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View Full Version : Will adding the Google canonical tags reduce your indexed pages?



FABQuest
02-06-2011, 12:06 AM
My PR dropped from a lowly 1 to 0. I suspect my duplicate product pages are the cause of this. I'm close to inserting the Google canonical tag into my sites code. But I'm concerned that lets say a product that was indexed under one category and not another may go missing from the SERPS. Thoughts?

vangogh
02-06-2011, 10:44 AM
The canonical tag is meant to tell Google which of say 3 duplicate pages is the one you want indexed. So you would be telling them not to index 2 pages in that scenario, but when you are you'd be telling them which page to index. However the canonical tag is mainly a fallback for when you have no other way to solve the duplicate problem issue. There are usually better ways to accomplish the same thing.

Here's a good post about the what and why of the canonical tag (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not).

As far as PR is concerned don't stress about it. The number you see in the toolbar is far less important than you think. If you want to see the green bar go up you need to get more sites linking to you. With your existing site that's not going to be easy as most pages are product pages. There's very little reason to link to product pages. What you want is to create more information content, which is one reason people like myself recommend blogs. The good news here is your site lends itself to a blog.

It shouldn't be hard to come up with plenty of idea for blogging about Street Rods. If you want your PR to increase you're going to need content other than what's for sale.

websonalized
05-07-2011, 10:12 AM
It shouldn't be hard to come up with plenty of idea for blogging about Street Rods. If you want your PR to increase you're going to need content other than what's for sale.

Although by the looks of the first two listed products there is unique and very specific content in each product's page. The descriptions themselves are filled with relevant words, and every description is different.

Would this not be considered unique content, and content that contributes to the relevancy of the website?

FABQuest
05-07-2011, 05:45 PM
This is true, I have hand written each product description to be unique and include keywords that pertain to the meta title and meta description. Over the last few weeks I have realized I need to create more depth by use of content in my category pages. I will add links to sub cats as well as some images. Since these cat pages are further up in the tree they seem to have more "pull" with the web bots. I need to take advantage of this. I have linked a Facebook page to my site but I assume that does not mean its content is will benefit my site.

vangogh
05-08-2011, 03:47 PM
I only looked at two product. It looks like you're redirecting the new product URL (or the category version of the URL) to the main product page URL. I don't see different content when accessing things from the different URLs. That's a good example of when you would want to use the canonical tag. You don't want both URLs indexed since they'd be seen as duplicate content.

Did I not look deep enough or at enough products. Seems like you're using the tag the right way.

FABQuest
05-09-2011, 12:14 PM
Most of the products will have unique content. The acceptation would be some of the brake kits where the same part number fits many different cars. I have duplicated these products with the only difference in content being their specific vehicle application. The product descriptions will be identical. On my site you can find the same product by way of different categories: example, "search by car" or "all GM brake kits" etc. Its for this reason I have implemented the canonical ref link. The little extension suggests that the correct page to index would be the one created by the xml sitemap. I like this as I regularly submit my sitemap to the search engines.

vangogh
05-09-2011, 01:17 PM
Like I said it looks to me like you're generally doing things right. I didn't go through the site in great detail, but the little I did look at indicated you've set things up properly.