Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should canonical links be included or excluded in a sitemap?
-
Our company is in the process of updating our sitemap. Should we include or exclude canonical links.
-
Include everything. You want Google to spider everything.
Let's take an example:
Two pages which talk about Llama Grooming, one which focuses on Llama Fur Enhancement, and the other that focuses on Llama Fur Lustre.
The content for both pages really is the same, just the SEO is a little different for each.
Your main page: www.llamas.com/lfe.com (Llama Fur Enhancement) has all the copy SEO'd for Llama Fur Enhancement. Your "alternate" page has the same copy, but optimized for Llama Fur Lustre with a Canonical REL tag back to the original page. If you omit the second page from the Sitemap, it doesn't get spidered, then what's the point? Both need to be spidered, but the Canonical REL tag tells it which is the "official" page so you don't get dinged for duplicate content.
Capice?
Jim
-
So if I understand correctly, Our Sitemap.xml should only have the "original" page, not pages that have a canonical link.
Thank You for your assistance
-
You mean in your sitemap.xml?
The canonical tag is a tab that goes on pages to let the bots know which URLs you want to get credit for content. So theoretically, your sitemap.xml file URLs should be very similar to your canonical links you are declaring in your metas.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate without user-selected canonical excluded
We have pdf files uploaded in the media of wordpress and used in our website. As these pdfs are duplicate content of the original publishers, we have marked links to these pdf urls as nofollow. These pages are also disallowed in robots.txt Now, Google Search Console has shown these pages Excluded as "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" As it comes out we cannot use canonical tag with pdf pages so as to point to the original pdf source If we embed a pdf viewer in our website and fetch the pdfs by passing the urls of the original publisher, would the pdfs be still read as text by google and again create duplicate content issue? Another thing, when the pdf expires and is removed, it would lead to 404 error. If we direct our users to the third party website, then it would add up to our bounce rate. What should be the appropriate way to handle duplicate pdfs? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dailynaukri1 -
Pending Sitemaps
Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin0 -
Footer no follow links
Just interested to know when putting links at the foot of the site some people use no-follow tags. I'm thinking about internal pages and social networks. Is this still necessary or is it an old-fashioned idea?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Linking to URLs With Hash (#) in Them
How does link juice flow when linking to URLs with the hash tag in them? If I link to this page, which generates a pop-over on my homepage that gives info about my special offer, where will the link juice go to? homepage.com/#specialoffer Will the link juice go to the homepage? Will it go nowhere? Will it go to the hash URL above? I'd like to publish an annual/evergreen sort of offer that will generate lots of links. And instead of driving those links to homepage.com/offer, I was hoping to get that link juice to flow to the homepage, or maybe even a product page, instead. And just updating the pop over information each year as the offer changes. I've seen competitors do it this way but wanted to see what the community here things in terms of linking to URLs with the hash tag in them. Can also be a use case for using hash tags in URLs for tracking purposes maybe?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Should I redirect my xml sitemap?
Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Should sitemap include https pages?
Hi guys, Trying to figure out some onsite issues I've been having. Would appreciate any feedback on the following 2 questions: My homepage (http://mysite.com) is a 301 redirect to https://mysite.com, which is under SSL. Only 2 pages of my site are https, the rest are http. Should the directory of my sitemap be https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml or should it be kept with http (even though the redirected homepage is to https)? Should my sitemap include the https pages (only 2 pages) as well as the http? Thanks, G
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | G.Anderson0 -
Canonical link vs root domain
I have a wordpress website installed on http://domain.com/home/ instead of http://domain.com - Does it matter whether I leave it that way with a canonical link from the domain.com to the domain.com/home/ or should I move the wordpress files and database to the root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JosephFrost0