The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. SEO and Digital Marketing Q&A Forum
    2. Categories
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Do I need to use canonical tags if I'm 301 redirecting pages?

    Do I need to use canonical tags if I'm 301 redirecting pages?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2 2 423
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • Omnipress
      Omnipress last edited by

      I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus.

      The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes)

      http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
      http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx

      (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider)

      So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this:

      With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in?

      For Example:

      http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/

      will become

      http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man

      My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page?

      I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RobertFisher
        RobertFisher last edited by

        Steve,

        First, I am not a .net expert and there are some here. As to the overall question though, when you 301 www.example.com/boss-man to www.example.com/big-boss-man, you do not need the canonical on the example.com/boss-man. The 301 is handling all for you.

        Best

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post
        • Can a duplicate page referencing the original page on another domain in another country using the 'canonical link' still get indexed locally?
          shahryar89
          shahryar89
          2
          2
          53

        • I've got duplicate pages. For example, blog/page/2 is the same as author/admin/page/2\. Is this something I should just ignore, or should I create the author/admin/page2 and then 301 redirect?
          BeanstalkIM
          BeanstalkIM
          0
          5
          414

        • Pagination and View All Pages Question. We currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to View all as I don't believe it's a good user experience so how best we deal with this.
          PeteC12
          PeteC12
          0
          3
          117

        • Is this all that is needed for a 'canonical' tag?
          infinart
          infinart
          0
          5
          157

        • Do I need to use canonicals if I will be using 301's?
          BlueprintMarketing
          BlueprintMarketing
          0
          6
          382

        • Is it ok to use both 301 redirect and rel="canonical' at the same time?
          Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete
          0
          4
          1.7k

        • Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
          marig
          marig
          0
          6
          1.0k

        • 301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
          MWM3772
          MWM3772
          0
          8
          973

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy