Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Multiple urls for posting multiple classified ads
-
Want to optimize referral traffic while at same time keep search engines happy and the ads posted.
Have a client who advertises on several classified ad sites around the globe.
Which is better (post Panda), having multiple identical urls using canonicals to redirect juice to original url?
For example: www.bluewidgets.com is the original
Or, should the duplicate pages be directed to original using a 301?
Currently using duplicate urls.
Am currently not using "nofollow" tags on those pages.
-
So you are saying 301 redirects are better?
Would amount to 50 redirects (in that ball park).
Does not affect google ranking?
-
So you are saying 301 redirects are better?
Would amount to 50 redirects (in that ball park).
Does not affect google ranking?
-
Google Analytics allows you to setup what are called tracking URLs. They can be used when you "tag" your URLs with tracking code that allows for GA to translate which medium is generating what traffic.
http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867 This is a tool that Google offers to help you generate your URLs. There are also spreadsheets available online that allow you to create the URLs in Excel but they aren't always 100% accurate. What you are doing is ultimately creating parameters that allow for custom campaigns to be setup within Analytics. This allows you to monitor more than just the clicks, but allows you to generate custom reports that are more insightful and provide better data.
Once your URLs and Campaigns are created and running smoothly, you will be able to look at the data of the multi-channel funnels. This feature allows for attribution to be given to the digital and non-digital channels that don't always get the credit for the conversion. There is a lot of data can be pulled from these models and they really help to better allocate resources if needed.
I hope this all makes sense and Google actually did a very good job of explaining these resources on their analytics guide. I would take a look there as well to get a better understanding before diving right in.
-
The reason for so many duplicate urls is that classified ads limit the number of posting to one url from one classified account. To post multiple ads, therefore, you create multiple websites with different urls.
I appreciate you bearing with me. Making headway with classified ads vs. google seo are two different entities. And this is a area with scant information on it, as if classifieds are the black sheep of the family. But getting a 2:1 ads v. seo traffic ratio out of the experience.
Creating a couple of additional websites with different urls accomplishes the ability to reach a wider audience with classified ads. One goes where the traffic is.
But does using canonicals that way offend Google?
I have consciously done a u-turn on this account in terms of time and seen both seo and referral traffic increase in the past couple of months.
But thinking that by increasing SEO ranking = more traffic = revenue.
Adding twitter, quora, facebook since October has given the site a nice boost. However, Yahoo Answers did nothing.
It all comes down to do those canonicals get penalized with Google? Is my seo traffic being suppressed because of it?
-
Your offer is inviting. I do want to hear more about what traffic drivers are creating the most conversions on.
-
In my opinion no. The canonical is telling search engines that there are pages with similar content that do exist, but one of them is the one you want to be crawled for the information and content.
Best practices suggest that you only have one canonical per page, but I am unsure as to the penalties associated with having more.
I am still confused as to why you couldn't use tracking URLs to achieve your goals because it allows you to see which site is referring the traffic without having to create multiple URLs. Tracking URLs are different from analytics tracking that you have installed on your sites.
-
Goal is to post as many classified ads as possible, which takes multiple duplicate urls on different websites to be competitive, without those duplicate pages impacting the seo ranking on the original site.
Do not care about SEO ranking on those duplicate pages. Just using them to drive traffic via classified ads.
My goal is to have the same page but with multiple urls in order to post several classified ads daily without being penalized by Google.
Have Google Analytics tracking already in place.Using same tracking code for the duplicated pages on different sites as using on original site. I see the # of visitors coming to the site from those pages.
I have the increased referral traffic the customer wants.
I want to make sure I am not hurting my SEO traffic, that Google isn't penalizing me for the duplicate pages on other sites.
My seo traffic is increasing, due to intensive improvements to the content, keywords, etc.
But do those duplicate pages on different website urls using canonicals to the original page hurt my rankings?
-
Im with brooke on this one.
Still don't see the exact point of your approach?
If I had to choose between the 2 options you are giving I would go with the rel=canonical but it all depends on the true meaning of your assignment. That is not very clear in this case.
Jarno
-
David,
Something else you may want to try are tracking URLs. If you are utilizing Google Analytics, you can setup tracking URLs that allow you to know which website the clicks are coming from, but also allows you to point users to the same URL/content on the website.
There are a lot of templates out there that can help you to get started using them, but once you do, it makes it a lot easier to track what mediums are driving what traffic. If you want to get really spiffy, you can start tracking what traffic drivers are creating the most conversions and also start to utlize multi-channel funnels.
If you are interested I would be more than happy to help you get started.
Hope this helps!
-
Whats your overall goal . It was difficult to get that in the post.
Do you want the traffic to land on your site ?
If so then 301 redirect all url to the url you want ?
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
-
Appending a code at the end of a URL
Hi All, Some real estate/ news companies have a code appended to the end of a URL https://www.realestate.com.au/property-house-qld-ormiston-141747584 https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/childcare-centre-could-face-prosecution-for-leaving-child-on-hot-bus-20230320-p5ctqs.html Can I ask if there's any negative SEO implications for doing this? Cheers Dave
Technical SEO | Mar 28, 2023, 10:09 PM | Redooo0 -
Old URLs Appearing in SERPs
Thirteen months ago we removed a large number of non-corporate URLs from our web server. We created 301 redirects and in some cases, we simply removed the content as there was no place to redirect to. Unfortunately, all these pages still appear in Google's SERPs (not Bings) for both the 301'd pages and the pages we removed without redirecting. When you click on the pages in the SERPs that have been redirected - you do get redirected - so we have ruled out any problems with the 301s. We have already resubmitted our XML sitemap and when we run a crawl using Screaming Frog we do not see any of these old pages being linked to at our domain. We have a few different approaches we're considering to get Google to remove these pages from the SERPs and would welcome your input. Remove the 301 redirect entirely so that visits to those pages return a 404 (much easier) or a 410 (would require some setup/configuration via Wordpress). This of course means that anyone visiting those URLs won't be forwarded along, but Google may not drop those redirects from the SERPs otherwise. Request that Google temporarily block those pages (done via GWMT), which lasts for 90 days. Update robots.txt to block access to the redirecting directories. Thank you. Rosemary One year ago I removed a whole lot of junk that was on my web server but it is still appearing in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | Feb 26, 2016, 10:02 PM | RosemaryB3 -
Absolute URL or Relative URL in my sitemap?
It there a benefit to using and absolute url in my sitemap vs relative?
Technical SEO | Feb 10, 2016, 5:18 PM | brianvest0 -
How do I deindex url parameters
Google indexed a bunch of our URL parameters. I'm worried about duplicate content. I used the URL parameter tool in webmaster to set it so future parameters don't get indexed. What can I do to remove the ones that have already been indexed? For example, Site.com/products and site.com/products?campaign=email have both been indexed as separate pages even though they are the same page. If I use a no index I'm worried about de indexing the product page. What can I do to just deindexed the URL parameter version? Thank you!
Technical SEO | May 8, 2015, 11:05 AM | BT20090 -
Singular vs plural in urls
In keyword research for an ecommerce site, I've found that widget, singular gets a lot more searches than widgets, plural AND is much less competitive. Is it better for SEO purposes to have the URLs (and matching title tags) in the catalog as /brass-widget.html, /steel-widget.html, etc., or /brass-widgets.html, etc.? I'm worried that a) searches for widgets will pass by the singular urls but not vice versa, and b) the singular form will strike visitors as bad grammar. Any advice?
Technical SEO | Feb 8, 2012, 5:47 PM | AmericanOutlets0 -
Someone is redirecting their url to mine
Hello, I have just discovered that a company in Poland www.realpilot.pl is directing their domain to ours www.transair.co.uk. We have not authorised this, neither do we want this. I have contacted the company and the webmaster to get it removed. If you search for the domain name www.realpilot.pl we (www.transair.co.uk) come up top. My biggest worry is that we will get penalised by Google for this re-direct as it appears to be done using some kind of frame. Does anyone know anything about this kind of thing? Many Thanks Rob Martin
Technical SEO | Sep 16, 2011, 3:34 PM | brightonseorob0 -
Products with discrete URLs for each color
here is the issue. i have an ecommerce site that on a category page, shows each individual color for each product sold. and there is a distinct URL for each color. each product page shares the same content, with the only potentially differentiating factor being customer reviews (not nearly enough of these to differentiate anything). so we have URLs like: www.domain.com/product-green www.domain.com/product-yellow www.domain.com/product-red and so on. i am looking for a way to consolidate these URL while still showing all colors on the category page. the first solution i am considering is using the hash tag. so we would create www.domain.com/product#green, www.domain.com/product#yellow, www.domain.com/product#red. if possible, i would set the canonical tag as www.domain.com/product. the second solution would be to use the canonical tag and keep the URLs as is. the issue i see here is that we would need to create www.domain.com/product and show that page somewhere. www.domain.com/product would the URL that the above color URLs would canonicalize to. what would be the preferred solution? or is there something else?
Technical SEO | Sep 14, 2011, 6:58 PM | rakesh_patel0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | May 27, 2011, 12:14 PM | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0