Is a canonical tag required for already redirecting URLs?

[nhhernandez]

Hi everyone,

One of our websites was changed to non-www to www. The non-www pages were then redirected to avoid duplicate issue. Moz and Screaming Frog flagged a number of these redirected pages as missing canonical tags. Is the canonical tag still required for pages already redirecting? Or is it detecting another possible duplicate page that we haven't redirected yet?

Also, the rankings for this website isn't improving despite having us optimising these pages as best as we could. I'm wondering if this canonical tag issue may be affecting it.

Thank you.

[benesmartin]

Hey Nikki,

If the page is 301 redirected then there is no need for canonical tag. The 301 has more "power" against duplicates because not all browsers follow the canonical tag.

Regarding your page optimization, it's just the beginning. Let's dig into link building and create high quality, topical link portfolio. This should boost your traffic.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Nikki

The 301 from non www to www is a simple 301 tag from one to the other which will carry about 85% of the 'juice' which was attributed to the old page.

It is best practice to have a self referencing canonical on the new www page - this is so then when other sites like Twitter add a UTM to the end of the URL Google only recognises the single canonicalized URL.

It may be this that MOZ and Screaming Frog was picking up on this.

Regards Nigel

[nhhernandez]

Thanks, everyone! We'll consider adding these canonical tags in the future, but won't flag it as urgent at the moment