URL for offline purposes
-
Hi there,
We are going to be promoting one of our products offline, however I do not want to use the original URL for this product page as it's long for the user to type in, so I thought it would be best practice in using a URL that would be short, easier for the consumer to remember.
My plan:
Replicate the product page and put it on this new short URL, however this would mean I have a duplicate content issue, would It be best practice to use a canonical on the new short URL pointing to the original URL? or use a 301?
Thanks for any help
-
I agree with Matt - as long as your primary, internal links are consistent, it's ok to use a short version for offline purposes. The canonical tag is perfectly appropriate for this.
The other option would be to use a third-party shortener that has built-in tracking, like Bit.ly. It uses a 301-redirect, but also captures the data. If you're just doing a test case, this might be easier all-around.
-
Well I am assuming all your sites internal links are already pointing to the original product page, so in relation to this, as long as you don't create any internal links pointing to your duplicate friendly URL for offline you will be fine and implementing it as DR Pete instructs. Canonical links should be on all pages that are duplicates of the target page which is part of the canonical tag.
-
I read this in Dr.Pete's article in seomoz
Know Your Crawl Paths
Finally, an important reminder – the most important canonical signal is usually your internal links. If you use the canonical tag to point to one version of a URL, but then every internal link uses a different version, you’re sending a mixed signal and using the tag as a band-aid. The canonical URL should actually becanonical in practice – use it consistently. If you’re an outside SEO coming into a new site, make sure you understand the crawl paths first, before you go and add a bunch of tags. Don’t create a mess on top of a mess.
Would this cause me an issue using the method I have used?
Also should I use a canonical on the original URL pointing to itself?
Thanks
-
I don't think you need to remove this Gary if that is the case - take a look here for an updated 2012 article on rel="canonical" from the horses mouth
- http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
This might help you.
-
H,
IMO you can simply disallow the URL with robots.txt. There is no other alternative for this.
Regards,
-
Hi Matt,
I really do not want to create a 301, as I want to see stats in Analytics for this short URL.
I have actually used a canonical, do you recommend removing this and using disallow in robots.txt?
Thanks.
-
I would create a 301 redirect from your new short URL to your original product page as you are essentially just creating a new path to it and not new content.
Here is a post about canonicalisation from Matt Cutts - http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
And another useful insight from SEOMoz on how to deal with duplicate content - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content
Hope this helps
Blurbpoint is also correct using his method will also work - blocking the page in a robots.txt file or using the meta-tags no index, no follow will also stop duplicate content issues! The down side is that any links that your short URL acquires will not pass any link juice unlike with 301s or canonicalization.
-
By using canonical tag we can tell Google, which is the original version of page. Dr pete has written nice post on it few days back.
Here is the URL: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-page-is-canonical
Hope this will solve your concern.
-
Hi there,
I have just read this post:
What is the purpose of the canonical tag in this instance if you can you block that URL in robots.txt?
Thanks
-
If you are thinking of promoting that product offline, you can block that page in your robots.txt file or alternatively you can also put noindex, nofollow robot tag in that page. Search engine will not going to index that page as its blocked for all bots so no duplicate content issue will arise.
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
-
410 or 301 after URL update?
Hi there, A site i'm working on atm has a thousand "not found" errors on google console (of course, I'm sure there are thousands more it's not showing us!). The issue is a lot of them seem to come from a URL change. Damage has been done, the URLs have been changed and I can't stop that... but as you can imagine, i'm keen to fix as many as humanly possible. I don't want to go mad with 301s - but for external links in, this seems like the best solution? On the other hand, Google is reading internal links that simply aren't there anymore. Is it better to hunt down the new page and 301-it anyway? OR should I 410 and grit my teeth while google crawls and recrawls it, warning me that this page really doesn't exist? Essentially I guess I'm asking, how many 301s are too many and will affect our DA? And what's the best solution for dealing with mass 404 errors - many of which aren't attached or linked to from any other pages anymore? Thanks for any insights 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Is there a problems with putting encoding into the subdomain of a URL?
We are looking at changing our URL structure for tracking various affiliates from: https://sub.domain.com/quote/?affiliate_id=xxx to https://aff_xxx_affname.domain.com/quote/ Both would allow us to track affiliates, but the second would allow us to use cookies to track. Does anyone know if this could possibly cause SEO concerns? Also, For the site we want to rank for, we will use a reverse proxy to change the URL from https://aff_xxx.maindomain.com/quote/ to https://www.maindomain.com/quote/ would that cause any SEO issues. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Safely change canonical URL many times
Hi, We are actually working on a new product information section for our network of websites (site A, B, C and D) where product landing pages allow to download information in pdf format and are active for downloads during a period of two months (active form for commercial reasons) with a unique URL (the case today). Here is a possible scenario for these product landing pages in the near future: Product is promoted in website A during 2 months (January to February) so canonical URL = A/page. Once expired, the product info. download form disappears. Customer decides to promote the same product in the same site A as well in site B from April to May so canonical URL will still be A/page. Canonical URL of B/page will point to A/page. Customer decides to relaunch his product promotion this time in site C from July to August so canonical URLs of pages A/page and B/page will now point to C/page as the latter will be the only product campaign active with a download form At the end of the year the customer does another campaign for the same product this time in website D so we will change the canonical URL of pages A/page, B/page and C/page to D/page as the latter will be the only product campaign active with a download form The obvious question here is: will this way of changing canonical URLs dynamically hurt the SEO of the section, pages, one particular website or the whole network ? Would it be better and safer to just keep the first canonical URL forever? A/page in this example Thanks so much for your input on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JulienLetellier0 -
Why is this url redirecting to our site?
I was doing an audit on our site and searching for duplicate content using some different terms from each of our pages. I came across the following result: www.sswug.org/url/32639 redirects to our website. Is that normal? There are hundreds of these url's in google all with the exact same description. I thought it was odd. Any ideas and what is the consequence of this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
URL Formatting - Magento
Hi, We are working with a client on Mangento who URLs are formatting Google friendly eg; productname.html - as seen in site search in Google) but when you click the link to the site it is adding on #.VEWKQxbc754 (or similar) The site is also having some page indexing problems as well Thoughts? specific settings/Add on in magento?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pure-SEO0 -
Capitals in URLs
Hello Mozzers. I've just been looking at a site with capitals in the URL - capitals are used in the product descriptions, so you'll have a URL structure like this: www.company.com/directory1/Double-Beds-Luxury (such URLs do not work if I lower the case of the capitals). There are 50,000 such products on the site. Clearly one drawback is potential customers might type in, or link to, the lower case of the URL and get a "not found" result (though the urls are relatively long so not that likely I'm thinking). Are there any additional drawbacks with the use of capitals outlined here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Received "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site:" but most of the example URLs are noindexed.
An example URL can be found here: http://symptom.healthline.com/symptomsearch?addterm=Neck%20pain&addterm=Face&addterm=Fatigue&addterm=Shortness%20Of%20Breath A couple of questions: Why is Google reporting an issue with these URLs if they are marked as noindex? What is the best way to fix the issue? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
What Should I Do With My URL Names?
I release property on my blog each week, and it has come to the point we will get property in the same area as we have had in the past. So, I name my URL /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]/ for the first property in that area right. Now I get a different property in that same area and the URL will have to be named /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2/. Now I'm not sure if this is a major issue or not, but I'm sure there must be a better way than this, and I don't really want to take down our past properties - unless you can give me good reason too, of course? So before I start getting URLs like this: /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2334343534654/ (well, ok, maybe not that bad! But you get my point) I wanted to see what everyones opinion on it is 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanRolande0