Reducing pages with canonical & redirects
-
We have a site that has a ridiculous number of pages. Its a directory of service providers that is organized by city and sub-category of the vertical. Each provider is on the main city page, then when you click on a category, it will only show those folks who offer that subcategory of this service.
example:
- colorado/denver - main city page
- colorado/denver/subcat1 - subcategory page
There are 37 subcategories. So, 38 pages that essentially have the same content - minus a provider or two - for each city.
There are approx 40K locations in our database. So rough math puts us at 1.5 million results pages, with 97% of those pages being duplicate content!
This is clearly a problem. But many of these obscure pages do rank and get traffic. A fair amount when you aggregate all these pages together.
We are about to go through a redesign and want to consolidate pages so we can reduce the dupe content, get crawl budget allocated to more meaningful pages, etc.
Here's what I'm thinking we should do with this site, and I would love to have your input:
- Canonicalize
Before the redesign use the canonical tag on all the sub-category pages and push all the value from those pages (colorado/denver/subcat1, /subcat2, /subcat3... etc) to the main city page (colorado/denver/subcat1)
- 301 Redirect
On the new site (we're moving to a new CMS) we don't publish the duplicate sub-category pages and do 301 redirects from the sub-category URLs to the main city page urls.
We'd still have the sub-categories (keywords) on-page and use some Javascript filtering to narrow results.
We could cut to the chase and just do the redirects, but would like to use canonicalization as a proof of concept internally at my company that getting rid of these pages is a good thing, or at least wont have a negative impact on traffic. i.e. by the time we are ready to relaunch traffic and value has been transfered to the /state/city page
Trying to create the right plan and build my argument. Any feedback you have will help.
-
Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered?
Thanks!
-
The best way is to make sure you're using the tag properly and that you have all your angles covered.
There is actually some good posts on SEOmoz about canonicalization, I'll try and find those for you.
-
awesome feedback! thanks david. would like to hear your thoughts on proper canonicalization when you have a moment. thanks again.
-
Your plan sounds good but here are a few things I'd like to add.
-
Make sure the dupe pages you're getting rid of are not the main traffic sources. If that is the case you'll want to redirect only a few at a time and slowly go around fixing that. You don't want to switch to new CMS, throw up redirects, and lose 85% of your traffic. Just make sure it's not your main traffic source.
-
Make sure you use the proper methods of canonicalization. Don't half-ass it.
-
On the new site, because you have a large and deep site, make sure you have a proper sitemap generated fresh all the time and that the proper weights are assigned and proper structuring. Less levels = better.
-
Watch your Webmaster Tools.
That is all I have, I think you'll be fine.
-
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
-
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
301 redirect for page 2, page 3 etc of an article or feed
Hey guys, We're looking to move a blog feed we have to a new static URL page. We are using 301 redirects but I'm unsure of what to regarding page 2, page 3 etc. of the feed. How do I make sure those urls are being redirected as well? For example: Moving FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/ to a new page url FloridaDentist.com/dental-tips. So, we are using a 301 on that old url to the new one. My questions is what to do with the other pages like FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/page/3. How do we make sure that page is also 301'd to the new main url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Using unique content from "rel=canonical"ized page
Hey everyone, I have a question about the following scenario: Page 1: Text A, Text B, Text C Page 2 (rel=canonical to Page 1): Text A, Text B, Text C, Text D Much of the content on page 2 is "rel=canonical"ized to page 1 to signalize duplicate content. However, Page 2 also contains some unique text not found in Page 1. How safe is it to use the unique content from Page 2 on a new page (Page 3) if the intention is to rank Page 3? Does that make any sense? 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Link Reclimation & Redirects
Hello, I'm in the middle of a link reclamation project wherein we're identifying broken links, links pointing to dupe content etc. I found a forgotten co-brand which is effectively dupe content across 8 sub-domains, some of which have a significant number of links (200+ linking domains | 2k+ in-bound links). Question for the group is what's the optimal redirect option? Option 1: set 301 and maintain 1:1 URL mapping will pass all equity to applicable PLPs and theoretically improve rank for related keyword(s). requires a bit more configuration time and will likely have small effect on rank given links are widely distributed across URLs. Option 2: set 301 to redirect all requests to the associated sub-domain e.g. foo.mybrand.cobrand.com/page1.html and foo.mybrand.cobrand.com/page2 both redirect to foo.mybrand.com/ will accumulate all equity at the sub-domain level which theoretically will be roughly distributed throughout underlying pages and will limit risk of penalty to that sub-domain. Option 3: set 301 to redirect all requests to our homepage. easiest to configure & maintain, will accumulate the maximum equity on a priority page which should positively affect domain authority. run risk of being penalized for accumulating links en mass, risk penalty for spammy links on our primary sub-domain www, won't pass keyword specific equity to applicable pages. To be clear, I've done an initial scrub of anchor text and there were no signs of spam. I'm leaning towards #3, but interested in others perspectives. Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PCampolo
Stefan0 -
External links point to 403 page - how to 301 redirect if no file extension?
Hi guys, After moving from an old static .htm site to Wordpress, I 301'd all old .htm urls fine to the new trailing slash foldery style /wordpress-urls/ in htaccess no problem. But Google Webmaster Tools tells me I still have hundreds of external links pointing to a similar version of the old urls (but without the .htm), giving lots of not founds and 403s. Example of the urls linked to that 403 not found: http://www.mydomain.com/filename So I'm wondering how I do a 301 redirect from a non-exisiting url that also has no file extention as above and is not like a folder? This seems like a lot of possible external link juice to lose. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Amount of pages indexed for classified (number of pages for the same query)
I've notice that classified usually has a lots of pages indexed and that's because for each query/kw they index the first 100 results pages, normally they have 10 results per page. As an example imagine the site www.classified.com, for the query/kw "house for rent new york" there is the page www.classified.com/houses/house-for-rent-new-york and the "index" is set for the first 100 SERP pages, so www.classified.com/houses/house-for-rent-new-york www.classified.com/houses/house-for-rent-new-york-1 www.classified.com/houses/house-for-rent-new-york-2 ...and so on. Wouldn't it better to index only the 1st result page? I mean in the first 100 pages lots of ads are very similar so why should Google be happy by indexing lots of similar pages? Could Google penalyze this behaviour? What's your suggestions? Many tahnks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuroa-2467120 -
Pricing Page vs. No Pricing Page
There are many SEO sites out there that have an SEO Pricing page, IMO this is BS. A SEO company cannot give every person the same quote for diffirent keywords. However, this is something we are currently debating. I don't want a pricing page, because it's a page full of lies. My coworker thinks it is a good idea, and that users look for a pricing page. Suggestions? If I had to build one (which I am debating against) is it better to just explain why pricing can be tricky? or to BS them like most sites do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Can I Use Cross Domain Canonical For Duplicate Categories & Product Pages?
I want to fix issue regarding duplicate categories & product pages on my multiple eCommerce websites. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas-fiberbuilt-umbrellas-llc-7gcrw-teal.html - Want to rank with this... http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/patio-umbrellas-fiberbuilt-umbrellas-llc-7gcrw-teal.html - Duplicate one! http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas - Want to rank with this... http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/patio-umbrellas - Duplicate one!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0