How similar do pages need to be in order to utilize the canonical tag
-
Here is my specific situation. My company released new versions of a few documents in the fall. I was hoping that over time the old version would decline and the new version would rise but after 6 months the old version continues to rank #1 and the new version #3. The old version needs to stay on our site but users should really be getting to the most recent version. I think utilizing the canonical tag would solve the issue but i am concerned because the content on the actual pages is not duplicate but it is updated. Below are the two URLs to see the differences in the content.
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/06tr008.cfm
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm
Is this an appropriate situation to use the canonical tag? If not, is there a better solution.
-
Super thanks for the heads up. I will start an new topic.
-
Hi Conor,
Welcome to the Q&A forum! Since this is an old topic, it may not get too much visibility. You may want to start a new question in its own thread.
-
I have a similar question. One of my pages is a help and questions page about completing a conversions and the other is the actual campaign landing page. While the subject of both pages is similar the content is not. Is the rel canonical tag appropriate here? I
-
Thanks! I will try it and see how it goes
-
Right. I just wanted to give you other options aside from the canonical tag, but if your site governance doesn't allow for these solutions the canonical tag as described by SSCDavis should work well.
-
I do not think they need to be all that similar. In one of Rand's examples he talked about in last weeks WBF he stated that he just did a blanket rel canonical on his old site to his new one and 2 days later everything was working as intended. When I went to check how he did it, it wasn't even specifically one page to another, he just added the rel canonical to the header file.
Your case is much more specific and involves doing it on on url only, not a whole domain. If I were in your position I would definitely give it a shot.
Quote from last weeks whiteboard friday :
The second example is even niftier and suggests some very cool applications as well, and so I want to point this one out. I was frustrated because for the last few years a very old domain that I created, I don't know, back in the late '90s, early 2000s, Randz.net was ranking really well for my name. I think it was ranking number 3 actually for my name, for Rand Fishkin in Google. I was always kind of frustrated because it's an old domain. I haven't updated in forever. I need to do the WordPress reinstall. I don't even know where the server login is. Whatever. It's kind of defunct at this point, and I haven't updated it in years. But I have this new blog, RandFishkin.com/blog. I really wish I could this one ranking because it has some good content on there, a bunch of posts that have been on Hacker News and some interesting things. It's much more current and updated. I do once a month at least put something new on there. So, what I did is I took very page in the header of the WordPress template, I took every page and I put a cross-domain rel=canonical to this URL. So every page at Randz.net now says canonical version is RandFishkin.com/blog. You know what happened? Two days, literally 48 hours, like the next time they crawled Randz.net, bang, RandFishkin.com/blog ranking number 3 for my name. It hadn't even ranked on page 1 or 2. I think it was on page 3 or 4 up until that point. So, just awesome to be able to put this, the page that I really want in the search results and kind of retire my old blog from being searchable.
-Rand Fishkin (Source)
-
Thanks for the response. Should I take that you advise against the utilizing the canonical tag for this scenario since you offered alternatives? Both of these alternatives make sense but I am not sure they are workable solutions within my site governance.
-
One option, aside from the canonical tag, is to put the new content on the old URL and add an archive tag to the older articles, like 10tr033-archive.cfm. Or, if that's not workable, create a new URL and 301 redirect all articles to that page and only ever keep your latest article there, but link to the older ones. By redirecting several articles to a new page and then linking out to the older ones from there on new URLs that new article page should out-rank all others and continue to do so as you update it.
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
-
Tags problem I need help
Hello I have a problem on my site and I want to help solve it I allow adding tags in search engines However, when writing new content, tags are not added to search engines This is my website link مجلة الحلوة
Technical SEO | | ahmedahmed3230 -
Canonical Page Question
Hi, I have a question relation to Canonical pages That i need clearing up. I am not sure that my bigcommere website is correctly configured and just wanted clarification from someone in the know. Take this page for example https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/ Canonical link is https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/ The Rel="next" link is https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?sort=bestselling&page=2 and this page has a canonical tag as rel='canonical' href='https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?page=2' /> Is this correct as above and working as it should or should the canonical tag for the second (pagination page) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/?page=2 in our source code be saying rel='canonical' href='https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/barra-lures/' />
Technical SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
Why are these pages duplicates when canonical is defined?
The SEOmoz reports indicate that the following pages are duplicates even though the canonical tag has been added. http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/quotes http://www.designquotes.com.au/dq/web/get-quotes/brief Is this normal?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Duplicates on the page
Hello SEOMOZ, I've one big question about one project. We have a page http://eb5info.com/eb5-attorneys and a lot of other similar pages. And we got a big list of errors, warnings saying that we have duplicate pages. But in real not all of them are same, they have small differences. For example - you select "State" in the left sidebar and you see a list on the right. List on the right panel is changing depending on the what you selecting on the left. But on report pages marked as duplicates. Maybe you can give some advices how to improve quality of the pages and make SEO better? Thanks Igor
Technical SEO | | usadvisors0 -
Canonical Issues
Hi Guys, I have a technical question. Ive started optimising an ecommerce site for a client and come across some duplicate content issues:- This page: http://www.bracknelllamps.com/projector-manufacturer/SANYO/70 is actually indexed in Google as:- http://www.bracknelllamps.com/projector-lamps.php?make=SANYO Both pages have the same content and I'm guessing the indexed page refers to an old way of navigating the site. As I'm concerned about duplicate content issues, what's the best approach as this seems to be the case for all 'projector manufacturer' pages. would it be to 301 redirect each manufacturer url (this could take forever with 107) manufacturers or rel="canonical" tag? to show Google which page I want indexing? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Page not being indexed
Hi all, On our site we have a lot of bookmaker reviews, and we are ranking pretty good for most bookmaker names as keywords, however a single bookmaker seems to have been shunned by Google. For a search "betsafe" in Denmark, this page does not appear among the top 50: http://www.betxpert.com/bookmakere/betsafe All of our other review pages rank in top 10-20 for the bookmaker name as keyword. What to do if Google has "banned" a page? Best regards, Rasmus
Technical SEO | | rasmusbang0