Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
-
Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to:
Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize.
Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.)
OR
do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C?
OR
Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C?
Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C.
(If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.)
Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
-
Woops lol. Had no idea. Was always under the impression using a canonicalization tag was only used to prevent duplicate content issues. Thank you.
-
Hi JU1985 - Yes, page C would get the link juice if you canonicalize pages A and B to page C. You should also make it very clear to your users that they should be using widget C.
The other option is to 301 redirect pages A and B to page C and implement a dynamically-generated message via cookie to let users know why they are being redirected. This would also enhance user experience.
-
Are you sure that canonicalization does not pass on link juice? My understanding has been that it does and our SEO vendor does as well. Reading from here and a few other places it appears it does (link below).
Just want to be sure my knowledge is current, any source you can provide would be helpful.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/an-seos-guide-to-http-status-codes
-
Hi JU1985,
Good call from Donnie!
I would be keeping both pages live and adding a unique explanation to each page that lets them know that the product they searched for has been superseded by Widget C.
When deciding on the right solution for any issue like this, the first thing to consider is the effect your solution will have on the user. Ask yourself "If I search for Widget A and land on a page that offers Widget C, what will I think?".
The answer for me is that I will most likely assume the result is incorrect and return to the search engine looking for a better result. That is not the best user experience possible and therefore unlikely to provide the best conversion rate possible.
So for me, any solution that simply delivers the client to a different product without an explanation (301 or rel=canonical) is least preferred.
The key to good business is good customer service - essentially being as helpful to your potential customer as possible. If a customer arrived at your offline store and said "I'm looking for Widget A", would you push them quickly across the store and say "here's Widget C"? Or would you explain that "Widget A has now been superseded by Widget C" and provide Widget C for them to look at?
The more you can emulate the offline store experience in your online store, the better the chance that the customer will feel comfortable buying from you.
Incidentally, I would make sure that the Widget C description added to the pages includes a Buy button and sufficient information that the customer can proceed to purchase without having to go to the Widget C page.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Canonicalization does not pass any link juice, only 301 redirect will let Google know to pass any of your external linking sites to your new URL. This is why I would stay away from Canonicalization in this case.
-
If we keep pages A and B alive, and canonicalize BOTH to page C - in addition to linking to page C from A and B, would this be the right thing to do?
Would page C then get the link juice?
I'm trying to please the user first, while still keeping best SEO practices in mind.
-
Good Question,
I would keep them live, if its not broken dont fix it. You can keep them live and add widget C to both pages.
Or
If you really want everything on page C. 301 both A & B to C and be sure to include the keywords your ranking for in your: title, H1, and body. If you do not do a 301 all the link juice will stay on the pages A and B.
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
-
Best way to link to multiple location pages
I am a Magician and have multiple location pages for each county I cover. I currently have them linked off the menu under locations/ <county>and also in the footer</county> However I have heard that a link from the page is much stronger, so I am experimenting with removing the Menu & Footer link and just linking to these pages from within the content. It's not really a navigation item and most people come in through search to the right page. Am I diluting the link by having it in the Menu/Page and Footer? I read a long time ago that Google only considers the first link to a page and ignores the rest - is that the case? Thanks Roger https://www.rogerlapin.co.uk/
Technical SEO | | Rogerperk0 -
Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.
Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
What to do with temporary empty pages?
I have a website listing real estate in different areas that are for sale. In small villages, towns, and areas, sometimes there is nothing for sale and therefore the page is completely empty with no content except a and some footer text. I have thousand of landing pages for different areas. For example "Apartments in Tibro" or "Houses in Ljusdahl" and Moz Pro gives me some warnings for "Duplicate Content" on the empty ones (I think it does so because the pages are so empty that they are quite similar). I guess Google could also think bad of my site if I have hundreds or thousands of empty pages even if my total amount of pages are 100,000. So, what to do with these pages for these small cities, towns and villages where there is not always houses for sale? Should I remove them completely? Should I make a 404 when no houses for sale and a 200 OK when there is? Please note that I have totally 100,000+ pages and this is only about 5% of all my pages.
Technical SEO | | marcuslind900 -
Is it good to redirect million of pages on a single page?
My site has 10 lakh approx. genuine urls. But due to some unidentified bugs site has created irrelevant urls 10 million approx. Since we don’t know the origin of these non-relevant links, we want to redirect or remove all these urls. Please suggest is it good to redirect such a high number urls to home page or to throw 404 for these pages. Or any other suggestions to solve this issue.
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Where to put Schema On Page
What part of my page should I put Schema data? Header? Footer? Also All pages? or just home page?
Technical SEO | | bozzie3114 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0