Blog URL Canonical

[Dan1e1]

Hi Guy's,

I would like to know your thoughts on the following set-up for blog canonical.

Option 1

domain.com/blog =  <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com/blog">

domain.com/blog-category/general  = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com/blog">

domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical  = no canonical

option 2

domain.com/blog =   <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"="">(as option 1)</link rel="canonical" href="domin.com>

domain.com/blog-category/general  = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"="">(this time has the canonical of the category)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>

domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical  =  <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" how-to-set-canonical"="">(this time has the canonical of the article full URL)</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>

Just not sure which is the best option, or even if it is any of the above!

Thanks

Dan

[TomRayner]

Hi Dan

I'd say it's Option 1...and a half!

As a general rule of thumb, I want to put a self-referring canonical tag (a tag that points to the same URL) on any page I'd want to rank.  So, I'd have one for domain.com/blog and domain.com/blog-article/how-to-set-canonical.

For any page I want Google to disregard, in terms of ranking, will have a different URL in their canonical tag.  So, you're right in this sense to have your blog category page to be like this: domain.com/blog-category/general  = <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog"="">.</link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>

Remembering that canonical tags are a strong directive, not command, to Google, I tend to also noindex and nofollow my category and/or tag pages as well, just to be doubly sure that Google is not flagging them as duplicate.  You can do this by simply adding to the head tag of the web page.

Hope this helps Dan.

[Dan1e1]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reply, this makes perfect sense

I was unsure if we should be creating a canonical for the full blog article or just leaving it and letting Google work it out!!

I will talk to our developer about adding the noindex and no follow to the category/archive pages.

Thanks

Daniel

[Dr-Pete]

It depends a bit on the site structure, but I'd actually be wary of setting the category page canonicals back up to the main blog. These aren't really duplicates, and that could send an odd signal (and potentially negative) to Google, especially if there are a lot of them.

If you're talking about a few category pages, leave it alone. Use rel=prev/next for pagination and make sure you're handling and search filters (and not spinning out URLs), but just let these pages get crawled normally. They're an important path on the site.

If you've got a ton of categories, sub-categories, and tags, then I'd go with META NOINDEX. Important note, though: in most cases, you'd use NOINDEX, FOLLOW (not NOFOLLOW) - you don't want to cut the path for crawlers to reach your individual posts. Again, this does depend a bit on the site architecture and whether you have other crawl paths.

[Dan1e1]

Hi Peter,

we don't have a have many categories less than 20, obviously when we create a new article it shows in the main domain.com/blog (for a limited time) but the same article can also appear in more than 1 of the categories, so based on this do you feel that option 2 would be the better way to go ?

many thanks

Daniel

[Dr-Pete]

Are these just snippets (link + paragraph) or are you displaying large portions of the posts on the home/category pages?

[Dan1e1]

Just snippets, a paragraph then a read more link to the main article.

[Dr-Pete]

I honestly don't think that's a big deal - as long as you aren't creating tags or adding categories in a way that this could spin out of control. You've basically got 20-ish search result pages. They aren't high value, but they are useful paths to the blog content and they could rank for category keywords. I think it's a balancing act, and in many cases internal search can spin out of control and harm a site. My gut reaction, though, is that you're not in that situation, and cutting off these pages might do more harm than good.

[Dan1e1]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the info, so from everything you have suggested, it seems as if my option 2 would be the better way?

In other words having a canonical for each element

domain.com/blog  =  <link rel="canonical" href="domin.com blog"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domin.com>

domain.com/blog-category-general  =  <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-category="" general"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>

domain.com/blog-article/this-is-it   =  <link rel="canonical" href="domain.com blog-article="" this-is-it"=""></link rel="canonical" href="domain.com>

Have I understood you correctly?

Many thanks

Daniel

[Dr-Pete]

Without seeing the actual site in question, that's my opinion, yes.