Is there a way to forward banklink benefits from one domain to another without a redirect?
-
In this situation I have SiteA, and SiteB on completely separate domains. SiteA is the marketing front for the company and SiteB is an app that company owns. SiteB receives a fair amount of backlinks as it has the login page of the application where customers link to a branded version for their members to login. Additionally none of that domain is indexable including the login page. SiteB's domain can't be changed to be a subdomain of SiteA as it isn't technically feasible.
Initially I was reluctant to use canonical because as it isn't really duplicate content. Is there a method for forwarding any link-juice from SiteB to SiteA without the use of a redirect and would canonical be appropriate in this case? Additionally would SiteB's not being indexed negate any link benefit?
Edit: Typo
-
In this case where I'm unable to do any sort of 301 is there any other in-page options that might be a reliable way to forward link equity?
The other option is that I keep pressing to change the domain of the login page to a subdomain of the marketing site, which is unlikely at this point, but even in that case the subdomain would cause issues with link equity correct?
-
Yes it's highly likely the canonical would be ignored. Regardless, canonical tags are NOT commonly thought to pass SEO authority (only relevance and content duplication nullification)
-
Canonical tags avoid duplicate content and help to determine page relevance, but common current SEO thinking is that they do not pass link equity or SEO authority. If they do, it's not much - and not comparable to the power of a 'properly' set up 301 redirect
Even when you DO use 301 redirects, they can fail for loads of different reasons. One big reason is content similarity in machine terms (think Boolean string similarity, for the content of the old and new URLs)
If even the mighty 301 has so many stipulations where it can just 'stop working' (or never work in the first place) I'd be highly, highly skeptical that canonical tags would have the desired effect
-
Possibly as Google may ignore the canonical - however, if the money site is the one you are pointing to, it is worth doing. It does sound like a disconnect, as would expect both features to be on same site - assume a "buy now" - CTA and click onto a separate site has also been considered..
-
The two pages in question here don't contain the same content. SiteA is a marketing description and features of the product and SiteB would be a login page for that product. Would the lack of duplicate content cause an issue?
-
Identifying a canonical URL for each range of comparable URLs can enhance the SEO of both sites. This is as the search engine knows which version is canonical, so it can consider the links pointing at all the different versions as links to the canonical version.
Setting a canonical is similar in concept to a 301 redirect, only without actually redirecting.
So the best outcome based on the above query is canonical. I note that google on occasions does choose to ignore canonicals. But it sounds like your starting point.
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
-
Creating two websites from one and building up traffic to the new domain quickly
A client has an existing successful website that sells niche products - they are well known in their marketplace. They have two sets of key customers, let's call them (a) and (b), that need addressing in different ways to maximise sales. (a) is the more specialist end of the market, where people have complex needs - there are fewer of them but repeat business is likely, and we can talk to them in more technical language. (b) is the layman's end of the market - there is a vast pool of potential customers but they'll be more casual buyers and need to be addressed more in layman's terms. So what they want to do is to take their existing website, and essentially split it into two different websites, one for each market. The one that will use the existing domain, with all the links that have built up over the years pointing to it, will be the site for the more specialist end of the market (a). The domain name suits it better, which is why he wants to use the existing domain with that site and not the other. (b) will be a brand new domain. The client will write new product descriptions across the board so that the two sets of product information are not duplicate. I'd rather he didn't do this at all, because of the risk involved, and the difficulty of building up the traffic to the new site, which is after all the one with the best chance of mass market sales. But given that the client has decided that this is definitely what he wants, does anyone have any thoughts on what the action plan should be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | helga730 -
Where/how do you set up 301 redirects when keeping the same domain and not preserving the filename?
Hi there, I'm just reaching to to ask for some help in understanding where 301 redirects should be set up on a website when keeping the same domain but not preserving the original filenames? Essentially what is happening is an old website is being completely overhauled and brought up to date from a technical and usability standpoint. While the SEO isn't great naturally many of the pages have been indexed by google over time. A few pages have decent statistics and I don't want to lose the juice from them, but they do still need a lot of improving. So my question is this, would all the redirection take place in the .htaccess file only in this case? From reading here on Moz I think this is the case, but I need to confirm that. I was reading this article which has thrown me slightly: https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection but this seems more complex as the website was actually moving domains. Open to any insight and if you need further clarification or information let me know.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODarren0 -
Redirect domain or keep separate domains in each country?
Hi all Hoping this might be something that can be answered given the number of variables 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse
My main site is www.isacleanse.com.au (Obviously targeted to Australian Market) and also www.isacleanse.co.nz targeted to NZ. The main Keywords im targeting are 'Isagenix' for both and also Isagenix Australia, Isagenix Perth, Sydney (Australian cities) and Isagenix NZ, Isagenix New Zealand, Isagenix Auckland etc.. for NZ The Australian site gets a lot more traffic and Australian market gets a lot more searches - I also have a section www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-new-zealand/ on the Australian site. The question is am I best off redirrecting the .co.nz domain completley to the Australian Domain to give it extra SEO Juice?0 -
Redirection question
How would I redirect this URL: http://www.members.mysite.com/ to this URL: http://www.mysite.com/ ? I cant figure it out
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Redirecting, then redirecting back
Hey, mozzers! My first question ever... I have a client who has (fictitionally) WickerPatioHomeStore.com, which features wicker home decor. Not too long ago, they wanted a shorter, easier URL, so they redirected to another domain they own, WickerPatio.com (again, fictional). They saw somewhat of a drop in traffic, and wonder if there's a correlation with the words "home store" not being in their domain any more. When considering the two, I figure that relevant factors would be age of domains, history of content of the domains, and inbound links to each domain. Any thoughts on other things to consider? Thanks very much!! ~ Scott
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GRIP-SEO0 -
Redirects 301
Hello guys, I have a doubt. If I reedirect a url with a pagerank of 2 to a new URL, will I loose the PR? My problem is that I have a long url in one page wich is not effective to target a keyword that Im persuing. Im climbing in Google, however I want to 1º place and I dont think that with this long URL I will make it. Advices? Cheers! Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Multiple retail sites redirected to one
Recently our company has acquired several high ranking retail websites which sell only our brand of products. We are now considering consolidating all our online sales from these different retail sites to be direct to our main website. The question we have is how do we do this without negatively affecting SEO for these high ranking retail sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DennyGan0 -
Should I 301 Redirect Old Pages to Newer Ones?
I know there is value having lots of unique content on our websites, but I'm wondering how long it should be kept for, and if there is any value in 301 redirecting it? So, for example we have a number of pages on our website that are dedicated to single products (blue widget x, blue widget y, red widget x, red widget y). Nice unique content, with some (but not many) links. These products are no longer available though and have been replaced. So I'm faced with three choices: 1. Leave it as it is, and hope it adds to the overall site authority (by value of being another page), and also perhaps mop up a few longer tail keywords. Add a link to the replacement product on these pages; 2. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products to give these a bit of a boost, and lose the content; 3. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products and move all the old content to a new 'blue widgets archive' and 'red widgets archive' page? Would appreciate everyones thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigMiniMan0