What to do with localised landing pages on listings website - Canonical question
-
Hi
Run a pet listings website and we had tonnes of duplicate content that we have resolved. But not sure what to do with the localised landing pages.
We have everything pointing back back to the main listings URL http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale-stud-and-adoption/ but haven't pointed the URLs that show pets for specific towns and cities eg http://www.dogscatsandpets.co.uk/for-sale/dogs-and-puppies/in-city-of-london/ back to the main url. Obviously this is giving us duplicate content issues, but these pages do rank in local search and drive traffic into the site.
So my question is should we canonicalise the local pages back to the main url and if we do will this mean our local landing pages will no longer rank? Is there any alternatives?
-
I usually recommend noindexing search results pages, since Google has said they don't want "search results in their search results."
I was thinking about this this morning and I think one way to go would be to give advice on owning a dog in different areas of the city. For example you could say something like "In the City of London, the area is more urban and green spaces are fewer and far between. Dog owners in the City should expect to take their pups to a dog park for some regular exercise, and may want to consider smaller, lower-energy breeds who don't need as much time to run." Something like that. You could talk about nearby parks and dog-friendly attractions, endorse some local vets, list nearby pet hospitals, that sort of thing. It will take time to build out this content, but you can prioritize based on the existing organic traffic each page is getting, or start with your top converters and go from there.
-
Hi Ruth, exactly the answer I was looking for, thank you. Great article by the way, we had already implemented a lot of what you covered there.
I guess my only problem would be finding unique content for localised landing pages. Breed specific landing pages (eg 'cocker spaniels for sale') will be fine as I can feature breed descriptions on these and the latest listings. But a little more difficult for the page 'puppies for sale in London' for example. Maybe I could feature some breeder profiles for that area.
Would you also recommend putting a no follow on the search results if we put these landing pages in?
-
Canonicalizing all these URLs back to your main page will drastically reduce the total number of pages that will drive any kind of traffic. At the very least, I would look at which type of URL is attracting the most organic traffic (location, listing type, breed, etc) and work to make these pages real landing pages for these search terms - other than the listings, what other information could you provide on these pages that would make them more unique? Striving to make the pages more unique from each other will give you more long-tail opportunity than canonizing everything back to the main page.
Ultimately, I recommend you rework your navigation using a combination of facets and filters, in order to reduce duplicate content while still having mid-tail level landing pages. Hannah Smith wrote a great piece for Moz on this a couple of years ago that's still useful today: http://moz.com/blog/information-architecture-faceted-navigation-duplicate-content-oh-my
-
Hi
Thanks for the quick reply. We used canonicals as a long term fix. We had duplicate content all over. You've get the url that displays every listing on the site that I posted above. Then unique URLs for different types of breed, URLs for listing type (for sale, stud, adoption) and location Etc. Obviously all these different URLs just created loads of duplicate content as one listing could appear in quite a few urls.
So we used canonical on everything to the url that displays all listings. Except for the localised URLs that we left as is. But moz sees these pages as duplicate content, as some listings appear in URLs for two locations depending on the postcode radius and all appear on the URL that displays every listing on the site.
Does tes that make things clearer at all?
-
Hi Calum,
Going the canonical route is typically meant as a short-term solution when a site is under maintenance - it normally isn't meant to be a long-term fix.
From what I understand, you have a number of localized landing pages for your services set up and they are bringing in traffic to your main page.
You don't want to redirect or create tags back to your home page from all of your local pages as this will create penalties with Google. Your best bet might be to incorporate your local pages into your site structure in a way that would permit them to be easily crawled (and therefore easy to access) rather than redirecting all traffic to your home page.
This is what I think you might be doing when you say "we have everything pointing back to our main URL" - it would be best to create new pages for redirects if this is indeed what you are doing.
Maybe give me some more information on the previous duplicate content, where you started and where you are now and I can create a more specific answer for you.
Rob
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
-
International SEO: reposting my own posts to different ccTLDs versions of my website
Hello there Moz community! Moz has been super helpful for me and the team, keep up the good work! I have searched online for answers regarding my specific situation, but I haven't found any. I'm asking my fellow Moz users in hopes of an answer. Maybe this thread will help others too. I currently have this domain: https://eco-reusable.com/ I would like to target Ireland and the UK with my keywords so I have just bought eco-reusable**.IE** and eco-reusable**.CO.UK** My questions are: 1. In order to rank as high as possible for Ireland, do I create a new website for eco-reusable.ie using the same pages but changing all the content slightly so it is not duplicate content OR do I point the eco-reusable.ie domain to eco-reusable.com? By having two sites, we will add more hours but we don't mind if that will be of benefit in the longrun for ranking high in Ireland. I have the same question for eco-reusable.co.uk
Local Website Optimization | | Gael_Regnault
If we have to create three websites and make similar content (not duplicate), we will if it will be better for ranking high in ireland for .ie, in the UK for .co.uk and for the rest of the world for .com 2. If we create three websites, can I safely "copy/paste" my blog posts without being punished by Google for duplicate content? If so, how much variation do we have to have for each of the three sites if we are writing blogs that are the same context. Thank you in advance! 🙂0 -
How to create sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results.
How to create sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results . According to MOZ I need to have powerful individual pages to achieve top results my site has a 0 authority so for this reason I need to focus on powerful pages but how do I know if my pages are powerful or not.
Local Website Optimization | | A.V.S0 -
Landing pages of web pages for multiple cities served
I have a customer that services literally hundreds of towns. I'm trying to figure out the best way rank in each town. Should I create a landing page or a webpage for each city and optimize for each particular town ( facts/information about the town. SEO titles H1, H2 and alt tags? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Miles230 -
Sub domain for geo pages
Hello Group! I have been tossing the idea in my head of using sub domains for the geo pages for each of my clients. For example: one of my clients is a lawyer in a very competitive Atlanta market http://bestdefensega.com. Can I set his geo page to woodstock.bestdefensega.com? Is this a viable option? Will I get penalized? Thoughts or suggestions always appreciated! Thanks in Advance
Local Website Optimization | | underdogmike0 -
Australian local business website on a dot.com - how do I ensure its indexed/ranked by Google.com/au as priority
look forward to your advice My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US. We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting. I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content. How can I tell google its a site for people in australia? I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url? Thanks for your recommendations
Local Website Optimization | | bisibee10 -
2 Relevant local websites but closing one and redirecting it to an older site
We have 2 websites, 1 domain is about 10 years old and another is about 4 years old, the 4 yr old domain we are thinking of shutting down since its the same type of service we run but it was a 'keyword domain' that used to rank on 1st page but now its 4th page back. If we put the blog posts and other content + setup re-directs from the 4yr old domain to the 10 yr old domain, would this help the 10 yr old domain with more link juice that it might need for the extra boost? There isnt really any point having both websites up since both are about the same content and targeting the same local market.
Local Website Optimization | | surfsup0 -
How slow can a website be, but still be ok for visitors and seo?
Hello to all, my site http://www.allspecialtybuildings.com is a barn construction site. Our visitors are usually local. I am worried about page speed. I have been using Google Page Insight, and Gtmetrix. Although I cannot figure out browser leveraging, I have a 79 / 93 google score and for gtmetrix 98/87 score. Load times vary between 2.13 secs to 2.54 secs What is acceptable? I want to make sure I get Google love for a decent page speed, but for me these times are great. Bad times are like 7 seconds and higher. I have thought about a CDN, yet I have read horror stories too. I have ZERO idea of how to use a CDN, or if I need it. I just want a fast site that is both user and Google speed friendly. So my question is, what is a slow speed for a website? Is under 3 seconds considered ok? or bad for seo? But any advice is greatly appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0 -
Location pages for Landing pages
So i have a client for carpet cleaning in Seattle, but he doesn't just want to rank up for "Carpet Cleaning Seattle" he wants to rank up for sub locations such as Lynnwood Carpet Cleaning
Local Website Optimization | | tonyr7
Kirkland Carpet Cleaning
Kenmore Carpet Cleaning
Issaquah Carpet Cleaning
Everett Carpet Cleaning
Edmonds Carpet Cleaning
Bothell Carpet Cleaning
Bellevue Carpet Cleaning
Auburn Carpet Cleaning
Orting Carpet Cleaning
Monroe Carpet Cleaning
Milton Carpet Cleaning
Marysville Carpet Cleaning
Lacey Carpet Cleaning Right now the designer he hired to develop the website has created a separate web page for each of these location pages. the reason being he services all these areas and wants to rank up for all of these areas with basically the same keyword... SEO is fairly simple to me when it comes to straight forward small sized projects or targeting specific services in one set location. But with all these algorithmic changes I worry that this is not something Google may want to see.. What is my best bet with this project, and what SEO methods would you recommend for a site that has 40 total landing pages all with similar keywords just different locations?0