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.
Is their value in linking to PPC landing pages and using rel="canonical"
-
I have ppc landing pages that are similar to my seo page. The pages are shorter with less text with a focus on converting visitors further along in the purchase cycle.
My questions are:
1. Is there a benefit for having the orphan ppc pages indexed or should I no index them?
2. If indexing does provide benefits, should I create links from my site to the ppc pages or should I just submit them in a sitemap?
3. If indexed, should I use rel="canonical" and point the ppc versions to the appropriate organic page?
Thanks,
-
Thanks Jasmine!
-
Thanks for the great response Bob!
I have decided to structure my pages along the purchase cycle like this:
brandexperience.ca/seo-professional-services > brandexperience.ca/seo-strategy > brandexperience.ca/seo-strategy-free-analysis and brandexperience.ca/seo-strategy-free-analysisB
I will index the free analysis page and use it as a conversion landing page for both SEO and SEM. I'll have a B for A/B testing and use rel="canonical" for the B to point to A. B will always be the challenger for testing.
-
Thanks Monica,
I thought about your statement - "What's wrong with PPC visitors landing on your SEO pages?" and I decided I will incorporate the PPC pages into my SEO content architecture.
-
For the reasons above, you should noindex them, but do make sure that the Google AdWords bot can crawl them - if this is the same bot as the organic bot, then don't noindex. I heard from a reliable source that noindexing will lower your ability to gain a higher Quality Score as google doesn't know what your page is about. If you are using Dynamic Search Ads then you will need to point those to the seo pages on your site, not your ppc pages.
-
If your PPC pages use a part of the content that's already on the SEO page (duplicated content) I would noindex those pages. Trying to get both pages indexed can only backfire. A other quick indication, if those pages are only attainable through your Ads and offer no new information to users who started there visit on the home page I would also noindex them.
If however, your PPC pages offer unique value to your visitors they can't find on other pages on your website (or on your organic landingpages) you could let them get indexed.
For point 2: Having a useful internal link structure is a best practice for SEO. If your pages offer unique value I would add them (in a logical way) to your internal navigation structure. If however they **do not ** offer unique value those links won't be useful for your visitors and will only be there to support your SEO. In this case it won't do you any good.
For point 3: Your building a triangle. It doesn't make sense to try to give your PPC pages any status through internal links and then giving a canonincal to merge any status with your organic pages. Either way, I would not canonical those pages. Give them noindex or treat them like a normal page.
Since this question is pretty old, I would love to know how you handled the situation!
- topic:timeago_earlier,19 days
-
Wherever you have duplicate content you should try to minimize the effects, usually with canonical tags.
I would shy away from your strategy only because showing viewers one thing and bots another is frowned upon. What's wrong with PPC visitors landing on your SEO pages?
-
Dear Steve,
I've never heard of the importance of a landing page needing to be indexed as it's a single page.
I don't know how having a landing page could be of benefit to you.
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
-
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 20, 2016, 10:09 AM | BeckyKey1 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 22, 2014, 1:32 PM | maxweb0 -
Using a lot of "Read More" Hidden text
My site has a LOT of "read more" and when a user click they will see a lot of text. "read more" is dark blue bold and clear to the user. It is the perfect for the user experience, since right below I have pictures and videos which is what most users want. Question: I expect few users will click "Read more" (however, some users will appreciate chance to read and learn more) and I wonder if search engines may think I am hiding text and this is a risky approach or simply discount the text as having zero value from an SEO perspective? Or, equally important: If the text was NOT hidden with a "Read more" would the text actually carry more SEO value than if it is hidden under a "read more" even though users will NOT read the text anyway? If yes, reason may be: when the text is not hidden, search engines cannot see that users are not reading it and the text carry more weight from an SEO perspective than pages where text is hidden under a "Read more" where users rarely click "read more".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 1, 2014, 5:54 AM | khi50 -
Canonical link vs root domain
I have a wordpress website installed on http://domain.com/home/ instead of http://domain.com - Does it matter whether I leave it that way with a canonical link from the domain.com to the domain.com/home/ or should I move the wordpress files and database to the root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 10, 2013, 6:43 PM | JosephFrost0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 1, 2013, 10:01 AM | underscorelive0 -
Using the Word "Free" in Metadata
Hi Forum! I've searched previous questions, and couldn't find anything related to this. I know the word "free" when used in email marketing can trigger spam filters. If I use the word "free" in my metadata (title tag, description, and keywords just for fun) will I be penalized in any way? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 11, 2012, 1:52 PM | Travis-W0 -
Rel=canonical tag on original page?
Afternoon All,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 28, 2012, 1:56 PM | Jellyfish-Agency
We are using Concrete5 as our CMS system, we are due to change but for the moment we have to play with what we have got. Part of the C5 system allows us to attribute our main page into other categories, via a page alaiser add-on. But what it also does is create several url paths and duplicate pages depending on how many times we take the original page and reference it in other categories. We have tried C5 canonical/SEO add-on's but they all seem to fall short. We have tried to address this issue in the most efficient way possible by using the rel=canonical tag. The only issue is the limitations of our cms system. We add the canonical tag to the original page header and this will automatically place this tag on all the duplicate pages and in turn fix the problem of duplicate content. The only problem is the canonical tag is on the original page as well, but it is referencing itself, effectively creating a tagging circle. Does anyone foresee a problem with the canonical tag being on the original page but in turn referencing itself? What we have done is try to simplify our duplicate content issues. We have over 2500 duplicate page issues because of this aliasing add-on and want to automate the canonical tag addition, rather than go to each individual page and manually add this tag, so the original reference page can remain the original. We have implemented this tag on one page at the moment with 9 duplicate pages/url's and are monitoring, but was curious if people had experienced this before or had any thoughts?0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 6, 2012, 11:04 AM | Visually0