Regarding Rel Canonical on PhoneTech.dk

[noerdar]

Hi All you Seo Experts from seomoz

I have a question about one of my webshops where I have the same product listed in different categories where I on the duplicate pages use the Rel Caninical Tag on, that points to the main product url. I just have to verify with you guys that I did it correctly

Example on the shop. This is just an example

www.phonetech.dk/shop/product1.html - This is Main

Duplicates

www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3G/product1.html -  Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main.

www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3g/backcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag on this one pointing to the main.

www.phonetech.dk/shop/iphone3gs/colorbackcovers/product1.html - Canonical Tag here also pointing to main

Hope you guys can help me that my use of Canonical Tag is correct.

Regards

Christian - Denmark

[donford]

Hi Christian that is basically what the REL canonical is for, typically it is used to deal with dynamic urls like
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L&Gender=F

I have seen some ecommerce shops that allow you to copy products from one category to another, if you do this, then yes REL canonical is how I would deal with this myself.

Hope it helps,

Don

[noerdar]

Ok, but the canonical tag shall not be on the main right?

[donford]

It doesn't need to be, but given the way the tag works, it does not hurt if the page you're on, is the path of the rel canonical.

Since the tag deals with dynamic pages it is very normal for the root page to have the tag as well as the dynamic pages.

[noerdar]

Ok but its ok if it not included on the main page?

[donford]

Rel canonical tags should be on the pages that they are dealing with.

In my example above a rel canonical tag would be fine all the pages

awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L
awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14?color=Red&Size=L&Gender=F

On each of the pages the tag would be

href="http://www.awebsite.com/t-shirts/product_id=14"/>

You would not put it on the page

awebsite.com/t-shirts/ or awebsite.com

Hope that clarifies it for you.

[Dr-Pete]

Are these live pages, or did something page (I can't seem to access them). Looking at the URLs, it seems like these are slightly different products, so I'm not clear if the canonical tag is appropriate.

[Dr-Pete]

It's fine to not include the canonical on the main/target page. As @donford said, it's fine to have a self-reference canonical, but it's definitely not necessary.

[noerdar]

It was just an example, its now live url's

[Dr-Pete]

Are these pages identical, but just reached via different paths (based on category/sub-category navigation)? If so, the canonical tag is definitely a good choice here. Ideally, it's best not to create duplicate paths, as it can cause long-term problems, but in lieu of that, canonical is probably your best defense.