Does my theme implement the canonical urls correctly?

[Soapa]

Found these in the manual of PrestaShop

 

"Canonical URLs are a way to eliminate self-created duplicate content – which can dramatically bring your search engine rank down, as this is considered spam. To avoid search engines thinking you are spamming their index, PrestaShop uses standard rel="canonical" link tag to indicate which is the one base URL for a given content."

 

 

 

"While it is highly recommended to enable this option, it also depends on your theme actually implementing correctly the <link> header tag. Ask the theme designer for more information." 

 

So I did ask my theme-designer for more information. This is what they replied. http://screencast.com/t/apQatth320

Of course with what they suggest me it doesn't proof that their theme is implementing the canonical URL's correctly. It is not that I don't trust them. But I wanna KNOW if their theme is doing it correctly instead of 'I- need-to-trust-them'. I don't wanna make a site which basically will do it bad on SEO. 

So..

 

How can I check that they are implementing the canonical URLs correctly?? Page-source? Somewhere else? Through a web-application? Please help me. 

Friendly regards

Thank you very much

[NemoPS]

You can check it by inspecting the site's code using a developer console (f12 on major browsers...I forgot the combination  on safari )

 

Look for link rel="canonical" in the head portion. Ideally, a canonical link doesn't have query string parameters attached, and it should be the same for different products attributes on product page, for example (as that's the same page, even if different options are selected)

[Soapa]

You can check it by inspecting the site's code using a developer console (f12 on major browsers...I forgot the combination  on safari )

 

Look for link rel="canonical" in the head portion. Ideally, a canonical link doesn't have query string parameters attached, and it should be the same for different products attributes on product page, for example (as that's the same page, even if different options are selected)

I checked in pagesource, I checked through f12. I did a ctrl-f. I am not finding anywhere 'canonical'. 

 

But

 

Through an extension in Chrome called "SEO & Website Analysis 1.0.7" this little tool said me the canonical aspect is ok. So. Can you check my website for me? I am new in this.

 

Soaparcadia.com

 

Thank you very much for replying!

[NemoPS]

Try looking for it in your ./htaccess file then

 

But, this has nothing to do with the theme, which DOES NOT implement the canonical tag, apparently

[Soapa]

Will check now the .htaccess file. 

If I don't find it there my theme-designers screwed me?

Because this is not good SEO?

[NemoPS]

SEO is made up of different things Use of title and alt tags, proper use of headings (h1 to h6), links usage, etc. Canonical tag is just a tiny part of it

[Soapa]

SEO is made up of different things Use of title and alt tags, proper use of headings (h1 to h6), links usage, etc. Canonical tag is just a tiny part of it

 

Yes yes. Sure. Fortunately

 

But I just wanted to know of those theme-designers are honest. I didn't find 'canonical' in my .htaccess either. I did send them a mail. But they answered me vague. Now I know why. They hoped I didn't understand. 

 

But ok - will send them a second mail. 

 

Does anyone know a plugg-in an add-on, an extension for in Chrome to find these things out? 

 

Thank you very much for replying!

[Soapa]

Nemo1, 

 

This is what the manual of PrestaShop says:

 

"Canonical URLs are a way to eliminate self-created duplicate content – which can dramatically bring your search engine rank down, as this is considered spam. To avoid search engines thinking you are spamming their index, PrestaShop uses standard rel="canonical" link tag to indicate which is the one base URL for a given content."
 

Now you see, I don't want to have a site which I am building upon a bad start to begin with. 

I am new in this. You see. Thanks for replying.

[NemoPS]

Prestashop always exaggerates. Duplicate content kicks your site down, it's true.

Now, yes, the theme you linked doesn't have the canonical tag in the head.

 

BUT

 

Regardless of what prestashop says, I've not seen the canonical tag working in the default theme so far (last version I checked was 1.5.5, no canonical tag there)

 

As far as I know, to have the right canonical tag implementation, you have to use a module, which grabs the base page url without querystrings, and assigns it to the canonical tag in the head I'm not aware of such (a simple) module unfortunately

[Soapa]

Sounds interesting. Is there a place I can suggest such a module? Or is their a bug in PrestaShop? The manual says one thing, but the program does another. 

Thank you for responding though!

[Soapa]

This seems to be a module that fixes the problem? http://addons.prestashop.com/en/seo-prestashop-modules/1149-canonical-seo.html

[NemoPS]

Hm, it would be nice to be able to test it, because it's only saying it will prevent duplication between rewritten and non retwritten urls, and prestashop does that already by default (redirect to canonical url)

[Soapa]

I am have no idea. I am new in this. But if it is that important in the manual of PrestaShop it should have been easier if their was info how to check it. 

I used this service http://www.woorank.com to check any issues. And there they say the canonical IP is ok. If anybody else know other services, online or extensions or other. Feel welcome. 

Thanks for replying