Canonical URL Destination Chooser

[Kerby]

At the moment the canonical URL is set to XF thread. It's needed for SEO reasons to change it to WP article instead of XF thread. because on WP I have with SEO Plugins more power to push SEO compared to XF.

I don't expect anyone would deny my point of view. WP-Side is better for SEO optimisation than XF-Side. So please set default canonical to WP-article or give us the option to choose between XF and WP.

Thank you very much

 

[Kerby]

Addition, because I can't edit my post afterwards:

Another very important reason for that feature: I want that WP article shows in search engine instead of XF Thread. because when a searcher clicks on the link and see a WP article or a xf thread, he would be in most cases more attracted to the WP article layout than xf thread layout, so the chance that he leaves site is lower and the chance he register as new member is higher.

 

[dethfire]

I agree with this. Otherwise why have a wordpress at all. Might as well just post articles in the forum. There would little advantage.

 

[dethfire]

Furthermore, I would like to set my comment destination forum to be private. That would solve dupe content problems, but would that mean that the canonical tags would point to a private forum? That would be very problematic.

 

[dethfire]

Any news on this? I might have to keep thread creation off if this is still true.

 

[LPH]

OK. Let me be blunt. I have NO idea about SEO or canonical URL except to state that XenForo uses a relative path and to get forum threads in widgets to post to the correct location then I use a canonical:thread in the widget code. Otherwise, the code simply writes the WP article to the XF thread.

So -- please be very specific -- in which part of XenWord do you believe is influencing SEO? Is it the widgets, the link to XenForo at the bottom of the WP article? Where are you thinking there is a place to make changes?

 

[dethfire]

Just to be clear, it sounds like you are saying each blog post does NOT have a canonical tag pointing to the XF thread?

 

[LPH]

Just to be clear, it sounds like you are saying each blog post does NOT have a canonical tag pointing to the XF thread?

Correct. The datawriter simply copies a portion of the WordPress post, page, or custom post to a created XenForo thread. The widget code does have canonical in it. I suspect -- but haven't tested -- that "full" could be used but I am not sure...

 

[Kerby]

Short explanation: What is canonical tag and how it should be used?


Actual behaviour of canonical tag in XenWord:

Example of your WP article: http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2015/04/25/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders/
sourcecode row 91:

<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2015/04/25/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders/' />

And your related XF thread: http://www.tuxreports.com/community/threads/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders.607776/
sourcecode row 102:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.tuxreports.com/community/threads/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders.607776/" />

So canonical tag is at the moment wrongly used. Both pages are pointing to themselves instead of one of them. That hurts more than it helps SEO, because google wants to know which one of the "duplicate content" sites is the original one to index.

Best practice is to point where the more important location for google search results is. And this would be in almost all cases for all admins the WP article instead of the XF thread, because WP article offers with a wp seo plugin (like yoast Wordpress SEO) more flexible and much stronger SEO Optimisation.



So for best practice, it should look like this:

Example of your WP article: http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2015/04/25/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders/
sourcecode row 91:

<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2015/04/25/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders/' />

And your related XF thread: http://www.tuxreports.com/community/threads/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders.607776/
sourcecode row 102:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.tuxreports.com/technology/xenword/2015/04/25/xenword-2-5-0-released-to-license-holders/" />

So the only change is on XF site, in example in thread at row 102, that the canonical tag is now pointing to the WP article instead of local XF thread. Is this possible?



Small hint: XenWord could probably provide a "maintenance tool" to check if the wp article URL has changed and then automatically changes the canonical url on xf site to the new wp article URL. But this is not needed for next 12 months, because how I've seen new WP 4.x handles URL changes with redirects itself. I just wanted to mention it for later to check if any issues could come up, here could be the solution

 

[LPH]

@Kerby -- I think you misunderstood my statement. The XenWord plugin is not setting that information. Where in the plugin source was my point -- because you pointed to links generated by the WordPress theme and the other by XenForo templates. Do a search in the XenForo templates and you'll see canonical is in many places.

For example:

<link rel="canonical" href="{xen:link 'canonical:threads', $thread, 'page={$page}'}" /></xen:container>

This XenForo template generates the canonical on the XenForo thread_view. Simply remove rel="canonical" from the template -- if you believe that helps. I'm never convinced about anything with Google and SEO.