Canonical Advice - ?
-
Hi everyone,
I have a bit of problem with duplicate content on a newly launched site and looking for some advice on which pages to canonicalize. Our legacy site had product "information" pages that now 301 to new product information pages. The reason for the legacy having these pages (instead of pages where you can purchase) is because we used our vendors "cart link", which was an iframe inside the website. So in order to get ranked for these products, we created these pages, that had links to the frame where they could buy. The strategy worked, and we got ranked for our products.
Now with the new site, we have those same product information pages, but when you click the link to buy, it goes to a page which now is on our actual site, where you can make the purchase, but this page contains the same basic information, though it looks very different.
So my question --- the product "information" pages, are the new 301 homes and are the pages with the rank. The purchase pages are new and have no rank, but are essentially duplicate content. Should I put the canonical link element on the purchase page and tell Google to regard the information pages since those are ranked? It just seems weird to me to direct Google away from the place where people can purchase, however, the purchase pages aren't nearly as "pretty" as the information pages are, and wouldn't be the greatest landing pages. We have an automotive site, and the purchase page you have to enter vehicle information. The information page is nicer, and if the visitor is interested, its just one click to get to that page to buy.
What to do here? I am fairly new to Moz, and I couldn't determine whether I am permitted to include an example link from our site of what I am referring to. Is that permitted?
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.
Kristin -
thanks guys. Very helpful
-
Hi Kristin,
If there are technical constraints and you cannot merge the pages, as recommended by Andrew above, then adding a canonical tag to your existing purchase pages, referring back to the product information pages would be my suggestion.
Though it seems a little strange to take focus away from the purchase pages, the reality is that the information pages are more useful for users--and therefore, that's the page that Google would prefer in its index.
In future iterations of your site, I'd strongly recommend doing what Andrew alluded to, which is create a single page, with both product information and purchasing features, and 301 redirect the other variations to the new version.
-Trung
-
Hi Kristin,
If the information on your purchase page and information page is identical then I would question why there is a need to keep them both as physical pages? My advice would be to 301 the new information pages and the old information pages directly to the new purchase pages - this will consolidate all your authority in once place and promote the page which is most beneficial to your company.
However, once this is done I would look to improve the visual aspect of these purchasing pages and see if you can improve the purchasing pages and make them more aesthetically pleasing so that you no longer have a "better landing page" situation like you do at the moment.
The above method require some time and work to be invested - if this is not viable at the moment then I would be inclined to suggest a canonical on the new information pages to the new purchasing pages (rel="canonical" src="new purchasing page").
All the information above is subject to the information being duplicated which I believe to be right. If you have any further questions I'll be happy to help.
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 tag use for ecommerce product page detail
Hi, I have a category page I want to rank. This page has 24 different products quite similar but not exactly the same.
Technical SEO | | amastone
I want to use canonical tag in any product to the parent category.
Is this a right use of the canonical?
Category page I'm talking about is : Finger bits If I understand how to use canonical tags I can improve all my category pages. thanks marco0 -
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
Should existing canonical tags be removed where a 301 redirect is the preferred option?
Hi, I'm working on a site that is currently using canonical tags to deal with www and non-www variations. My recommendation is to setup 301 redirects to deal with this issue instead. However, is it ok to leave the existing canonical tags in place alongside the new 301 redirects or should they be removed? My thoughts are that this is not a canonical issue and therefore they should be removed? If 301 redirects are not possible it would be better have them that nothing at all but I don't think we need both, right? Any feedback much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | MVIreland0 -
Self referencing canonicals AND duplicate URLs. Have I set them up correctly?
Hi team, We've recently redesigned our website. Originally we had separate product listings for every product. Even if there was one design in two colours, each colour had its own listing. With the redesign we merged all of these identical products to help with duplicate content. Customers can now browse the different stone colours available in that design from a single product listing (bottom left of screen under 'select a stone' on a product page) When the customer changes the stone colour, the product images change to the new colour and its product code is appended to the end of the existing URL. eg: http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/ (original listing) http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/?sku=JC1725BL (black selected) We have the following self referencing canonicals on all product pages [current-page:url:absolute], yet MOZ is telling me I have alot of duplicate content on pages with the above example. Have I implemented the canonicals correctly? Is this why Moz is flagging the listings as duplicate?
Technical SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Multilingual -> ahref lang, canonical and duplicated title content
Hi all! We have our site eurasmus.com where we are implementing the multilingual.
Technical SEO | | Eurasmus.com
We have already available english and spanish and we use basically href lang to control different areas. First question: When a page is not translated but still is visible in both langauges under /en and /es is it enough with the hreflang or should we
add a canonical as well? Nowadays we are apply href lang and only canonicals to the one which are duplicated
in the same language. Second question: When some pages are not translated, like http://eurasmus.com/en/info/find-intern-placement-austria and http://eurasmus.com/es/info/find-intern-placement-austria,
we are setting up the href lang but still moz detects title and meta duplicated (not duplicate page content).
What do you suggest we should do? Let me know and thank you before hand for your help!0 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
Rel Canonical problem or SEOmoz bug ?
Hello all, I hope that sombody out there could help me with my question. I am very new in SEO and in SEOmoz community. I am not familiar with coding. I am goining to start learning soon enough but till now I now only basics. At the website where I am trying to optimize for SEO I am reciving this Crawl Diagnostic Programme. Issue: Rel Canonical (Notice) not Error I searched and lerned what it is. So I contact the developers of the website. Build in wordpress and ask them how to corrected ? They told me that they are using Canonical Tags to all their pages and have no idea why SEOmoz keep identifining it as a "notice" They also tel me to check the source code of page to see the canonical tag. I did and their is actuall a canonical tag there. Cjeck please here www.costanavarinogolf.com So do you have any idea why this is happening ? could you help me explaiin to developers what they should do to overcome this ? Or it's just a bug of SEOmoz and not a reall problem exist ? Thank you very much for your time
Technical SEO | | grzontan0 -
New consultant looking for advice on setting client expectations
I'm just starting to provide paid consultation to a few clients who have approached me for SEO help. As I've not completed a lot of projects, I'm looking for guidance on how to set expectations. I get the feeling that one of my clients is going to expect that once our initial work (keyword research, addressed their primary technical issues, fixing on-page issues) that they will automatically appear on the first page of Google. In a project with 50 keywords, I believe this may be true for a few keywords where there isn't a lot of competition. However, I believe that for many of the keywords, we won't be able to achieve ranking on the first page unless we do an on-going link-building program. Is this assumption accurate?
Technical SEO | | EricVallee340