Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
-
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created.
We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale.
The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
-
I'm with you on using rel=canonical but the new pages are slightly different in that they have a lot more content for SEO purposes. The content definitely provides value to users but wondering if the extra content means Google will ignore canonical tag? Google mentions that canonical is good for duplicates where pages are very similar if not identical.
-
So we're also planning on A/B testing the original PPC pages. There are going to be 2 control pages vs 1 test (original URL). There are about 12 control pages.
Normally I would use rel=canonical for landing pages if the control page was actually ranking organically which is the case now but we're going to block them from search results when the new organic pages roll out. I'm assuming no indexing the test variations would be the best direction to take?
-
Yes, this is exactly what's happening
-
Yes, they don't want to change URLs in all their marketing campaigns (offline, email, social media, etc)
-
Hi,
In my view add content in existing PPC page which is ranking in search results and ask PPC team to create a new landing page.
PPC campaign performance won't be derailed by having a new landing page
Hope it helps!!!
Thanks
-
The canonical option would be the route I went with in this scenario.
If you are going to noindex them, make sure that you audit the pages to see what links are pointing to the pages. If there is value them, canonicalization would be a better approach.
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 and redirect on same page
Hi Guys, Am I going slightly mad but why would you want to have a redirect and a canonical redirecting back to the same page. For Instance https://handletrade.co.uk/pull-handles/pull-handles-zcs-range/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/?tag=Dia.&page=2 and in the source code:- <link href="<a class="attribute-value">https://handletrade.co.uk/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/</a>" rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" /> Perfect! exactly what it is intended to do. But then this page is 301 redirected tohttps://handletrade.co.uk/pull-handles/pull-handles-zcs-range/d'-pull-handle-19mm-dia.-19-x-150mm-ss/ The site is built in open cart and I think it's the SEO plugin that needs tweaking. Could this cause poor SERP visibility? This is happening across the whole site. Surely the canonical should just point to the proper page and then there is no need for an additional bounce.
Technical SEO | | nezona1 -
Canonical
i have some static webpages in root and wordpress installed in subdirectory , Canonical tag for the whole website was with trailing slash , i stripped the HTML extensions for static webpages but i can't force to add trailing slash to the static webpages so i changed the canonical for html webpages from http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles.html/ to http://ghadaalsaman.com/articles but the Wordpress" http://ghadaalsaman.com/blog/ " still with trailing slash , when i've checked my google webmasters i found that my indexed pages dropped down 100 page ! what should i put in the canonical for the static pages? i tried to strip the slash from wordpress but i failed , so my static webpages canonical with no trailing slash and wordpress with trailing slash .
Technical SEO | | NeatIT0 -
Canonical URL
Hi there Our website www.snowbusiness.com has a non www version and this one has 398 backlinks. What is the best way of transfering this link value if i establish the www. address as the canonical URL? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SnowFX0 -
Banned Page
I have been using a 3rd party checker on indexed pages in google. It has shown several banned pages. I type the page in and it comes up. But it is nowhere to be found for me to delete it. It is not in the wordpress pages. It also shows up in the duplicate content section in my campaigns in moz.com. I can find the page to delete it. If it is banned then I do not want to redirect it to the correct page. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Technical SEO | | Roots70 -
Pages extensions
Hi guys, We're in the process of moving one of our sites to a newer version of the CMS. The new version doesn't support page extensions (.aspx) but we'll keep them for all existing pages (about 8,000) to avoid redirects. The technical team is wondering about the new pages - does it make any difference if the new pages are without extensions, except for usability? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
Incorrect rel canonical , impacts ?
Incorrect use of canonical code.. and why have they used the strange code surrounding it. Hi there seo guys, I need some help.. a site I am working on has used the rel canonical tag incorrectly. they have used the code on the cannon page not on the duplicate pages.. there is also some other strange code with it. I will show and hide the url.. However I wanted to know if this would stop google bots crawling this page correctly as they dont seem to rank very well either.. here is the code:
Technical SEO | | ibusmedia0 -
Have a client that migrated their site; went live with noindex/nofollow and for last two SEOMoz crawls only getting one page crawled. In contrast, G.A. is crawling all pages. Just wait?
Client site is 15 + pages. New site had noindex/nofollow removed prior to last two crawls.
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Too many on page links for WP blog page
Hello, I have set my WP blog to a page so new posts go to that page making it the blog. On a SEOmoz campaign crawl, it says there are too many links on one page, so does this mean that as I am posting my blog posts to this page, the search engines are seeing the page as one page with links instead of the blog posts? I worry that if I continue to add more posts (which obviously I want to) the links will increase more and more, meaning that they will be discounted due to too many links. What can I do to rectify this? Many thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | mozUser14692366292850