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 pages with rel="canonical" be put in a sitemap?
-
I am working on an ecommerce site and I am going to add different views to the category pages. The views will all have different urls so I would like to add the rel="canonical" tag to them. Should I still add these pages to the sitemap?
-
I would just title them according to their view type. Try to put your most informative words as close to the front as possible so that it's easy to read in browser tabs, for example: Red Widgets, All Widgets, <$25 Widgets... etc. Meta description could probably be a repeat of the title tag. Make the title as UX friendly as possible.
-
- What are your thoughts on title tag and meta description on these pages? The only thing that changes on these pages is how the item is displayed. Should I change the title tag and meta description even though they should never be the organic landing page?
-
What are your thoughts on title tag and meta description on these pages? The only thing that changes on these pages is how the item is displayed. Should I change the title tag and meta description even though they should never be the organic landing page?
-
Yes, I would not put them in the sitemap. Main goal of a sitemap is to make it easier for bots to discover the different pages of the site. The pages that have a canonical url pointing to another page don't really need this, as you don't want the search engines to index them anyway.
-
Since my preference is always to have people land on the page with thumbnails that is what I was thinking but wanted to double check. Thank you.
-
Based on how you're describing it, I'd leave them out of the sitemap.
-
These pages will be almost identical. They are category pages for ecommerce and the only difference is it will display all items and there will be no thumbnails. It sounds like you are saying not to put them in the sitemap in this instance?
-
They are category pages for an ecommerce site. Currently we list the items 25 to a page with a thumbnail. The second view will be all of the items in a basic list view with no thumbnails. We have some categories with several hundred items and our users have requested a way to see them all on one page.
-
Hi,
Agree with the arguments of Ryan on the whether or not to put the canonical.
However, if you decide that these pages are almost identical, and that you will use a canonical, it has no use to put all the variations of these pages in the sitemap. However, you should add the canonical version to the sitemap.
It's not a big problem if these pages are in the sitemap, you'll just notice it webmaster tools a low % of indexed pages for this sitemap.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Are the different views going to be substantially different pages or a reordering of products seen throughout each view? If the latter is the case I wouldn't use rel="canonical" for each view. If the pages are substantially different, like one is just displaying widgets, while the other is displaying widget maintenance tools, the having each of those pages as categorical sections to your store is worth it and worth being in the sitemap.
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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shabbirmoosa0 -
Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?
Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag0 -
Redirecting homepage to internal page (2nd Tier page)
We are planning to experiment redirecting our homepage to one of the 2nd tier page. I mean....example.com to example.com/page. We need this page to rank well, but it doesn't have much internal links or external back-links, so we opt for this redirect. Advantage with this page is, it has "keyword" we want to rank for in URL. "page" in example.com/page. Will this help or hurt us in SEO? I think we are missing keyword in our root domain, so interested to highlight this page. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?
Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
(a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml
and so on... OR this kind of approach -
(b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and
http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke0 -
Is it a bad idea to have a "press" page and link to press mentions of our company?
We've recently been getting quite a bit of press. Would it be wise to create a "press" page and link to mentions of us or would this devalue the links on the press pages as Google may think they reciprocal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JenniferDacosta0 -
Canonical VS Rel=Next & Rel=Prev for Paginated Pages
I run an ecommerce site that paginates product pages within Categories/Sub-Categories. Currently, products are not displayed in multiple categories but this will most likely happen as time goes on (in Clearance and Manufacturer Categories). I am unclear as to the proper implementation of Canonical tags and Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages. I do not have a View All page to use as the Canonical URL so that is not an option. I want to avoid duplicate content issues down the road when products are displayed in multiple categories of the site and have Search Engines index paginated pages. My question is, should I use the Rel=Next & Rel=Prev tags on paginated pages as well as using Page One as the Canonical URL? Also, should I implement the Canonical tag on pages that are not yet paginated (only one page)?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750 -
Canonical URLs and Sitemaps
We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names. So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category. And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL? In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345. This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo0