Rel="canonical"

[jonesatl]

Can you tell me if we've implemented rel="canonical" properly?

We want this to be our primary:

http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads-

while this would be duplicate and refer robots back to the URL above:

http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6054284

We've added the following to both pages: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads- "/>

Thanks

[saibose]

I think that Rand posted an article sometime back on this.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

Lindsay followed it up last year with this:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not

You can read through them and have a good understanding of the best practices involved.

What i dont understand is why have you implemented rel=canonical to both pages. Its not required on your target page, that is, http://www.autopartstomorrow.com/parts/6052317-r-econ-semi-met-brake-pads-

You just require it on your other page.

Hope that helps.

[AlanMosley]

i would use a 301 redirect for this
rel conical tells the search engine where the original content is, it does not pass link juice to the original content. while 301 tells the SE that it is the same page and all link juice will be awarded to the one page.

[CodyWheeler]

Tried a couple of times and these pages aren't loading for me in a couple of different browsers. Not sure if you've changed something since the posting of this question, but if you're still subscribed to this thread you may want to look into this.

As someone said already I would just like to reinforce that rel=canonical only has to be used on the target page, however since these pages you're referencing aren't exactly the same you DON'T want to use a 301 redirect. Your rel=canonical tag will simply signal the search engines to pass all ranking to your main page, which is actually a better implementation than using 301, albeit it won't make a huge difference on a small scale.

If this is a Wordpress blog, which I can't really tell if it is or not since the pages aren't loading, you may want to try the WP canonical plugin. It will semi-automate all of your canonical tags so you're not having to modify code all the time.

[kwoolf]

Likewise, your posted links lead to white pages. If you still need help with this, get those links fixed for us.

[Yevgeny]

I have a follow question about this.  I have a zen cart eCommerce site.  Just learned and read both articles that Saibose mentioned but still not sure how to proceed.  I have dup content issues.  So do I use 301 or  rel=canonical? I have two variations. (that I see for now)

1.  Main category _ Sub category_product   examples below

http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards

http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards

http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards/slanted-award

Do I pass all link juice to the main category ie awards or sub cat.  (should mention there are three sub categories in this example.

2. Main category _product

same as above with out sub categories.

Thanks

[kwoolf]

Ideally, you should use both, but I realize that could be a lot of work. Canonical URLs will work well for the case you mentioned above. Just remember to link to your canonical URL on internal pages and have inbound links point to that canonical URL. You should ask site owners that host those inbound links to change if possible or use 301 to redirect those links that can't be changed.

You may also want to consider creating redirect rules to add or remove the trailing slash for all URLs, because links with and without the slash are considered different URLs and will split link juice.