Canonical tag question
-
Suppose a site has two pages ( Page A ) and Page B. Both of them have pagerank, but duplicate content.
The page A is ranked for keyword "seo india" and page B is ranked for keyword "seo services".
If i implement canonical tag on page B, does
1. The pagerank of page B will be transfered to Page A ?
2. Does the site A now ranks for keyword "seo servicies " ( for which Page B was ranking earlier )
-
Google views the canonical tag as a hint, and reserves the right to ignore it if the pages don't look to be virtually identical in content, so it would depend in part on how much of the content is duplicate. If it's your own site, you can always give it a try and see. If it's a client site and they're depending on both pages ranking for conversions, I'd warn them first that you might lose the rankings from Page B.
-
I would agree with Stephen on point 1, but would throw the following thoughts in on point 2:
For example:
page A is mysite.com/seo-india
page B is mysite.com/seo-services
I would guess that there would be a minor difference in ranking impact on a couple of counts with respect to what phrase is ranked for in each case - despite having the same content.
Things to consider would be the url itself, the page title, the H1 and the metadescription.
I can't see that using a canon from one page to another will migrate additional ranking terms to the destination page in its own right - if you have links to page B with anchors that reflect the terms it might - but how long you would continue to rank for the additional term would be questionable.
If it was that simple to get the same page to rank for multiple terms just by duplicating content, linking to it, and then redirecting with the canon tag - I am sure google would get wise to that pretty quick, and there would be no end of "top secret ranking" mails doing the rounds from "SEO gurus"
Would be interesting to test though!
-
I am not sure if there is just a simple yes or no answer to your questions. It is hard to predict exactly to what the search engines will do and ranking will change.
1. It looks like the answer to this question is Yes. Here is a snippet for a Google Webmaster Blog article.
Additional URL properties, like PageRank and related signals, are transferred as well.
2. I can only assume the answer to this question would be yes too. I would assume that since both pages are identical and are on the same domain, page A would now rank the same as page B. It is hard to know for sure though. Sorry I can't be more definitive but Google is a complex animal.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Duplicate pages and Canonicals
Hi all, Our website has more than 30 pages which are duplicates. So canonicals have been deployed to show up only 10 of these pages. Do more of these pages impact rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Multiple H2 tags
Is it advisable to use only one H2 tag? The template designs for some reason is ended up with multiple H2 tags, I realise if any think it's that each one is that are important and it is all relative. Just trying to assess if it's worth the time and effort to rehash the template. Has anyone done any testing or got any experience? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Advanced SEO question.
Hi, I manage and do the SEO for this site: www.aerlawgroup.com. If you Google "Los Angeles Criminal Defense Attorney", you can see I rank well (1st page). I have managed to achieve similar rankings for interior pages within the site: www.aerlawgroup.com/domestic-violence.html (Google: "Los Angeles Domestic Violence Attorney".) Here is my question. No matter how hard I try, I cannot get to the first page on Google for the search term: "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer", for the following interior page: www.aerlawgroup.com/dui.html. Is there anyway that I can pass the authority/ranking (not sure what to call it) that I have for www.aerlawgroup.com to www.aerlawgroup.com/dui.html so that internal page ranks higher for "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer"? I apologize if my question doesn't make sense. In a nutshell, I'm trying to understand if there is anyway to use the ranking I have for www.aerlawgroup.com to help me rank higher for Los Angeles DUI lawyer for the dui interior page. If not, are there any other suggestions anyone has to achieve a higher ranking? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Question about multiple websites in same field
I know what most people say that it is best to only have the 1 website for focus but if we can put this to the back of our minds, if we create 2 different websites that are totally different designs (one upmarket one and one targeting the cheaper market) but in the same fields (printing) and go after 80% of the same keywords is this ok (could we be penalized). Please note we will not be interlinking the websites, the website .will be on different servers and the names will be registered under different people (2 partners in the business). We will however be accessing webmaster tools from the same location.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Brief question - SEOMOZ is teling me that i have duplicate content on the following two pages http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/ and http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/index.asp The default page for the /visas/ directory is index.asp - so it effectively the same page - but apparently SEOMOZ and more importantly Google, etc treat these as two different pages. I read about 301 redirects etc, but in this case there aren't two physical HTML pages - so how do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | santiago230 -
Anchor text questions - What are your thoughts?
Hi, I want to talk about anchor text and the effect it has on search engines (Good & Bad). Here is a fictitious example we can talk about: www.supercoolrunningsneakers.com Title Tag: Running Sneakers - The Super Trendy Running Trainers Keywords targeted: Running Sneakers, Running Trainers How would you vary your anchor text to target these terms? If you had 50 unique articles to play with how would you vary the anchor text using the articles? Would you push 25 articles at 'Running Sneakers' and the other 25 at 'Running Trainers' or would you link some articles using the domain name anchor text? Q: I'm guessing running 50 articles using anchor text 'Running Sneakers' would benefit the SERP's moe for that term then mixing it up with say 'Running Sneakers', 'Running Trainers' & 'Domain Name Links'. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Could adding canonical tags to large Ecommerce site ever hurt rankings? Temporarily?
We have a really large site we're working on who's product pages rank well for the most part but also have multiple products listed in different categories with different URL's. I'm assuming there's no downside to adding canonical tags to these right? Its peak season so I don't want to do anything that could, even temporarily, bring down their rankings. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0