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.
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
-
Canonical or hreflang?
I have four English sites for four different countries, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and I want to share some content between the sites. On the pages that share the content, which is essentially exactly the same on all 4 sites, do I use the hreflang tags like: or do I add a canonical tag to the other three pointing to the "origin", which would be the UK site? I believe it is best practice to use one or the other, but I'm not sure which make sense in this situation.
Technical SEO | | andrew-mso0 -
Do you need a canonical tag for search and filter pages?
Hi Moz Community, We've been implementing new canonical tags for our category pages but I have a question about pages that are found via search and our filtering options. Would we still need a canonical tag for pages that show up in search + a filter option if it only lists one page of items? Example below. www.uncommongoods.com/search.html/find/?q=dog&exclusive=1 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Rel=canonical on Godaddy Website builder
Hey crew! First off this is a last resort asking this question here. Godaddy has not been able to help so I need my Moz Fam on this one. So common problem My crawl report is showing I have duplicate home pages www.answer2cancer.org and www.answer2cancer.org/home.html I understand this is a common issue with apache webservers which is why the wonderful rel=canonical tag was created! I don't want to go through the hassle of a 301 redirect of course for such a simple issue. Now here's the issue. Godaddy website builder does not make any sense to me. In wordpress I could just go add the tag to the head in the back end. But no such thing exist in godaddy. You have to do this weird drag and drop html block and drag it somewhere on the site and plug in the code. I think putting before the code instead of just putting it in there. So I did that but when I publish and inspect in chrome I cannot see the tag in the head! This is confusing I know. the guy at godaddy didn't stand a chance lol. Anyway much love for any replies!
Technical SEO | | Answer2cancer0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
how to set rel canonical on wordpress.com sites
I know how to do this with a wordpress.org site but I have a client that does not want to switch and without a plugin I am lost. any help would be greatly appreciated. Jeremy Wood
Technical SEO | | SOtBOrlando0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Adding Rel Canonical to multiple pages
Hi, Our CMS generates a lot of duplicate content, (Different versions of every page for 3 different font sizes). There are many other reasons why we should drop this current CMS and go with something else, and we are in the process of doing that. But for now, does anyone know how would I do the following: I've created a spreadsheet that contains the following: Column 1: rel="canonical" tag for URL Column 2: Duplicate Content URL # 1 Column 3: Duplicate Content URL # 2 Column 4: Duplicate Content URL # 3 I want to add the tag from column 1 into the head of every page from column 2,3, and 4. What would be a fast way to do this considering that I have around 1800 rows. Check the screenshot of the builtwith.com result to see more information about the website if that helps. Farris bxySL
Technical SEO | | jdossetti0
