Canonical tags pointing at old URLs that have been 301'd

[BeattieGroup]

I have a site which has various white label sites with the same content on each. I have canonical tags on the white label sites pointing to the main site. I have changed some URLs on the main site and 301'd the previous URL to the new ones. Is it ok to have the canonicals pointing to the old URLs that now have a 301 redirect on them.

[NakulGoyal]

It would be best to update the canonical URLs to go directly to the new location. Having too many redirects, canonicals can often create these complex situations causing issues in the long-run. The intent of the canonical tag is to pass the bots a strong directive about what the correct URL is. So it would be wise to use the correct URL instead of a URL which does not exist (301'd). I hope this helps.

[Dr-Pete]

So, you basically (in some cases) have a canonical pointing to a URL, and then that URL 301s to a new URL? If that's the case, I think Nakul is right - it's not ideal. It's not a disaster, but you're basically putting Google through extra hops and you could be losing link-juice. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to calculate how much. Ideally, I'd change the canonicals to point to the new URLs.