Site splitting value of our pages with multiple variations. How can I fix this with the least impact?
-
Just started at a company recently, and there is a preexisting problem that I could use some help with. Somebody please tell me there is a low impact fix for this:
My company's website is structured so all of the main links used on the nav are listed as .asp pages. All the canonical stuff. However, for "SEO Purposes," we have a number of similar (not exact) pages in .html on the same topic on our site.
So, for example, let's say we're a bakery. The main URL, as linked in the nav, for our Chocolate Cakes, would be http://www.oursite.com/chocolate-cakes.asp. This differentiates the page from our other cake varieties, such as http://www.oursite.com/pound-cakes.asp and http://www.oursite.com/carrot-cakes.asp.
Alas, fully indexed in Google with links existing only in our sitemap, we also have:
http://www.oursite.com/chocolate-cakes.html
http://www.oursite.com/chocolatecakes.html
http://www.oursite.com/cakes-chocolate.html
This seems CRAZY to me, because wouldn't this split our search results 4 ways?
Am I right in assuming this is destroying the rankings of our canonical pages? I want to change this, but problem is, none of the content is the same on any of the variants, and some of these pages rank really well - albeit mostly for long tail keywords instead of the good, solid keywords we're after.
So, what I'm asking you guys is: How do I burn these .html pages to the ground without completely destroying our rankings for the other keywords? I want to 301 those pages to our canonical nav URLs but, because of the wildly different content, I'm afraid that we could see a heavy drop in search traffic. Am I just being overly cautious?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi there,
I want to dig in a little about what's concerning you here. Are you worried that you're splitting link equity? Because, it's okay to have 4 pages about chocolate cakes. There's no penalty from Google for having multiple pages about the same thing - just think about how many pages Nordstrom has for black sweaters. There's actually a benefit to having multiple pages on the same topic, if you're willing to write unique content for each page. It means you can rank for more long tail keywords, just as you mentioned your .html pages do, since each page will have a slightly different angle.
So, if your question was about duplicate content, know that you're okay.
Leave the URLs as they are, but tweak the page titles and headers so they more clearly target the long tail search term that they're ranking for. Link to the .html versions of /chocolate-cake from /chocolate-cake.asp so that's clearly the higher level page, and spend more time optimizing that.
If, on the other hand, what you're worried about is link equity, the idea that by having 4 pages about chocolate cakes (and 4 pages for every other other baked good), you're getting 25% of your link potential going to each page, making 4 PA 20 pages when you could have 1 PA 30 page, then there are a few things to look at.
If there are external links to all 4 pages, then your answer lies in your competition. Search for the primary keyword that you'd hope you'd rank for if you could combine link equity for all 4 pages with the Moz toolbar turned on. Look at your competition - would you be able to beat that? Does your DA compete with other pages? Would your potential link count, once you had links from all 4 similar pages, allow you to rank on the first SERP?
If you have no chance of ranking for your primary keyword, I suggest that you stick with your 4 variations and make sure you rank for a wide variety of terms around your core keyword. That'll get you more traffic, in the end.
If you could rank on the first page for your primary keyword once you redirected those links from the .htmls, try to consolidate the content from all 4 pages. If you're cautious like me, I would do it one page at a time, combining content from both pages, redirecting one page, and then making sure that the .asp page can rank for the long tail terms that the .html page I redirected was ranking for before moving on. If you're less cautious, you can do them all at once, but you may lose that long tail traffic.
Wow, that was a lot of "if"s! I hope I didn't lose you there. Also, I hope I answered the question you were getting at.
Let me know!
Kristina
-
I would not necessarily direct to the .asp canonical page immediately, although that would be my ultimate goal.
First, check the traffic on all 4 versions. Is the canonical the only one getting traffic now? Is it getting the most?
Second - is there any value on these pages or is it as blatantly duplicate as you indicated? If it's that bad, I would want it fixed asap too.
I suppose as far as the actual fix, yes I would 301 them to the canonical but it depends how "wildly different" the content really is. In your example, it's all about chocolate cake. Assuming that's part of what you are getting traffic on, how wildly different can chocolate cake really be?
You shouldn't see a massive drop in search traffic but it would be wise to run a bit of a test on one segment for say a month. Then do a month-over-month GA review and if it's worked out for you, continue to roll out full scale. But that depends on the size of the site, the potential impact, etc.
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
-
Why does a site that is worse than mine by every objective measure I can find, keep outranking me in search?
I’ve been working on educating myself about SEO all day, again. All-Star Telescope up in Canada. We have a competitor that consistently ranks #1 and I don't get it. Their site is full of duplicate content (straight copy and paste from the manufacturer site). They don't have any meaningful blog or video content to add relevance or value to their site. We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the the competitors page. Our site is slow, but theirs is slower. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page (a popular telescope). Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069?_pos=1&_sid=f0aa91cc2&_ss=r Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope?_pos=1&_sid=56abdabd4&_ss=r#description Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). The text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here, something that isn't being captured by the tools that I have. Is it simple the fact that they get more traffic? Is that why some people go and buy traffic? Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
Technical SEO | | nkennett
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE Canada We've worked with two highly ranked SEO's to try and figure this out, one in Canada, and one in the USA. I haven't seen a confidence inspiring answer from either of them. Posting on a forum is a bit of an act of desperation, I'll continue to work the problem, but it's discouraging to see the leader in my industry look like he's just phoning it in with his website.1 -
Search Console Indexed Page Count vs Site:Search Operator page count
We launched a new site and Google Search Console is showing 39 pages have been indexed. When I perform a Site:myurl.com search I see over 100 pages that appear to be indexed. Which is correct and why is there a discrepancy? Also, Search Console Page Index count started at 39 pages on 5/21 and has not increased even though we have hundreds of pages to index. But I do see more results each week from Site:psglearning.com My site is https://wwww.psglearning.com
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
The search button on my site no longer works. Any fixes?
I have a wordpress site (can be found at theFlooringGirl.com). On all the pages, there is a search button so you can search for words on the site, but it no longer seems to work. My original webdesigner put it in, and I can't seem where to find it/where to edit/fix it. I finally found something that mentions "search" in the widget section and it is in the tool bar, but I can't find where/how to edit/fix it. BTW, I do have two other smaller sites that have this button and it still works there...so if I could find where to edit, I could theoretically copy and paste the code...if I knew where). Any advice? Thx.
Technical SEO | | Jborgueta0 -
How do I fix this type of duplicate page content problem?
Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content URLs Internal Links External Links Page Authority Linking Root Domains http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 26 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html 30 0 20 1 http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ | 1,630 | 613 | 43 | 110 | As you can see there are three duplicate pages; http://rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/index.html http://www.rogerelkindlaw.com/ What would be the best and most efficient way to fix this problem and also how to prevent this from happening? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | brianhughes0 -
What is the proper way to deal with multiple product pages?
If an e-commerce site selling backpacks has 200 items and they only show 30 per page, what is the proper way to deal with page 2, page 3, etc? Do you let each page rank separately? even though they are competing on the same keywords? Do you use canonical tags on pages after the first page?
Technical SEO | | youngsgarden1 -
How can I have pages with media that changes and avoid duplicate content when the text stays the same?
I want to have a page that describes a specific property and/or product. The top part of the page has media options such as video and photos while the bottom includes the description. I know I can set up the media in tabs and have it separated by javascript, but everything resides on one page so there are no duplicate content issues. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside BUT what if I need to the photos and the videos to have separate URLs so I can link to them individually? For example, for a real estate site blog, I may want to send visitors to the page of the home tour. I don't want to link them to the version of the page with the photos because I want them to arrive on the video portion. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside?video=1 Is there any way to get around the problem that would result from the duplicate content of the product/property description? I do not have the resources in the budget to make two unique descriptions for every page.
Technical SEO | | WebsightDesign0 -
Can leaving up old web pages no longer accessible through my site navigation hurt my rankings?
My firm recently overhauled a client's website. As part of the project, we gave the content a new structure, eliminating certain pages and creating several new ones. However, I just found out that some of the "old" pages (the ones we supposedly eliminated) still appear in the Google SERPs. Somehow, the client - who handled the coding - let these pages remain live even though they can no longer be accessed through the site navigation. This seems like something that could hurt the client's SEO rankings, but I want to make sure before contacting the client and suggesting they take down the old pages. Can anyone confirm my suspicion?
Technical SEO | | matt-145670 -
Impact of 401s on Site Rankings
Will having 401s on a site negatively impact rankings? (e.g. 401s thrown from a social media sharing icon)
Technical SEO | | Christy-Correll0