[Support request] Placing a canonical tag

[Michiel]

Hi Tom,

I want to show a blog post which is part of website 1, a service oriented website, on my other website, website 2. Website 2 is a pure blog-site where I installed the masonry option. Both websites have GP + GP premium.

I tried to link the blog post with a 301 redirection plugin, that works, but I am not totally happy with this solution as the URL changes so the visitor leaves the site.

Now I am thinking to copy the blog post from one site to the other. In that case I duplicate the content and I need to place a canonical tag. My question is: where in the blogpost should I put this tag?

(If you know another way to show a blog post on my other website please let me me know)

By the way, still very happy with GP!

Thx
Michael

[Leo]

Hi Michael,

Sorry I’m missing something but maybe you can insert the link to your other website like this so it opens up in a new tab?
<a href="https://URL-HERE" target="_blank">Blog Title</a>

Let me know if this helps.

[Michiel]

Thank you Leo.

Please take a look at website 2, the blog-site. It is: derden.org.

You will see two blog post at the right hand corner:
– test, this is the blog post where I have added a link. Please click on the post.
– als u een organisatieadviseur uitnodigt etc: this post is redirected with a 301 redirection plugin. The visitor moves to website 1, which a don’t like.

Therefore I was thinking to duplicate content of a blog from website 1 to website 2, but duplication is from a SEO point of view not recommendable. Experts say that you can prevent SEO-problems by putting a “canonical tag” between the head tags. But I do not know how to do that. Where do I find the “head” tags of a blogpost?

Thx

[Tom]

You would have to use the wp_head hook in GP Hooks.

However, it would need to be inside a conditional so it only displays for that page.

For example:

<?php if ( is_single( 'your-post-slug' ) ) { ?>
    Canonical tag for yoursite.com/your-post-slug here
<?php } ?>

Let me know if that helps or not 🙂

[Michiel]

Thank you Tom, working with hooks is new for me and feels a bit tricky. I installed hooks and found GP-head.
I assume if I make a mistake it will be easy to correct. Just to be sure could you please evaluate the following:

Q1: what to use in the first part: ‘your-post-slug’ or your-post-slug (with or without quotes?)
Q2: is this the right canonical tag: <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://yoursite1.com/your-post-slug.html” />
Q3: if I want to do the same operation for another post, can I just add one more line to WP-heads?

So I am thinking to add the following to GP-heads:
<?php if ( is_single( ‘your-post-slug’ ) ) { ?>
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://yoursite 1.com/your-post-slug.html” /><?php } ?>

Thx

[Michiel]

to add another q: please evaluate when to use a single quote (‘) and when to use double quotes (“).

[Leo]

Hi there,

1. You would need to replace that with the actual post slug: http://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/post-slug/.
Keep the quotation.

2. Looks right. but you would need to replace “http://yoursite1.com/your-post-slug.html&#8221; to the actual link to your post.

3. I assume you would need to link to a different post? If so then yes.

[v4ncouver]

Could you please provide an example of what to paste in the wp-head field if we want to add a canonical tag to landing pages?
Example:
Landing page 1 is for facebook
Landing page 2 is for kijiji

Both of the above pages are exactly the same as an already existing page that is part of the main website and to which the 2 above pages would point that tag to.

Thanks! 🙂

[Tom]

WordPress adds the canonical tag for you based on your page structure.

However, if you’re using Yoast SEO, they have a field where you can add a custom URL: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/canonical-urls-in-wordpress-seo/

[Author]

Posts