iSEO: Canonical URLs

deideidei

iSEO system plugin has a function that adds a Canonical link in the head.
This is processed on the onBeforeCompileHead event.
However, there are a couple of issues regarding the canonical.
- I can't find how I could specify custom canonicals for each page. I didn't find anything in the documentation on how to use the Canonical screen of the iSEO component and how to link those canonicals to a certain page.
- It seems that iSEO plugin will add a canonical anyway, which it will be the same as the base href URL.
- In a multilingual website, adding the canonical on the onBeforeCompileHead event, it will cause the alternate hreflang link of the current page/language to be removed and replaced by that canonical.

Could explain how to use the canonicals? For example, how to create a canonical for our home page of the English language, and have that canonical added in our page for any possible duplicates of the page? Also, we don't want to remove the alternate link of the current language.

I would suggest to add a setting in the iSEO plugin to disable the addition of the canonical URL.
I would suggest that the addition of the canonical URL could be handled in the onAfterDispatch event, where it won't remove the Joomla's alternate hreflang link for the current page.
Please explain how to add custom canonicals that the iSEO plugin will force inject in duplicate pages.
I could add the setting in the iSEO plugin, and modify the code, so the canonical addition could be disabled. And if enabled, that would be handled on the onAfterDispatch event and sent the modified plugin back to you.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.

Ninja

deideidei
Hi
In current system for URL i am afraid it does not support like you required.
iSEO will check and share the resulted links that used a canonical tag based on the URL at the moment, it does not based on the Menu item. You have to add the URL only under Iseo admin > Canonical URL > Add New
URL to make canonical.
You can add sub/child URL as well once it created.

About the requests shared here i submitted it to concern team member for further discussion with dev team to add in future roadmap.

I also request the dev team member to look on this, if there is something can be tweaked in current system.

Regards

deideidei

Hi!
So if I create a Canonical in iSEO admin -> Canonical URL - what that canonical does? How is it linked with a specific URL of the front-end?
And what a sub/child URL will do?

For example, I created a new Canonical URL for the homepage of the website. What, where and how this Canonical will be used by iSEO, and how all possible duplicates of the homepage will use that Canonical?

Ninja

deideidei

Canonical URL:
A canonical tag is used to show the search engine about the duplicate content /link. It is used to avoid the duplicate content issue when there is similar content from different links. iSEO will check and share the resulted links that used a canonical tag. Latest version if iSeo also brings canonical URL features that allow you to add canonical tag fro the URL via iSEO Joomla extension

When you will add it for Homepage you will see the rel="canonical" Tag in page source code.
More information on what a canonical tag do here.

Regards

deideidei

Hi again and thanks for your effort to answer my questions.

I know what a Canonical tag is and does.

I don't know how the Canonicals of the iSEO can be assigned to certain pages of the website.
iSEO will add a Canonical even if I don't create one in the component. The canonical added from iSEO seems to be always the base href link -> the current URL that I am visiting on the browser.

If I have a duplicate pages for the home page - then I need to specify a Canonical for the homepage, so every duplicate page will have the 1 canonical for the real homepage URL.

How to do this with iSEO?

I created a canonical for my homepage in iSEO component.
It is just a URL string.
What iSEO does with this? How does it know for which real page that Canonical is created?
In my real homepage, the Canonical is added, which is the current URL of the page. But that Canonical is added anyway, even without my custom added Canonical in iSEO component.
If I visit a duplicate of my homepage, iSEO will not use my specified canonical, but it will add again the Current URL as canonical.

I would expect that for each article, or menu item, I could assign a Canonical, so when that article id or menu item is loaded in the front-end view, iSEO would add that canonical.

The question the Canonicals section of iSEO can be used, in order to create correct canonicals for each page.
The Canonicals section is missing from the documentation of the extension, so this is unclear.

Ninja

deideidei
Hi this option is added after request from user later with page scan plugin release so it's not added in doc as it still basic feature to add relationship canonical. At the moment this is only only way to add it via url option.
I forwarded your feedback on this to concern team member for future plans.