Hello, I’m sorry to hear about the issue you’re facing with the canonical URLs on your paginated pages. It seems that you want to define the canonical page for all paginated pages to be the archive page without the /page/ suffix.
To achieve this, you can use the “Noindex Paginated Single Pages” option in Rank Math. This will allow you to set the canonical page to be the archive page without the /page/ suffix and prevent the paginated pages from showing up in the search results.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Go to WordPress Dashboard → Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta → Misc. Pages.
- Enable the “Noindex Paginated Single Pages” option.
By enabling this option, you will be able to set the canonical page to be the archive page without the /page/ suffix and prevent the paginated pages from showing up in the search results.
If you have any further questions or need assistance with this, please feel free to reach out to our support team, who are always more than happy to help.
I hope this helps! If you need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Sources:
Rank Math ‘Titles and Meta’ Options and Settings
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Advanced Tab in Rank Math SEO’s Meta Box
How to NoIndex Paginated Pages » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for reaching out to Rank Math support. We are happy to help you with your issue.
You have done the right thing by activating the “Noindex Subpages” option in Rank Math. This will prevent the paginated pages from being indexed by search engines and avoid duplicate content issues. You also don’t need to worry about the canonical URL being removed from the paginated pages. This is the correct and expected behavior of Rank Math.
Rank Math automatically removes the canonical URL from the paginated pages when they are set to noindex, because it knows that the canonical tag is not needed or appropriate in this case. This will not affect your SEO or ranking, because the paginated pages are not meant to be shown in the search results anyway. The first page in the series will still have the canonical URL pointing to itself, which is the correct way to do it.
Also, according to Google, the canonical tag should only be used for pages that are equivalent or nearly identical in content. Paginated pages are not equivalent to the first page in the series, because they have different content and serve different purposes. Therefore, using the canonical tag to point all paginated pages to the first page would be incorrect and misleading. You can learn more about this here.
We hope this helps clarify the issue and answer your question. If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us again. We are always happy to assist you.
Hi,
Really thank you for quick and long answer.
I totally understand you and functions of RankMath plugin.
But my company want to set canonical for paginated pages to be like archive page without /page/ and they told me to do that.
I try couple of functions like:
1.
add_filter( ‘rank_math/frontend/canonical’, function( $canonical ) {
global $wp;
$current_slug = home_url( $wp->request );
if ( is_paged()) {
$canonical = $current_slug . ‘/’;
}
return $canonical;
});
2.
function my_wpseo_canonical($canonical) {
if (is_paged()) {
if (is_home()) {
return home_url();
}
if (is_archive()) {
$url = get_category_link(get_queried_object_id());
return $url;
}
}
return $canonical;
}
But none of this working. Canonical on paginated page is always not defined.
Can you please help me with this?
Thanks!
Hello,
Please note that a canonical URL helps you specify which version of a URL you would like to appear in search results. So, if you set a page to noindex then there is no need to set a canonical because Google is not going to add this page on SERPs and that’s why Rank Math doesn’t include the canonical URL on your noindexed pages.
And unfortunately, we don’t have any option to add the canonical URL to the noindexed pages.
Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
