СANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 1 & MAGENTO 2. Author: Alina Bragina 2018 Amasty Ltd.

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1 СANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 1 & MAGENTO 2 Author: Alina Bragina 2018 Amasty Ltd.

2 1 SUMMARY WHY WORK OUT THE DUPLICATE CONTENT ISSUE? 3 WHAT IS A MAGENTO CANONICAL URL? 4 HOW TO SET CANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 1? 5 PRODUCT CANONICAL TAGS 5 CATEGORY CANONICAL TAGS 7 HOW TO SET CANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 2? 10 USEFUL ADD-ONS 12

3 2 WELCOME BACK, AMASTY BLOG READERS! Any website owner, sooner or later, comes up with the challenge of duplicate content. However, don t jump to conclusions and don t rush to redraw the original content. There are many valid reasons why your site has several URLs leading to the same page or duplicate content on different URLs. It is not unusual at all due to the typical e-commerce functionality. Keep reading to learn how to overcome the problem.

4 3WHY WORK OUT THE DUPLICATE CONTENT ISSUE? To point out a URL that you want users to see in search results; To help search engines assign all the duplicate URLs (from your and other websites) to a canonical one; To make product metrics easier by allotting the duplicate product pages to a definite piece of content; To manage the syndicated content posted on other resources and assign ranking to a preferred URL; To exclude the duplicate pages from crawling and let Google spend time on crawling new pages to gain the maximum out of your site. So, how to solve the duplicate issue for good? The easiest and most powerful way is to set canonical URLs.

5 4 WHAT IS A MAGENTO CANONICAL URL? A canonical URL is an address that is chosen as a preferred one for search engine indexation. You may also hear users say canonical tag keeping in mind an HTML attribute, which you apply to website pages to tell search engines where to assign the search value. The canonicalization is necessary for pages with duplicate or very similar content. Thus, you can specify which page is the main. E.g.: Let s say that you have these pages for the same product: site.com/dresses/blackzaradress.html site.com/occasions/blackzaradress.html site.com/color/black/blackzaradress.html site.com/blackzaradress.html If you won t make any settings on your Magento store, search engines will automatically choose one of them as canonical considering it the most relevant. This means you won t be able to control the choice, until making any changes. That is why you need to tell search engines which one is canonical and set the 301 redirect for all the rest. Learn everything about duplicate content from our extensive guide on Magento duplicate content.

6 5 HOW TO SET CANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 1? PRODUCT CANONICAL TAGS Have you chosen the URL to rank? Great! Now log in to the Admin Panel and navigate to System>Configuration menu:

7 6 Choose Catalog tab from the left menu and expand the Search Engine Optimizations drop-down menu: Make sure the Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Products field is set to Yes :

8 7Don t change the fields to No in case they were previously set to Yes. This can bring to SEO achievements destruction, as Google won t see the URL you want to rank but multiple pages with duplicate content. Save the changes if you ve applied any and clear the cache. CATEGORY CANONICAL TAGS Why haven t we made the setting at the Search Engine Optimization tab in the Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories field? Simply because you won t manage to control the situation manually. Therefore, the above-mentioned field should be set to No, so that you can add the canonical tag manually: If logged in, go to System>Configuration>Catalog>Search Engine Optimizations, find the drop-down Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories field and set it to No. Don t forget to save the changes:

9 8 Choose a needed category page, for this go to Catalog>Manage Categories: Choose the Custom Design tab from the upper menu:

10 9 In the Custom Layout Update box, fill in the next code: <reference name= head > <action method= addlinkrel > <rel>canonical</rel> <href> </action> </reference> Save the changes and check the source code of the category page. It should be the following: <link rel= canonical href= example.com/category-women.html />

11 10 HOW TO SET CANONICAL URLS IN MAGENTO 2? Log in to the Admin Panel, go to Stores>Settings>Configuration: Expand the Catalog drop-down menu and choose Catalog. Then open the Search Engine Optimization section:

12 11 Make the next changes: If you need Google (or any other search engine) to index the pages with complete category URL path only, make the changes: Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Categories Yes ; Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Products No ; If you want Google (or any other search engine) to index the products pages only, complete the next settings: Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Categories No ; Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Products Yes ; If you want Google (or any other search engine) to index categories and products, enable both the options: Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Categories Yes ; Use Canonical Link Meta Tag for Products Yes ; Don t forget to save the changes and clear the cache in the end.

13 12 USEFUL ADD-ONS Learning the basic principles of canonicalization will help you get rid of the duplicate content. This will allow you to go up in the rating positions and benefit from the current SEO strategy. But, supposing, you know all the basic Magento settings and there is hardly anything to make you surprised. Or if you want to spend less time and make the process more efficient, we offer to try our solutions for SEO in Magento 2. With Magento 2 AJAX Layered Navigation, for instance, you get special possibilities, such as: flexible canonical modes; handy detached Canonical URL grid; the ability to set structure of canonical URLs for key -related and category pages:

14 13 Besides the AJAX Layered Navigation, Magento solutions such as SEO Toolkit for Magento 2 offer a complete list of SEO hits you may apply to boost your platform basic settings. Using the toolkit, you can act in numerous optimization ways at the same time: Unique product URLs; XML Sitemap; HTML Sitemap; Pager Optimization; Google Rich Snippets; Relevant Meta Tags; No duplicate content; Cross Linking. The same SEO tools are available for Magento 1 as well.

15 14 BEST WISHES FOR A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS! ALINA BRAGINA Alina is heavily into natural language expression in real life and technical one in blogging. She believes self-enhancement and spot-on goal setting contribute to any project's success. At out off-work time she is open to tattooing, sketching, and doing oils.