreciate that it's not really a recommendation if we are pushing our own services to you so if I were to recommend another company that I have no affiliation with, in terms of anything Magento related, Inchoo would be my recommendation.