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.
Canonical tag - but Title and Description are slightly different
-
I am building a new SEO site with a "Silo" / Themed architecture. I have a travel website selling hotel reservations. I list a hotel page under a city page - example, www.abc.com/Dallas/Hilton.html Then I use that same property under a segment within the city - example www.abc.com/Dallas/Downtown/Hilton.html, so there are two URLs with the same content
Both pages are identical, except I want to customize the Title and Description. I want to customize the title and description to build a consistent theme - for example the /Downtown/Hilton page will have the words "Near Downtown" in the Title and Description, while the primary city Hilton page will not. So I have two questions about this.
-
First, is it okay to use a canonical tag if the Title and Description are slightly different? Everything else is identical.
-
If so, will Google crawl and comprehend the unique Title and Description on the "Downtown" silo?
I want Google to see that I have several "supporting" pages to my main landing page(s). I want to present to Google 5 supporting pages in each silo that each has a supporting keyword theme. But I'm not sure if Google will consider content of pages that point to a different page using the canonical tag.
Please see this supporting example: http://d.pr/i/aQPv
Thanks for your insights.
Rob
-
-
Kurt,
Just wanted to let you know, I decided to go with option 1 above. This is the long route, but the purest form of SEO. It will cost me more money up front, and will take time to develop, but I think its our best bet for the long run.
Thanks again for your help. I understand the canonical tag better now.
Rob
-
Kurt,
Thanks again for your insights. I appreciate you taking the time to comprehend my question so thoroughly. I am still learning this, and its good to get your input. I am leaning toward doing this without a canonical tag. I still feel that by adding the canonical tag it should send a clear signal to Google that I'm not trying to manipulate the results, as I'm effectively removing those pages from the index. But if they "think" (and thats all that matters) I'm trying something wrong, then its probably not worth it.
I'll have to think about what my best course of action is, as this will have a big impact on how I proceed.
Thanks again for your input. I do appreciate it.
Best,
Rob
-
The canonical tag is telling Google to treat that canonical URL as the URL you want them to consider for the content. It can be used to give credit when you use someone else's content, point Google to the page you want them to list when you have duplicates of your own content, or assist in moving pages from one URL to another (adding a 301 redirect later) Honestly, I've never heard of someone trying to do what you are suggesting. I'm not sure exactly how Google would treat that.
As to whether Google would consider what you're doing as spam, it's a matter of degrees. If you're doing it a lot, then it's possible they might apply a manual action. If it's not enough to warrant an action, they may just disregard all but one of the duplicate versions of each page. Maybe nothing will happen and Google won't notice. What I can tell you is that they would consider it manipulation if they notice it.
The simple fact is this. You could just have one version of the supporting pages and link to that one version from each of the relevant main pages. There are only two reasons you'd want different versions of the supporting pages. Either you want to hone the content to get the best conversion rate from users, in which case each page wouldn't actually be duplicate, or you want to manipulate the search rankings by creating a bunch of duplicates of the exact same page to target different keywords. Clearly, since you don't want to work on the content of each version, you are solely doing this to manipulate the search rankings when the same user experience could be achieved with one copy of the page.
Please also understand that this isn't personal. I don't have a problem with what you're doing. Just be aware that it comes with risks. If Google discovers it, they may treat a bunch of your pages as duplicates and may even penalize your site and you be back in the forums in a few months asking how to deal with the fact that your rankings just disappeared overnight. You just have to decide if your willing to take that risk.
-
One more thought.
I could see Google seeing my strategy as manipulation - trying to rank the same piece of content for multiple keywords if I didn't have a canonical tag on the page.
But if I reference one page and designate it as canonical I would think that removes the spam aspect. Do you agree with this?
What I'm not sure about though is how does Google read a page with a canonical tag on it. Will they ignore the unique title and description - and I lose the "supporting" pages on my other silos.
I appreciate your inputs on this - and i'm not trying to argue, just hoping (maybe in vain) I can find an alternative to the 2 options you present above.
Best,
Rob
-
Thanks for your response Kurt.
This is slowly coming to me. But if I have five duplicate versions of a hotel property page, and reference one of them as canonical, I would be fine if Google disregarded the other 4 as I only need to rank for one of those pages.
What I do want to accomplish though, is get a ranking boost for the main page in the silo(s). I'm hoping that the supporting pages (which are duplicates and have a canonical tag on them) will provide some lift to the top level page in the silo.
Example: keyword "hotels in downtown Dallas" www.abc.com/hotels-in-dallas/downtown/ to get a boost from supporting pages which also have the term "near downtown Dallas" in their title / description.
Are you saying that Google will not even recognize the unique title / description of the property pages below - because they have a canonical tag referencing a different page?
If that is the case, then you are right, I am left with the two options you give above. I don't really like either scenario as option 1 is a lot more work and money, and option 2 really dilutes my theme. Are you sure that Google considers what I want to do as spam - even though its completely legit? Just want to double check.
Best,
Rob
-
Hi Rob,
I understand what you're trying to do and why; however, you need to understand that it's something the search engines (Google in particular) don't like. Creating a bunch of duplicate pages to try to target different, similar keywords is considered manipulation, even if each of those keywords are relevant. The search engines want unique content for different pages.
In regards to the canonical tag, the pages don't have to be completely exact to use the canonical tag. After all, it's recommended that if one site uses content from another, they use the canonical tag to give the original site credit. But there will be lots of different content on the two pages since they'll have unique headers, navigation menus, footers, and possibly title and description tags. However, using canonical tags the way you are suggesting will defeat your own purpose. If you have 5 different duplicate versions of the page and setup canonical tags on each to point to one of them, Google is only going to consider that one page. The others will most likely be disregarded. Thus, you still won't get the rankings boost for the optimized title and description tags on the other duplicate versions.
It seems to me you have two options that don't run afowl of Google.
- Create different pages for each silo and have unique content for each of those pages. Not only does this give the search engines what they want, but you have more opportunity to optimize the content for the keywords you are targeting. Of course it will take a lot more work.
- Have only one version of each page, but optimize it for each of the targeted keywords. This is probably less effective since the optimization will get diluted by targeting so many keywords in the content, but it will be a lot less work.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Thanks Federico,
I think I understand what your recommending. I just have one more thing to clarify.
I plan to build landing pages for a variety of city hotel related terms such as:
"hotels in Dallas"
"hotels in downtown Dallas"
"hotels with suites in Dallas"
"three star hotels in Dallas"
"hotels with pools in Dallas"Its quite possible that one hotel fits in all of those silos. So my thought was I would write content for a property one time, and re-use that page in multiple silos. I am not trying to mislead search engines, just optimizing for a variety of "facts" about that property.
I know the canonical tag can be used across domains, so I'm assuming its fine to use it here, even though there is a slight variation in the Title and Description. What I don't know is whether or not Google will read a page when it encounters a canonical tag, or does it simply stop at that point, and reference the root page. I'm hoping that I can build a consistently themed silo - all pages with a common keyword. Given that Google allows users to navigate to the URL of pages that have a canonical tag on them, I'm hoping that Google sees that content, and recognizes me as a subject matter expert.
If I can't use the canonical tag, then I would be forced to write different content multiple times for the same property page...
Thanks for your advice on this.
Rob
-
Hi Rob,
I personally wouldn't go the way you are heading... that could be seen by Google as a technique to manipulate search engine results (which you stated it is).
But to respond to your question, why don't you use the "definitive" version of the page as the canonical? If the one including "near downtown" is the most accurate (and complete one as I guess the hotel IS near downtown) then you should go with that and noindex the alternatives... although I know that's not your intention, that is the way it should be done.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 31, 2024, 4:19 PM | shabbirmoosa0 -
Difference hummingbird and rankbrain
From my understanding hummingbird is the fact that google is able to parse sentences and link entites to understand the meaning of content in a better way than with just keywords and rankbrain is about user intent, google understands that they are various ways to mean the same thing. Is my understanding correct ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 2, 2018, 4:46 AM | seoanalytics0 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 29, 2017, 10:18 AM | McTaggart1 -
Do I need to add the actual language for meta tags and description for different languages? cited for duplicate content for different language
Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and this community so pardon my questions. We recently launched on our drupal site mandarin language version for the entire site. And when i do the crawl site, i get duplicate content for the pages that are in mandarin. Is this a problem or can i ignore this? Should i make different page titles for the different languages? Also, for the metatag and descriptions, would it better in the native language for google to search for? thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 23, 2017, 11:45 AM | lynetteboss0 -
Tools to test meta descriptions?
Hey does anyone know of any tools which can test your meta descriptions against competitors meta descriptions for specific keyword terms. I know one tool called SERP Turkey which uses mechanical turk, i was wondering if there is any others on the market? Even a tool which can automatically score your meta description against others on the SERP results page. E..g optimised, keyword, call to action, etc. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 25, 2015, 5:38 AM | jayoliverwright0 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 29, 2015, 7:06 PM | Atomicx0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jan 29, 2013, 10:14 AM | SamCUK0 -
Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
In performing a link: to my site, I found this: Video Of People Using Viagra - Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping <cite>www.planetherbs.com/affiliate-program.html</cite> - Cached -Block all www.planetherbs.com results1 day ago – Video Of People Using Viagra. Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping. Check Order Status. Natural and healthy products! If you go to that url, you will see it's just an affiliate program page. Some viagra spammer somehow changed the title and description metatags that google sees (not actually) and links from what appears to be spammy pages are pointing to me. I don't want to get dinged for this. How do I fix these for myself and planetherbs.com? And how did the spammer do this???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 25, 2011, 5:26 PM | KatMouse0