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
-
Competing URLs
Hi We have a number of blogs that compete with our homepage for some keywords/phrases. The URLs of the blogs contain the keywords/phrases. I would like to re-work the blogs so that they target different keywords that don't compete and are more relevant. Should I change the URLs as I think this is what is mainly causing the issue? If so, should I 301 old URL's to the homepage? For example, say we we're a site that specialised in selling plastic cups. Currently there is a blog with the URL www.mysite.com/plastic-cups that outranks the homepage for _plastic cups. _The blog isn't particularly relevant to plastic cups and the homepage should rank for this term. How should I let Google know that it is the homepage that is most relevant for this term? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Buffalo_71 -
URL Construction
Working on an old site that currently has category urls (that productively rank) like this example: LakeNameBoating.com/category/705687/rentals I want to enhance the existing mid page one rank for terms related to "Lake Name Boat Rentals," 301ing the old urls to the new, would you construct the new urls as: LakeNameBoating.com/lake-name-boat-rentals or... LakeNameBoating.com/boat-rentals And why? It's all for one particular lake with "name" being just an anonymous placeholder example. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
How careful do you need to be about changes to readable URLs?
We are moving to Sitecore where the standard out the box is that if you change page title it amends the URL as well. I am worried that this will lead to SEO issues and am considering whether we need to get it locked down so that if the page title is amended (only in a minor way) it does not also change the URL. I have never worked with readable URLs before - what are the implications of the URL not exactly matching the wording of the page title?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alzheimerssoc0 -
SEO benefit of tracked URLs
I've found a lot of mixed info on this topic so I thought I'd ask the experts (Moz community). If I'm adding tracking parameters to URLs to monitor organic traffic will this affect the rank/value of the original clean URL? If so, would best practice be to 301 redirect the tracked URL to the original:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
i.e. redirect www.example.com/category/?DZID=Organic_G_NP/SQ&utm_source=Organic&utm_medium=Google TO www.example.com/category Thanks for your help!
-Reed0 -
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
Hey there. For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jay328
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.com This is happening to all pages, posts and even category type 1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO plugin Any suggestions? Thanks!0 -
2 URLS pointing to the same content
Hi, We currently have 2 URL's pointing to the same website (long story why we have it) - A & B. A is our main website but we set up B as a rewrite URL to use for our Pay Per Click campaign. Now because its the same site, but B is just a URL rewrite, Google Webmaster Tools is seeing that we have thousands of links coming in from site B to site A. I want to tell Google to ignore site B url but worried it might affect site A. I can't add a no follow link on site B as its the same content so will also be applicable on Site A. I'm also worried about using Google Disavow as it might impact on site A! Can anyone make any suggestions on what to do, as I would like to hear from anyone with experience with this or can recommend a safe option. Thanks for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Party_Experts0 -
Effect of 301 redirect to a relative url to homepage?
One of our new clients recently encountered a site-wide ranking drop for many keywords and I'm pretty confident regarding their link profile as to being 98% legit. Background: 1. Client full site is https, and all http pages are 301 redirected to their https counterpart 2. Client has ~50 links partners (all legitimate sites + schools etc) links to client with urls such as www.example.com/portal/123.aspx that redirects to www.example.com. 3. Client homepage 301 redirects from www.example.com to www.example.com/default.aspx and then 301 redirects to the relative url "/Home.aspx". 4. Client launched some testing with Google website optimizer tool. ~1-2 months ago. Symptoms: 1. Rankings dropped for basically many/all 30-40+ keywords by ~15 positions 2. Seomoz reports close to a double of existing pages + (600+) duplicate content in the same date range. Webmasters only report 80 duplicate titles though. 3. Domain authority by seomoz reduced a bit + backlinks recorded by seomoz to the website nearly halved in the past 2 months. I'm not sure if I narrowed this towards the right direction, and it isn't clear when the relative url 301 redirect was implemented: 1. The 301 redirect to the relative page (www.example.com/default.aspx to "/home.aspx") is accounting for the loss of links recorded by seomoz. 2. The ~50 links the client currently use (www.example.com/portal.123.aspx 301 redirecting to www.example.com, also relative) as a tracking tool is being considered 301 redirect abuse. 3. Maybe something went wrong with the usage of google optimizer tool for SEO purposes? Visitor traffic to each of the tested pages looked fine. I would greatly appreciate any advice/insights on what I might be missing in terms of direction / factors. Thanks! Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sixspokemedia0 -
Does Google index url with hashtags?
We are setting up some Jquery tabs in a page that will produce the same url with hashtags. For example: index.php#aboutus, index.php#ourguarantee, etc. We don't want that content to be crawled as we'd like to prevent duplicate content. Does Google normally crawl such urls or does it just ignore them? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoppc20120