Using rel-canonical to point to page with no internal link to it?

[mevseo]

This post is deleted!

[AlanMosley]

If there is no link to the page I would suggest that they are not indexed for that reason, a rel canonical it would seem is not followed by the crawler.

My thinking is that a canonical just tells the search engine to pass value, but if it cant find it in its index it wont do so, it may even waste the link juice.

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, this is a bit dangerous - Google doesn't want you to rel-canonical to Page 1 of a paginated series, and when you're using a different page 1 than the internal link, you're really sending a mixed signal. The canonical link should actually be the one in play on the site, in the vast majority of the cases.

They won't penalize you over this, but it's entirely possible that it simply is going to be ignored, and you're potentially harming your ranking ability.

I would probably use rel=prev/next, but I think the bigger issue is to consolidate your internal links to match the canonical. Could you use the "hub" page as your internal link and then just set the default sort on the server side? Sorts in the URL like that aren't great anyway - by treating it as a sub-folder you can't even tell Google to block the sort parameter. I'd really avoid tying that to the URL structure the way you have, if at all possible.

The other option would be to META NOINDEX pages 2+ of the paginated results, but that doesn't solve you hub issue at all.

[toddmumford]

Great answers from both responders, and I agree - every category needs a default hub page that is linked to preferably directly in your breadcrumb, and all pages within that series should reference it in link canonical.

So, to help answer your questions:

1. No, its not preferrable and is probably hurtful to your campaign to not have a physical link to the primary page you are referencing in your rel canonical in that categorical series

2. Yes, using pagination and rel-next, rel-previous is a solid option which limits page load issues. Adding filters (often seen in the left hand navigation in context) is also very helpful in keeping the total results lower.

3. Likely because you are not sending strong signals to Google that you believe the hub pages are best for your visitors. By adding those links to the breadcrumb permanently, and by referencing those directly in internal links, etc, you will send the signal to Google that those pages are important, and Google will begin to utilize those.

Hope this helps.