Rel=canonical Notice

[Prager]

In the Crawl Diagnostics report we see there 314 Rel Canonical notices. We use the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin and noticed that the URL is the exact same as the Tag value. When looking into the issue more, I see that the rel canonical tag is pointing to the same page as itself. For example, on the www.domain.com/blog/ page, there is a link rel="canonical" href="/blog/".

1. Is this an issue that needs to be fixed?
2. How can it be fixed?
3. Will this cause any potential ranking issues?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[jesse-landry]

Nope, doesn't need to be fixed. There's nothing wrong with this practice, especially for a Wordpress site (imo).

The notices that moz tools are giving you are just that - to make you aware that those canonical tags exist. They aren't warnings or errors, just notices to draw your attention to canonicals in case you ever wanted to look into them or ensure they were correct.

[GeorgeAndrews]

Hello!

It sounds like there are a few questions here.

First, let me clarify that the 314 Rel Canonical notices are just that - notices. They are there to let you know the canonical link elements are present and also the tag value or where they point to.

Second, in most cases, the tag values match the page URL. Canonical link elements are used to identify the URL search engines should use for the page no matter how the URL looks.

I don't think you have any issues that need to be fixed as long as you've confirmed the canonical link element tag values match the page you are reviewing. You shouldn't see any ranking issues.

Edit: Looks like Jesse chimed in as I was typing up a response. What he has said is correct, you should be fine :).

[Prager]

Thank you very much for your help. I just thought it was odd to have a rel canonical tag that pointed to itself. Seems like it would be an endless loop. Great to hear that this is not a concern and can be disregarded.

[GeorgeAndrews]

Ah, yes. Since the tag just "represents" the URL that should be used for the content, it doesn't produce an endless loop. Redirects (301 or 302) produce loops from time to time, but that is another issue. Good question to ask and good that you are looking at everything to make sure your site is healthy.