[Rank Math SEO Plugin] canonical url

[gmanwicksy]

Hi I have questions about POST canonical urls

when making a post and putting it into a category the post url becomes one with the category url.

Is this then the canonical url? 

This is different from other plugins as they do not show the category as the url on the post page which is fine, I just need to understand what is going on and how it works and if its a good strategy or not the rank math is doing it.

I see in advanced seo on the POST page you can set the canonical url as the url without the category name, This is good? I guess? Because I do not know the seo strategy behind this, it may be really good, or really bad. But is it the canonical or is the url with the category name in it truely the canonical?

I say this because when I look at the post it has the category name in the url as well.  just to be clear its not the word Category, its the key word of the category ie www.cat.com/meowmix/best-cat-food where meow mix is the category and best cat food is the actual post.

Does this mean my post will always show as this www.cat.com/meowmix/best-cat-food when the actual post I made if it was a page without the meow mix category would be www.cat.com/cat-food

What happens if I add to an extra category? Does this mean that the seo is set up for categories to be a main source of bread crumb for seo and all posts will have to stay in one category only for best seo results? 

Because if people start linking to this post it has the category name in it meow mix, so link juice goes to the category meow mix when people link to it? Which means the same post if put in another category will not have as much seo if links go to the one and not the other because the true link is actually www.cat.com/cat-food    and if I put it in www.cat.com/purina/cat-food  I will not have any links pointing to it? Because they are all going to  www.cat.com/meowmix/cat-food   (NOT A REAL SITE just an example).

This is confusing to me. As I do not know how you have configured this to work seo wise.

I guess when it would matter is if I put the url into more than one category?

Please explain what is going on here, and what is the strategy please.

I have just combined 3 1000 word PAGES into A POST and  its the first Post in the first Category of this site which up till now has been all pages. Therefore I need to redirect all pages to the new post.

Which I did to www.cat.com/cat-food   and not the url that is showing which is www.cat.com/purina/cat-food

Please explain the intention of how this is set up and the scenarios for good seo. I have several sites, and some are all category sites so I dare not move them until I understand this. 

Please help by explaining your strategy behind rank maths url category structure/url structure in regards to what I mentioned above. Thank you

 

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

You should not use the same option in 2 different plugins/themes, that is a sure shot call for a disaster. Sometimes sites break and admins do not realize it. 

WP Rocket is a great caching plugin and you can definitely use it with the tutorial we provided.

At the end of the day, do not fret over the scores. Optimize the site to load fast and then work on optimizing the content instead of spending too much time.

SiteGround is a good hosting provider and is one of our recommended hosts.

Regarding the security warnings, you are seeing when using the SEO Analysis, you can ignore those. Fixing them would break the updates and is recommended only to the advanced users. That's why no points are given to those tests.

Hope that helps. If you have any further question(s), please let us know. Thank you.

[Pratik.d]

Hello,

Thank you for contacting MyThemeShop today.

Quote

A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of duplicate pages on your site. For example, if you have URLs for the same page (for example: example.com?dress=1234 and example.com/dresses/1234), Google chooses one as canonical. Note that the pages do not need to be absolutely identical. The canonical can also be on a different domain than the duplicate.

- Google

1

If you have a single page accessible by multiple URLs, or different pages with similar content (for example, a page with both a mobile and a desktop version), Google sees these as duplicate versions of the same page. Google will choose one URL as the canonical version and crawl that, and all other URLs will be considered duplicate URLs and crawled less often. If you don't explicitly tell Google which URL is canonical, Google will make the choice for you or might consider them both of equal weight, which might lead to unwanted behavior.

This is what Rank Math plugin does; it allows you to set canonical URL. By default, Rank Math uses post URL ( with or without category, it depends on your permalink structure ) as Canonical URL. So if your post link is: www.cat.com/meowmix/best-cat-food then canonical URL will also be same.

You can use the option in Advanced Settings to change Canonical URL if you want Google to crawl the content from different URL instead of the current page.

5 hours ago, gmanwicksy said:

What happens if I add to an extra category? Does this mean that the seo is set up for categories to be a main source of bread crumb for seo and all posts will have to stay in one category only for best seo results? 

 Because if people start linking to this post it has the category name in it meow mix, so link juice goes to the category meow mix when people link to it? Which means the same post if put in another category will not have as much seo if links go to the one and not the other because the true link is actually www.cat.com/cat-food    and if I put it in www.cat.com/purina/cat-food  I will not have any links pointing to it? Because they are all going to  www.cat.com/meowmix/cat-food   (NOT A REAL SITE just an example).

It doesn't matter if you add an extra category, your post URL will only show 1 category in URL which will be used as the Canonical URL. If you are using default Canonical Setting, then you would not have to change anything in Settings to keep the current page as canonical.

You can read more about Canonical URL in our KB article: https://mythemeshop.com/kb/wordpress-seo-plugin-rank-math/advanced-tab/#canonical-url

Hope that helps. Please let us know if you need any further assistance.

Thank you.

[gmanwicksy]

I have another post open in rank math, where the auto set up did not work, I had to set it up manually. Maybe I would not have this issue if it had worked.

Could you do an update to the great guide you already made step by step each function so that someone can set up manually and know what each thing that they are doing is explained. I found most info I needed. But for now how do I get my posts to show as the url without the category in it. Where do I go to correct this? Is this it here?

Posts

Primary Taxonomy

Categories  

Select taxonomy to show in the Breadcrumbs when a single Post is being viewed.

P.S. I do see you have explained alot of functions in detail and I have read them all. They helped me with alot of the set up, But there are a few not covered still. I have some specific questions below, that did not have guides for.

Edited January 4, 2019 by gmanwicksy
clarification

[gmanwicksy]

Under general settings

seo settings

breadcrumbs

There are 3 buttons all off  are these recommended to be off?

Hide Post Title

• Off
• On

Hide Post title from Breadcrumb.

Show Category(s)

• Off
• On

If category is a child category, show all ancestor categories.

Hide Taxonomy Name

• Off
• On

Hide Taxonomy Name from Breadcrumb.

[gmanwicksy]

And what about this? at the top of the page 

What does this mean? Is this not set up already? 

There is also a turn bread crumbs on off in the Mythemeshop Appearance theme settings area Post area there is also a bread crumbs on off button there

SO what do I do? turn on the post button in theme to on which it is. and then on again in breadcrumbs in the rank math which it is. Then what about this below? Do I ignore it?

Breadcrumbs

Here you can set up the breadcrumbs function. Learn more. 
Use the following code in your theme template files to display breadcrumbs:
<?php if (function_exists('rank_math_the_breadcrumbs')) rank_math_the_breadcrumbs(); ?>
OR 
[rank_math_breadcrumb]

 

[gmanwicksy]

The section below did not get set up automatically because my auto install feature had errors. Therefore what is the best way to set this up? I did not see it in the instructions. Therefore I need to do Custom, so what is the recommended setting in custom? How do these different selections affect the seo strategy?

What is the default recommended settings put in for categories and tags during the auto setup so I can add them below manually?

Category Archives Robots Meta

This option lets you customize the robots meta for category archive pages. You can either leave them at the default settings that were set during Rank Math’s setup or set them to custom settings.

If you choose the custom option, another set of options will appear below it which will allow you to pick the meta robots tags specifically.

Edited January 4, 2019 by gmanwicksy
more clarification

[Pratik.d]

Hello,

9 hours ago, gmanwicksy said:

I have another post open in rank math, where the auto set up did not work, I had to set it up manually. Maybe I would not have this issue if it had worked.

 Could you do an update to the great guide you already made step by step each function so that someone can set up manually and know what each thing that they are doing is explained. I found most info I needed. But for now how do I get my posts to show as the url without the category in it. Where do I go to correct this? Is this it here?

By default, Rank Math uses post URL ( with or without category, it depends on your permalink structure ) as Canonical URL. So if your post link has category base in it then the canonical URL's will also have the category base. If you want to remove the category base from post URL then you can do so by changing your permalink structure:

If you want to keep the category base in Post URL and remove it only in the Canonical URL then you'll have to manually update canonical URL from Advanced tab.

 

Breadcrumbs:

8 hours ago, gmanwicksy said:

And what about this? at the top of the page 

What does this mean? Is this not set up already? 

 There is also a turn bread crumbs on off in the Mythemeshop Appearance theme settings area Post area there is also a bread crumbs on off button there

 SO what do I do? turn on the post button in theme to on which it is. and then on again in breadcrumbs in the rank math which it is. Then what about this below? Do I ignore it?

Breadcrumbs are not only used to show Page link trails on the frontend but it also appears in the Google Search Results and you can take advantage of this by setting this option on. When this option is set to on, Rank Math will automatically add the necessary structured data in JSON-LD format for you. Basically, it lets search engines understand your site structure better. I would suggest you turn off the Theme Breadcrumbs and use the one generated by Rank Math instead.

 

Quote

 Hide Post Title
Show Category(s)
Hide Taxonomy Name

 

You can use these options to remove Post title, Ancestor category name, and Taxonomy Name on their respective pages. It is recommended to keep these options off.

 

Robots Data: 

7 hours ago, gmanwicksy said:

The section below did not get set up automatically because my auto install feature had errors. Therefore what is the best way to set this up? I did not see it in the instructions. Therefore I need to do Custom, so what is the recommended setting in custom? How do these different selections affect the seo strategy?

What is the default recommended settings put in for categories and tags during the auto setup so I can add them below manually?

1

By default Category Archive Robots meta is set to Default so it will use the Robots data set in Dashboard >> Rank Math >> Titles & Meta >> Global Meta. Below is a link to the KB article which explains what each option in Robots meta does: https://mythemeshop.com/kb/wordpress-seo-plugin-rank-math/titles-and-meta/#robots-meta

Hope that helps. If there is anything else, please let us know.

Thank you.

[gmanwicksy]

Ok thats all great stuff thanks.

I just want to make sure that I understand another thing thats a bit confusing and can lead to trouble and that is images

I have the images set to no index under custom like the instructions say to do. 

But what about the global settings? Do I have to click something on the global setting as well or leave all un  clicked?

or should the box for images be clicked on the global and the images then set to default.

Or should they both be clicked?

Global Meta

This tab contains SEO titles and meta options related to all the pages of your site. Learn more.

Robots Meta

•  No IndexPrevents pages from being indexed and displayed in search engine result pages
•  
•  No FollowPrevents search engines from following links on the pages
•  No ArchivePrevents search engines from showing Cached links for pages
•  
•  No Image IndexLets you specify that you do not want your pages to appear as the referring page for images that appear in image search results
•  No SnippetPrevents a snippet from being shown in the search results

Default values for robots meta tag. These can be changed for individual posts, taxonomies, etc.

MEDIA

Post Excerpt

Article Type

• Article
• Blog Post
• News Article

Media Robots Meta

• Default
• Custom

Select custom robots meta, such as nofollow, noarchive, etc. for single Media pages. Otherwise the default meta will be used, as set in the Global Meta tab.

Media Robots Meta

•  No IndexPrevents pages from being indexed and displayed in search engine result pages
•  
•  No FollowPrevents search engines from following links on the pages
•  No ArchivePrevents search engines from showing Cached links for pages
•  
•  No Image IndexLets you specify that you do not want your pages to appear as the referring page for images that appear in image search results
•  No SnippetPrevents a snippet from being shown in the search results

Custom values for robots meta tag on homepage.

Bulk Editing

• Disabled
• Enabled
• Read Only

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

Images and media are 2 different things.

You should index the images but not the attachment pages, as those are thin content and could lead to a penalty by Google.

If you could share your WordPress login details, we could take a look at the settings and confirm if everything's set up correctly. You can add them in the sensitive data section.

Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

[gmanwicksy]

Hello,

I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?

Thank you.

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

Can you please check the login details? They are not working for me.

Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

[gmanwicksy]

Hello,

I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?

Thank you.

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

Thank you for posting the correct details. They worked this time.

1. Please add a logo and a bigger social media images here:

wp-admin/admin.php?page=rank-math-wizard&step=yoursite

These images are vital for Google and the social media sites, especially when your article(s) does not have a featured or a social image. This will prevent from showing no image when your articles are shared.

2. You should get your website verified with different search engines listed here:

wp-admin/admin.php?page=rank-math-options-general#setting-panel-webmaster

3. I turned off the Redirection module since you do not have any redirections created on your website. When you need to create it, you can turn it back on. Do not keep any module active whose functionality you are not using.

4. I would recommend this option to be turned on:

wp-admin/admin.php?page=rank-math-options-titles#setting-panel-misc

Google understands the pagination pretty well now and if it is ranking one of your inner pages, that is nothing but the need of the query the person is using to find your website's article. It's fine to noindex the archive's paginated pages but not your main site's.

But it's your choice and you can use your knowledge for this option.

5. I changed your Sitemap's settings so it won't overload your server when you have those many articles:

6. Since you are indexing your categories, they should be included in the Sitemap, which I changed for you:

As a rule of thumb, whatever taxonomy you are indexing, that should be included in the Sitemap and if you are not indexing any taxonomy, then that should not be included in the sitemaps like the tags.

7. Do you provide access to other writers on your website? If not, then you don't need the Role Manager module either and you can disable it.

8. Please mark all these attachment errors as fixed in the Search Console (desktop):

wp-admin/admin.php?page=rank-math-search-console&view=errors

Try to keep all these 404 errors to a minimum.

9. You should implement the recommendations from the following article to make your website faster:
https://mythemeshop.com/blog/wordpress-speed-optimization/

Google takes it as a ranking factor.

10. Finally, write amazing articles by following these guides:
https://mythemeshop.com/blog/keyword-research/
https://mythemeshop.com/kb/wordpress-seo-plugin-rank-math/score-100-in-tests/
https://mythemeshop.com/blog/increase-website-traffic/

Hope this helps. If you have any further questions, please let us know.

[gmanwicksy]

Ok thanks alot. I implemented the changes in the seo plugin.

The next question is your number 9. Which I need to tackle and get down for all my sites which have 3 common elements. They all have SIteground hosting and they all have mythemeshop themes. and cloudfare free. I tackled this last year but did not get anything to go over 80

I read your speed optimization page. The thing is. I am confused a small bit. There are references to to plug ins or ht.access and w3 cache cloudfare etc. 

There is information overload and duplication of efforts and its hard to optimize to the best with so many different scenarios.

For example siteground has told me w3 is not needed because of a couple things, one is cloudfare handles some issues and two there optimizer plug in handles different things.

I have initiated all enhancements in the siteground plug in and have cloudfare working yet do not come close to 100 gt metrix or even 90 gt metrix score. I admit I have not tried to implement w3 cache again because siteground told me to get rid of it last year when I was tackling all this, which I was unable to do successfully. All scores still remain average.

The first thing is, There should be an optimization plug in that takes siteground, and mythemeshop and cloudfare and combines all 3 and makes the site run at maximum speed and with no overlapping codes/duplication, similiar to the awesome job you are under taking with the seo plug in.

For example the siteground plug in has a lazy load feature. Would it be best to have that on or the themes? Or both? This is an example of the confusion faced with optimizing and not knowing what to do with cloudfare, siteground, and mythemeshop all doing different things.

I would gladly pay for a plug in that integrates all 3 and tops my max performance once and for all without all the confusion. An enormous amount of time can be spent on all this with little to no further gains when things conflict and you try them and then have to convert them back.

Anyhow. These are my issues for this one site the one I have initiated the rank math for and it tells me I need to fix, Now I just need easy, exact solutions. 

Now I see Siteground is recommending a plug in called wp rocket. WIll it solve my problems and get me closer to 100 score? I have schema theme and not ever been able to get it anywhere near 80 or better, never mind the near 100 per cent you obtained which would be nice.

So I guess my goal is to see how on this one site, working with this seo plug in Rank math which seems awesome, is to get my seo score to 100 on rank math and my 5 performance issues and 2 security issues fixed and site close to 100 gtmetrix score on my Schema theme. One of the security issues involves one of the premium plugins I purchased from mythemeshop. If you could take a look in the sensitive data area I would appreciate it.

 

 

 

[gmanwicksy]

Hello,

I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?

Thank you.

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

You should not use the same option in 2 different plugins/themes, that is a sure shot call for a disaster. Sometimes sites break and admins do not realize it. 

WP Rocket is a great caching plugin and you can definitely use it with the tutorial we provided.

At the end of the day, do not fret over the scores. Optimize the site to load fast and then work on optimizing the content instead of spending too much time.

SiteGround is a good hosting provider and is one of our recommended hosts.

Regarding the security warnings, you are seeing when using the SEO Analysis, you can ignore those. Fixing them would break the updates and is recommended only to the advanced users. That's why no points are given to those tests.

Hope that helps. If you have any further question(s), please let us know. Thank you.

[gmanwicksy]

Hi thanks for your help, I have been able to get my scores much higher now, using your tools and sitegrounds, they are not perfect but all in the 80 to 90 scores now, and that nice crypto theme is blazing fast on the testing machines under 2 seconds home page full loading. Your right I am fretting a bit too much, but these issues are my New Years resolutions so been working on them a few days now for long hours. Also New Years is part of the reason I am going through this rank math plug in and all your tutorials with a fine tooth comb and implementing them on my site. Thanks for those. 

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

It was a pleasure helping you. We are glad you found our help useful. If you have any other questions in the future, do let us know. We are here to help you.

Good luck with your future endeavors and wish you great luck in this year.

Could you please leave us a testimonial (if you haven't already done that) on about your overall experience with MyThemeShop & the Rank Math plugin? This will help us serve you, our members, better. We appreciate your time and patience.
https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/?filter=5#new-post

Thank you in anticipation.

[gmanwicksy]

Just left a 5 star review, and I always mention you as my theme provider to anyone who asks me. Your service is good. (Usually every new year about this time when I tweak everything and start asking questions of both you and the siteground team.)  But you both keep getting better as do my sites.

[Montgomerie]

Hello,

Can't thank you enough.

We are here to help, so if you need any assistance, please feel free to open a new support ticket.

Good day.