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  4. Sub Domain rel=canonical to Main Domain

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Sub Domain rel=canonical to Main Domain

White Hat / Black Hat SEO
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  • Joseph-Vodafone
    Joseph-Vodafone last edited by Sep 6, 2016, 12:32 PM

    Just a quick one, i have the following example scenario.

    Main Domain: http://www.test.com

    Sub Domain: http://sub.test.com

    What I am wondering is I can add onto the sub domain a rel=canonical to the main domain. I dont want to de-index the whole sub domain just a few pages are duplicated from the main site.

    Is it easier to de-index the individual sub domain pages or add the rel=canonical back to the main domain.

    Much appreciated

    Joseph

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Linda-Vassily
      Linda-Vassily last edited by Sep 7, 2016, 4:38 PM Sep 7, 2016, 4:38 PM

      Canonicalizing http://sub.test.com to http://www.test.com will tell Google that those two individual pages are the same and it should only index http://www.test.com--it won't affect other pages on the subdomain.

      If you only have a few subdomain pages that are duplicates of root domain pages, you can just use canonicals to indicate which pages you want indexed. You won't need to noindex the duplicate ones--they will fall out of Google's index naturally once Google sees which are the preferred, canonical ones.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • GastonRiera
        Gaston Riera last edited by Sep 6, 2016, 1:51 PM Sep 6, 2016, 1:51 PM

        Hi there,

        The Rel=canonical will not de-index those pages.

        To de-index, add a rel=robots with a noindex tag. And also add the rel=canonical or just redirect 301 the page. Of course, do it to those selected pages only.

        Hope it helps.
        GR.

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