Backlinks pointing to the B page of an A/B test.
-
To rel-canonical or to 301, that is the question.
We're frequently running an A/B split test on our home page to optimize conversion. As a result about 10,000 backlinks to our homepage point to the B page. (If we're running a test when a blog or newspaper checks us out, there's a 50% chance they're diverted to the B page. So when they copy our home page URL, they're unknowingly copying the B page link.)
We can't contact all of these sites and ask for them to change their links. A lot of the links are from big organizations that aren't interested in tweaking the links of old articles.
So should we rel-canonical or 301 the B page? We consistently use the same URL for our B page tests, so we'd only have to 'fix' one page.
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks Keri. Appreciate the offer, but I'm all set. We just 301d the page after the test was done and have decided that we'll only multivariate the home page for now. We've now had 3 major press links point to the testing version of our home page, so we've decided our best bet is just to set up all tests as multivariate so we don't create two different URLs.
Thanks again.
-
Hi Joe,
I'm following up on older, unanswered posts. Did you find a solution, or are you still looking for advice?
-
Thanks for your thoughts.
While a canonical shouldn't impact a split test, a 301 would create a loop and make an A/B test impossible. Although, if we were to 301 this page, we wouldn't use that same page for testing.
As far as multivariate vs A/B. The design changes are often significant enough where a multivariate is impossible.
FYI - we use Google Website Optimizer for our tests.
Thanks again. Appreciate your weighing in.
-
From a logical point of view (or thinking out loud as it were) if you are consistently using the same B page, that in itself will be where the problem is likely to be.
For example - if you canonical the B page, and continue to run the B page anyway, I would think you would end up creating a loop, or at minimum a strange redirect because the script in you A page for the split test to function will/could point it back at page B
If you 301, I would think the same could apply, and still not solve the issue.
If you ran the tests using the multivariant test format instead, I would think this is less likely to cause issues because you are then just switching segments of content on your landing page, rather than urls, therefore eliminating the problem altogether.
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
-
Page Juice not moving???
Moved URL's from ldnwicklesscandles.com to ldnwicklesscandles.co.uk because I wanted to rank better for UK where I'm located and thought also the .co.uk for my competitors may have been giving them the advantage. Use Squarespace 7 (transferred over from SS5)----they told me to set primary domain to .co.uk and I've done it. I've also done a 301 redirect and done a change of address in webmaster tools although I'm not sure if all of this is needed? Squarespace seem to think just setting the primary domain is enough. My question is its been a couple of weeks, I've resubmited to Google webmaster to try to speed things up, the new URL is appearing in Google but none of my Page Juice seems to be transferring yet? How long will it take? I know not all the juice will move over but my PA/DA is non existent now and I have no idea if I'm just being impatient or I've done something wrong here. Not a Pro, Just a small biz owner here so forgive me if this has been asked before.
Technical SEO | | ldnwickless0 -
Why are my Duplicated Pages not being updated?
I've recently changed a bunch of duplicated pages from our site. I did get a slightly minimized amount of duplicated pages, however, some of the pages that I've already fixed are still unfixed according to MOZ. Whenever I check the back-end of each of these pages, I see that they've already been changed and non of them are the same in terms of Meta Tag Title is concern. Can anyone provide any suggestions on what I should do to get a more accurate result? Is there a process that I'm missing?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
Blog.furnacefilterscanada.com/ or furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/
My shopping cart does not allow to instal a WordPress blog on a sub-domain like: furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ But I can host my blog on another server with a sub-domain like: blog.furnacefilterscanada.com In a SEO point of view is there a difference between the 2? Link juice? Page authority? Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Job/Blog Pages and rel=canonical
Hi, I know there are several questions and articles concerning the rel=canonical on SEOmoz, but I didn't find the answer I was looking for... We have some job pages, URLs are: /jobs and then jobs/2, jobs/3 etc.. Our blog pages follow the same: /blog, /blog2, /blog/3... Our CMS is self-produced, and every job/blog-page has the same title tag. According to SEOmoz (and the Webmaster Tools), we have a lots of duplicate title tags because of this problem. If we put the rel=canonical on each page's source code, the title tag problem will be solved for google, right? Because they will just display the /job and /blog main page. That would be great because we dont want 40 blog pages in the index. My concern (a stupid question, but I am not sure): if we put the rel=canonical on the pages, does google crawl them and index our job links? We want to keep our rankings for our job offers on pages 2-xxx. More simple: will we find our job offers on jobs/2, jobs/3... in google, if these pages have the rel=canonical on them? AND ONE MORE: does the SEOmoz bot also follow the rel=canonical and then reduce the number of duplicate title-tags in the campaigns??? Thanx........
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
/out/ URLs in GWMTs
I am recently seeing some URLs come up as 404s in GWMTs for a client. They look like this: http://client-url/out/www.linkedin.com/company/client-linkedin-name /out/client-url/sub-directory/postname/ We thought they might have something to do with the social plugins but they are all over the place and they are sometime for internal pages on the site. Anyone run into these and know why they are happening?
Technical SEO | | DragonSearch0 -
No. of links on a page
Is it true that If there is a huge number of links from the source page then each link will provide very little value in terms of passing link juice ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
How to see a theme ‘/wp-content/themes/’
HI I'm still plugging away at getting to grips with my companies personalized blog. I've been trying for the past two days to upload a theme to my own test Wordpress blog, in order to correct a bug in the companies theme that makes formatting in the Post disappear. The code in the themes CSS file seems to be fine. Anyhow what I assumed would be a simple step has given me hours of hassle. I have finally got to the point of uploading an unzipped version of the theme intot ‘/wp-content/themes/’. Now try as I might my Wordpress admin is completely blind to the fact. Any attempt at using the Upload facility (which is what I attempted many hours ago) fails. There seems to be no place to say, look out there at my directory - a new original theme - unzipped and ready to go. Am I missing something very obvious?
Technical SEO | | catherine-2793880 -
Hundreds of 404 Pages, What Should I do?
Hi, My client just had there website redeveloped within wordpress. I just ran a crawl errors test for their website using Google Webmasters. I discovered that the client has about six hundred, 404 pages. Most of the error pages originated from their previous image gallery. I already have a custom 404 page set-up, but is there something else I should be doing? Is it worth while to 301 redirect every single page within the .htaccess file, or will Google filter these pages out of its index naturally? Thanks Mozers!
Technical SEO | | calindaniel0