Canonical Tags Question

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by danmon, Oct 28, 2011.

  1. #1
    danmon, Oct 28, 2011 IP
  2. danielwood

    danielwood Member

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    #2
    Canonical tag is used when you have similar content with different URL and would like to set a preferred version among the similar pages. Are you sure is this the case? As far as i know there is no way to define a canonical tag for a particular keyword.
     
    danielwood, Oct 28, 2011 IP
  3. annaharryson

    annaharryson Peon

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    #3
    thank u for sharing about the Canonical tag with us.
     
    annaharryson, Oct 28, 2011 IP
  4. danmon

    danmon Active Member

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    #4
    Yes i know that its used for duplicate urls..
    But can we use canonical tags like this..
    If keyword="xyz"
    then link rel=canonical href=http://www.mysite.com/correct-url

    Is this possible guys..? Has anyone tried this..?
     
    danmon, Oct 28, 2011 IP
  5. BluesFan

    BluesFan Peon

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    #5
    This is not possible to do. Canonical tags can "hint" to the search engines what the correct page is as a whole if you have duplicate versions however you can't hint to the search engines what page you want to appear for a keyword, it wouldn't make sense for this to ever work as the search engines job is to display the most relevant result to the user, so if the page you want ranking is not appearing it means its not deemed as relevant and so more work needs doing to fix this (add content, build links etc.).

    If you want both pages to remain (i.e. both stay live and no redirects are put in place) you would;d need to optimise the desired page for the desired keyword. I would:

    Take content from the page ranking for the keyword and add to page you want to rank
    Look through back-links for the ranking page and send emails requesting the link change to the new destination page
    Build new links for the keyword to the page you want to rank

    Hope this helps
     
    BluesFan, Oct 28, 2011 IP