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Canonical Tag in Blogs

New Here ,
Mar 11, 2013 Mar 11, 2013

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Hi Everyone,

We are looking to set up the canonical tag (rel="canonical") in the business catalyst blog. However, if we put the tag in the blog post it does not get picked up. We then tried to put it in the blog layout or blog detail using the {tag_itemurl_withhost}. This works in BC but does not give the correct url and instead goes to http://www.symphony3.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogName=Online_Business_Strategy_And_Digital_Marketing&P...

I do not believe this is ideal.

How do we implement the canonical tag dynamically in BC using one of the BC tags.

Thanks.

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LEGEND ,
Mar 11, 2013 Mar 11, 2013

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Permalink but you can not do this properly in BC at this time, Let you google find out what canonical does and the implementation you are doing wont have any effect.. BUT..

The tag for blogs you want is the permalink tag  - {tag_permalinkonly}

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New Here ,
Mar 11, 2013 Mar 11, 2013

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Hi Liam,

Thanks for you reply. Sorry I didn't quite get the part "Let you google find out what canonical does "

Does this mean we cannot use canonical tags in blog posts in BC? I simply need to get the <head> tag from the blog post to include the link rel .

Sohal

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LEGEND ,
Mar 12, 2013 Mar 12, 2013

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What are you trying to achieve by doing so?

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Advocate ,
Mar 13, 2013 Mar 13, 2013

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Using the canonical tag means you've got duplicate sets of content (ie- two blogs, two product catalogs) with virtually the same information.  It's so that you have have multiple landing pages for use in PPC or SEO but not take a hit by having numerous pages with similar content. 

Google will dock your ranking if you have sets and sets of the same page content.  Also, in some cases, like in BC- you could have those long ugly URLs and the permalink/pretty urls that are different but lead to the same content.  That's a good use case for canonical links. 

I think the canonical link tag must be in the HEAD of the document, so make sure you are putting it there.  Also, you should be adding the tag to the blog post detail layout so that the canonical url is for that specific blog post's detail view.  I think you just need to add this to your blog detail layout:

<link rel="canonical" href="{tag_permalink}"/>

Or you could try the other tag:

<link rel="canonical" href="{tag_permalinkonly}"/>

Now, you should probably also include a canonical link tag for your main "blog" page which shows the blog posts. You'll have to add that to your overall blog layout... and I'm not 100% sure, but I think that if you have a duplicate meta tag on your detail layout and one on the overall blog layout, the detail one should override the canonical reference in the overall blog layout on the blog detail view.

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LEGEND ,
Mar 13, 2013 Mar 13, 2013

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Thetrickster,

Google will not dock you for having same content within the same site, Can link more then one article/video from Mike Cutts on that fact. It is not deirable and you want to avoid it but you will not be punished by google. Cross domain etc you will, but not under the soame domain.
Permalink if domain is set up renders the SEO friendly version of the URL, only searches return.

Coanoical is suggestive and not a directive as a 301. It is a means to tell google which is your prefered version of the url and google can choose to ignore this if it feels another has that much stronger ranking.

You can also not put that code in the head as those tags will not render in templates, only within the blog layouts. Currently in the blog layouts BC is not pushing these into the head (which they are aware of).

You can not also put a meta of the same type in an overal layout for say a blog or product because the detail views use the same overal layout and you would create those duplications and the one in the overall would be the first to render and be read so create incorect meta information.

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Advocate ,
Mar 13, 2013 Mar 13, 2013

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Google will dock you for having identical content at different URLs, be it

on the same domain or otherwise. Here's more from Google on the "duplicate

content penalty":

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

Maybe Mike Cutts knows better but I do know that Google has started

recognizing the canonical tag for this exact purpose.

As for putting the tags in the head-- well I thought that would work as

expected but I guess that's a bug for the Blog layout.

So do you have any ideas what we CAN do to help this gentleman?

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LEGEND ,
Mar 13, 2013 Mar 13, 2013

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Google hate the missunderstanding of their own missinformation, it is why they setup the google channel answering questions.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/duplicate-content-question/

Google does not “penalise” duplicate content - it will just show one page over another.  If there are 3 pages of duplicate content on your website it generally will only show 1 result on a Google results page, (unless the search is incredibly longtail and specific – but of course we now get the “omitted results” link displayed). Google just shows the content that it feels is most relevant to the users search. New algorithms take into account things like content age (so original content is more likely to rank higher). (Greg gives the best explanation, not Matt)
http://www.spottedpanda.com/2011/seo-news/confirmed-seo-facts-matt-cutts/

Translations:

http://www.webpronews.com/google-duplicate-content-2011-12


You will have a proudct that is in multiple catalogs and thus multiple urls. If Google treated those as duplicant content then thats bad. You can also find out information via Google blog more on the language and same IP information as well. AS you can see above the language thing is very similar and you wont get punished in that regard.

This is why cononical exists, it is not a directive and not as good as a 301 redirect, a 301 has some bleed off but is minute, cononical has knowledge of any of that relevence. All it is is for google to tell them which is your prefered URL.

And as I mentioned they can choose to ignore it.

Is rel="canonical" a suggestion or a directive?

This new option lets site owners suggest the version of a page that Google should treat as canonical. Google will take this into account, in conjunction with other signals, when determining which URL sets contain identical content, and calculating the most relevant of these pages to display in search results.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

Missinterpretation of the google information happens a lot. So its great Matt spends a lot of time correcting this and more of the team now take active part in this as well now and their youtube channel is feature rich of the right information.

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LEGEND ,
Mar 13, 2013 Mar 13, 2013

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As a note as with the videos and information linked here and out there as well - Like Matt has said many times - Try to avoid the duplicate content with urls on your site so in the case of BC the ID based URL that appears via search and other cases and the seo friendly url - it happens. This is how systems work. They have an ID value (wordpress) url of a page but they have the seo set option. If google punished you for using CMS that would be daft

But if you can avoid them, do so, so no manual pages with same content because that can be avoided.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 24, 2015 Jun 24, 2015

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Liam:

I agree 301 is the best way to handle "duplicate content", but isn't canonical more about individual page scores, not having "links to you page from other sites" capital spread across more than one URL, for the same page?  thus lowering your search score?  This I would consider to be a valid concern.

I assume that the answer is more with a JS script in the header. 

I have:

<script>

document.querySelector("link[rel='canonical']").href;

</script>

and that works on all pages, however it doesn't for the blog pages as the JS errors out as href is coming back as empty on the blog pages.

So I guess modifying the JS to instead of putting in href - you want to put in the trackback link as the canonical link?

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LEGEND ,
Jun 25, 2015 Jun 25, 2015

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When is a script rendered and what does a bot do- Think about that. While Google does now re-read based on ajax requests (only in a specific way (hashbang)) and there are some leverage in terms of script redirects, if you dynamic render content like that it is not picked up - because its rendered later then the bot reads.

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2015 Jun 29, 2015

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Good to know that, as I didn't.  Question - then do I need to be concerned about the spreading of the "link" capital across multiple URL's.  And if so, then what is your recommendation to best handle this?  There is a lot out there on the subject, some good, some not so good, and unlike many other subjects, this one doesn't appear to have consistency in recommended approaches.  Or one should 301 direct every possibility to a single URL, and considering SSL, then one should have a site that is completely SSL.  Thus with BC then all our preferred URL's should point to site.worldsecuresystems.com.  I have also read about doing this in a site map, but have been unable to find good information on this??

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 29, 2015 Jun 29, 2015

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Liam,

Thanks for the info, I read a bit about AJAX and I believe you are referring to what is called Hijax, and see how that would be important if JS is creating the links etc.

Ultimately my question comes down to the BC blogs and the URL that should be set as the preferred.  This is where I have a knowledge gap of understanding.  If we have a home page, and on that page it pulls up latest blogs etc, then that doesn't get read, so ultimately it is the blog post page that would??  How does BC serve those pages as static, so that the individual blog post is readable by the search engines?  And what is the preferred URL that is recommended to be used?  And does BC already handle the original question of the canonical thing of the individual blog post.  It is probably the mechanics of the content in the CMS system, and how search engines can read it, is what is confusing, at least to me.

Thanks,

Dave

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Contributor ,
Jun 29, 2015 Jun 29, 2015

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What I have found is that In the post detail layout set the following code into the <head>

<link rel="canonical" href="{tag_itemurl_withhost}" />

Note: in order to force this into the <head> section you MUST set the <head>…</head> tags in the "Develop" mode html editor or in Dreamweaver as the HTML editor in the module editor strips out the <head> tags

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 30, 2015 Jun 30, 2015

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ok that makes sense.  I assume then it goes in the POST DETAILS layout for the blog.

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Contributor ,
Jun 30, 2015 Jun 30, 2015

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Yes. but remember to use Developer mode or DW otherwise the BC module editor

in HTML mode strips out the . tags. The canonical tag MUST be

in the head to work correctly.

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LEGEND ,
Jun 30, 2015 Jun 30, 2015

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It wont if you wrap it in a head tag

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Contributor ,
Jun 30, 2015 Jun 30, 2015

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Liam is correct... I was trying to say that but this system stripped out the head tags I included in my post... Insert the following into your Blog post detail layout with HTML editor oterh than the module editor

<head>
<link rel="canonical" href="{tag_itemurl_withhost}" />
</head>

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Community Beginner ,
Jun 30, 2015 Jun 30, 2015

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Thanks Liam and Greg

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