Canonical URLs and SEO

[casper434]

After publishing my new wordpress website my on page analysis shows two canonical urls on my homepage. In checking the source code the Yoast SEO plugin states my canoncial url is www.homepage.ca/   This is the only one showing. Having said this I do not add the trailing slash to anything on my url structure. Could this be why the on page analysis tool says there are 2? If so is there any way to resolve this?

[Nobody1560986989723]

What tool are you using for your on-page analysis?

Have you done a Google search for : site:www.homepage.ca and see if two URLs are listed?

If the source code is only giving you one rel canonical tag then regardless of your analysis there's only one canonical URL so I don't think you have anything to worry about, so long as you agree with the URL given in that tag

[casper434]

Using the SEOmoz on page analysis tool. The source code shows rel canonical for www.homepage.ca/    yet my site url is www.homepage.ca   with all redirects there

[Nobody1560986989723]

In which case I suggest you do the following:-

• Edit your home page as normal through the WP back end
• In the 'Wordpress SEO by Yoast' box under the editor select the 'Advanced' tab
• Enter your Canonical URL without the backslash there.

Publish and refresh the 'live' page and it all should marry up.

You're still probably not losing out with or without the trailing backslash, but it definitely makes it cleaner if your incoming links are precisely the same as your canonical definition.

Let me know if this works out for you.

[casper434]

Hi Martin, I must be looking in the wrong place. When I open up Yoast SEO I can find menus for dashboard, titles&meta, social, sitemaps, permalinks, internal links, rss, import&export and edit files (which gives me acess to htaccess). I can find the advanced tab for all pages but the home page. Where do I find it? thanks

[Nobody1560986989723]

Don't open up the Yoast SEO on it's own. Go edit the home page text as you would do normally. It will be under 'Pages' or 'Posts' depending on which way you created your home page.

Then edit the page/post in the normal way and then the Yoast box is under the normal editing window.

If it's not there make sure you're running the most up-to-date version of Wordpress and Yoast SEO and re-try

[casper434]

i created the home page through the appearance/widgets menu using an agentpress theme built on the genesis framework. there is no "home page" appearing as either a page or post in these menus (unless I am missing something)

[Nobody1560986989723]

Can you take some screenshots so I can see what you're seeing?

Can you post firstly the page you see when you are editing the home page content? (not the layout/design).

[casper434]

screenshot attached

4BdrX 4BdrX

[Nobody1560986989723]

And can you show me the screen/section when you're editing the homepage text?

(we will get to the bottom of this one, it's just taking time).

[casper434]

all done through the widgets per attached example

s7eI5.jpg?1 s7eI5.jpg?1

[Nobody1560986989723]

Oh I see, you've got a specialised set-up. Okay.

In which case the actual place you want to be checking is under Settings > General and look at your Wordpress and website address to see if those have a trailing backslash or not.

[casper434]

They do not have the slash but the Yoast SEO package has it in the automatic rel=canonical which I cannot find to change

[Nobody1560986989723]

Ah I think I may have found it.

Under Permalinks on the Yoast menu on the left do you have

"Enforce a trailing slash on all category and tag URL's" ticked or not?

[casper434]

no it is not checked

[Nobody1560986989723]

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/tag-rel-canonical-bug

?