Using cononical tag instead of 301
-
I've got a bit of an odd situation... My business partner and I split up, and he's going to keep the company name. The website that I built for the company has some links to it, and I've managed to build up some DA and PA.
I want to get the link juice over to my new website. My former partner doesn't care about the link juice, he just wants a website that he can show people. SO, I can't do a 301 or 302, because that would take down the existing site. Can I just use a canonical tag that refers link power to my new website? Would this be harmful in any way? What should I do to accomplish getting the link power without a redirect, and without contacting each person who has given us a backlink?
-
I believe that canonical does pass link assets. If you have a canonical on Page A, pointing to Page B, all of the links that go to Page A will start showing in the link profile for Page B in Google Webmaster Tools.
They will show in WMT as.....
Via this intermediate link: http://yourdomain.com/page-a
-
Hi Erick,
In your case 301 redirection is the only option because you want to pass link juice canonical doesn't work in that case. If your partner doesn't care about link juice then you can put few do follow anchor text links on important keywords to your website.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
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
-
Redirect 301 still works?
Hi, yesterday a friend said that 301 redirects does not transfer your page rank or domain autorithy anymore. I could'nt find anything in internet saying it, but I decided to ask you guys, since I think you are very reliable. so, 301 redirects wroks for transfer page rank, and i can create better domains and transfer everything, or this strategy is gone forever now?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chablau0 -
Tricky 301 question
A friend has relaunched a website but his web guys (he didn't consult me!) didn't do any 301s and now traffic unsurprisingly has tanked. The old site and database no longer exists and there are now 2000+ 404's. Any ideas how to do the 301s from old urls to new product urls WITHOUT it being a massive manual job?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Setting up 301 Redirects after acquisition?
Hello! The company that I work for has recently acquired two other companies. I was wondering what the best strategy would be as it relates to redirects / authority. Please help! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colin.Accela0 -
Block in robots.txt instead of using canonical?
When I use a canonical tag for pages that are variations of the same page, it basically means that I don't want Google to index this page. But at the same time, spiders will go ahead and crawl the page. Isn't this a waste of my crawl budget? Wouldn't it be better to just disallow the page in robots.txt and let Google focus on crawling the pages that I do want indexed? In other words, why should I ever use rel=canonical as opposed to simply disallowing in robots.txt?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Undo a 301 redirect
Hi there, 4 months ago I have done a redirect from one domain to another. Now, after about 120 days I have just a few results from the old domain indexed. The problem is that I believe that the old domain name had a really big impact on rankings, as it had the main keyword in the domain name. I'm wondering now if I could restore the old domain just by taking out the 301 instruction and how will search engines react. Do you have any studies on that? Would it be possible? Matt Cutts himself did it with his own domain, but he doesn't talk specifically on the effect of the rankings: http://www.thedotcomblog.com/seo/redirects-after-change-in-domain-name Thanks in advance for any help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SandraMoZ0 -
Meta description Tag who should it be used and what should it describe?
Hi when using the meta description tag how is it best used? what should it describe? should it describe the topic or the services offered i.e should it be a sales message for the services. For example: a page that promotes the benefits of acupuncture whilst pregnant should it describe the page content or the service provided? i.e. acupuncture for pregnancy in Chester or acupuncture can benefit pregnancy because.... thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Should I be using rel canonical here?
I am reorganizing the data on my informational site in a drilldown menu. So, here's an example. One the home page are several different items. Let's say you clicked on "Back Problems". Then, you would get a menu that says: Disc problems, Pain relief, paralysis issues, see all back articles. Each of those pages will have a list of articles that suit. Some articles will appear on more than one page. Should I be worried about these pages being partially duplicates of each other? Should I use rel-canonical to make the root page for each section the one that is indexed. I'm thinking no, because I think it would be good to have all of these pages indexed. But then, that's why I'm asking!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0