Internal linking to AMP major issue for SEO

  • Hi,

    I installed your plugin which was very useful and I like it. However, I discovered that all the internal linking by default on the plugin is AMP to AMP although the canonical is to the non-AMP page. The major problem is that internal linking is also a signal to indicate the canonical version of a page (best source) and nullifies to an extent the canonical in the canonical link relation tag.

    There is ability to update this manually but this needs to be by default linking to the NON-AMP url internally rather than the other way around. Given there are already over 40,000 installs of this plugin this could be very problematic going forward.

    I refer you to the RFC 6596 on The Canonical Link Relation which states internal linking as a fallback if a canonical is ever not valid (and this can happen a lot).

    Please follow the thread on Twitter for more discussion around this.

    Other than this, as mentioned previously the plugin is good. Just the major internal linking issue.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Hi Dawnjeando,

    For the article you can use custom amp editor under your article editor. and copy-past and change all link by amp link, i must do that aslo, big job!

    And for canonical, i have same problem, i use yoast, i hope they’ll find solution.

    Thread Starter dawnieando

    (@dawnieando)

    Hi Pierreto,

    Thanks for coming back. The point is though though that this is not the default and many many users will go with the default so it’s really important the default internal linking is to the non AMP pages.

    I doubt this is a big issue if you set up your web site correctly.

    Basics: you don’t decide whether google indexes an AMP page/post or not. They decide if it meets their quality guidelines and it passes validation.

    If the canonical link is not specified then the AMP page will be invalid. Google will stick with the non AMP version whatever you do. If a canonical link is specified then RFC 6596 is not going to be forced or count for much.

    For example, let us suppose google finds an AMP page via some link and it doesn’t know about the canonical page as yet. Google will go back to the canonical first. It will check out that page. It will probably index it. It will then see the <link rel=”amphtml”. It will then decide whether to index the AMP version or not (quality and valid AMP).

    Internal links within an article are normally to non-amp posts and pages unless you use the custom editor to modify them for a specific AMP page/post. Menu links are normally to other AMP pages unless made otherwise (your choice to set up menus as you please). Links on AMP archive pages go to AMP articles.

    With 8 AMP sites, all of them rank highly on both mobile and non mobile indexes. In my experience google will choose the AMP version in the mobile index if the page is valid and it meets their quality guidelines. All pages with AMP versions are presented in their mobile index.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 6 months ago by frenchomatic.
    Thread Starter dawnieando

    (@dawnieando)

    I beg to differ. Actually you can indicate to Google the page you would like to include in search results (AMP or not) by sending signals. When two pages are exact duplicates (AMP and non-AMP) one will be filtered from the search results.
    Internal links are signals and may well override the canonical link.

    Plugin Author Ahmed Kaludi

    (@ahmedkaludi)

    Hi @dawnieando

    When you say the internal linking, do you mean the part that is in the visual editor [ the_content() ]?

    So, the visual editor content automatically goes to the Non-AMP. It does go from AMP > AMP.

    I did try going through the https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6596.txt but it’s so non-user friendly that I would have to spend an hour or two to understand it.

    If you could tell me in the simpler words, then it would really helpful for me to understand and then I will make the necessary changes to comply with it.

    What do you say? Let’s work together on this!

    Regards,
    Ahmed

    Thread Starter dawnieando

    (@dawnieando)

    Hi,

    When I installed the plugin alongside ‘related content’ which was already added as a plugin it automatically added /amp/ after all of the related content URLs.

    Plugin Author Ahmed Kaludi

    (@ahmedkaludi)

    Hi @dawnieando

    So when you say ‘related content’, you mean an external plugin or the related posts feature with in the plugin?

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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