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.
Multiple urls for posting multiple classified ads
-
Want to optimize referral traffic while at same time keep search engines happy and the ads posted.
Have a client who advertises on several classified ad sites around the globe.
Which is better (post Panda), having multiple identical urls using canonicals to redirect juice to original url?
For example: www.bluewidgets.com is the original
Or, should the duplicate pages be directed to original using a 301?
Currently using duplicate urls.
Am currently not using "nofollow" tags on those pages.
-
So you are saying 301 redirects are better?
Would amount to 50 redirects (in that ball park).
Does not affect google ranking?
-
So you are saying 301 redirects are better?
Would amount to 50 redirects (in that ball park).
Does not affect google ranking?
-
Google Analytics allows you to setup what are called tracking URLs. They can be used when you "tag" your URLs with tracking code that allows for GA to translate which medium is generating what traffic.
http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1033867 This is a tool that Google offers to help you generate your URLs. There are also spreadsheets available online that allow you to create the URLs in Excel but they aren't always 100% accurate. What you are doing is ultimately creating parameters that allow for custom campaigns to be setup within Analytics. This allows you to monitor more than just the clicks, but allows you to generate custom reports that are more insightful and provide better data.
Once your URLs and Campaigns are created and running smoothly, you will be able to look at the data of the multi-channel funnels. This feature allows for attribution to be given to the digital and non-digital channels that don't always get the credit for the conversion. There is a lot of data can be pulled from these models and they really help to better allocate resources if needed.
I hope this all makes sense and Google actually did a very good job of explaining these resources on their analytics guide. I would take a look there as well to get a better understanding before diving right in.
-
The reason for so many duplicate urls is that classified ads limit the number of posting to one url from one classified account. To post multiple ads, therefore, you create multiple websites with different urls.
I appreciate you bearing with me. Making headway with classified ads vs. google seo are two different entities. And this is a area with scant information on it, as if classifieds are the black sheep of the family. But getting a 2:1 ads v. seo traffic ratio out of the experience.
Creating a couple of additional websites with different urls accomplishes the ability to reach a wider audience with classified ads. One goes where the traffic is.
But does using canonicals that way offend Google?
I have consciously done a u-turn on this account in terms of time and seen both seo and referral traffic increase in the past couple of months.
But thinking that by increasing SEO ranking = more traffic = revenue.
Adding twitter, quora, facebook since October has given the site a nice boost. However, Yahoo Answers did nothing.
It all comes down to do those canonicals get penalized with Google? Is my seo traffic being suppressed because of it?
-
Your offer is inviting. I do want to hear more about what traffic drivers are creating the most conversions on.
-
In my opinion no. The canonical is telling search engines that there are pages with similar content that do exist, but one of them is the one you want to be crawled for the information and content.
Best practices suggest that you only have one canonical per page, but I am unsure as to the penalties associated with having more.
I am still confused as to why you couldn't use tracking URLs to achieve your goals because it allows you to see which site is referring the traffic without having to create multiple URLs. Tracking URLs are different from analytics tracking that you have installed on your sites.
-
Goal is to post as many classified ads as possible, which takes multiple duplicate urls on different websites to be competitive, without those duplicate pages impacting the seo ranking on the original site.
Do not care about SEO ranking on those duplicate pages. Just using them to drive traffic via classified ads.
My goal is to have the same page but with multiple urls in order to post several classified ads daily without being penalized by Google.
Have Google Analytics tracking already in place.Using same tracking code for the duplicated pages on different sites as using on original site. I see the # of visitors coming to the site from those pages.
I have the increased referral traffic the customer wants.
I want to make sure I am not hurting my SEO traffic, that Google isn't penalizing me for the duplicate pages on other sites.
My seo traffic is increasing, due to intensive improvements to the content, keywords, etc.
But do those duplicate pages on different website urls using canonicals to the original page hurt my rankings?
-
Im with brooke on this one.
Still don't see the exact point of your approach?
If I had to choose between the 2 options you are giving I would go with the rel=canonical but it all depends on the true meaning of your assignment. That is not very clear in this case.
Jarno
-
David,
Something else you may want to try are tracking URLs. If you are utilizing Google Analytics, you can setup tracking URLs that allow you to know which website the clicks are coming from, but also allows you to point users to the same URL/content on the website.
There are a lot of templates out there that can help you to get started using them, but once you do, it makes it a lot easier to track what mediums are driving what traffic. If you want to get really spiffy, you can start tracking what traffic drivers are creating the most conversions and also start to utlize multi-channel funnels.
If you are interested I would be more than happy to help you get started.
Hope this helps!
-
Whats your overall goal . It was difficult to get that in the post.
Do you want the traffic to land on your site ?
If so then 301 redirect all url to the url you want ?
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
-
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
URL - Well Formed or Malformed
Hi Mozzers, I've been mulling over whether my URLs could benefit a little SEO tweaking. I'd be grateful for your opinion. For instance, we've a product, a vintage (second hand), red Chanel bag. At the moment the URL is: www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150 Broken down... vintage-chanel-bags = this is the main product category, i.e. vintage chanel bags 2.55-bags = is a sub category of the main category above. They are vintage Chanel 2.55 bags, but I've not included 'vintage' again. 2.55 bags are a type of Chanel bag. red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag = this is the product, the bag **1362483150 **= this is a unique id, to prevent the possibility of duplicate URLs As you no doubt can see we target, in particular, the phrase **vintage. **The actual bag / product title is: Vintage Chanel Red 2.55 classic double flap bag 10” / 25cm With this in mind, would I be better off trying to match the product name with the end of the URL as closely as possible? So a close match below would involve not repeating 'chanel' again: www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag or an exact match below would involve repeating 'chanel': www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag This may open up more flexibility to experiment with product terms like second hand, preowned etc. Maybe this is a bad idea as I'm removing the phrase 'vintage' from the main category. But this logical extension of this looks like keyword stuffing !! www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/vintage-2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag Maybe this is over analyzing, but I doubt it? Thanks for looking. Kevin
Technical SEO | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Best Practices for adding Dynamic URL's to XML Sitemap
Hi Guys, I'm working on an ecommerce website with all the product pages using dynamic URL's (we also have a few static pages but there is no issue with them). The products are updated on the site every couple of hours (because we sell out or the special offer expires) and as a result I keep seeing heaps of 404 errors in Google Webmaster tools and am trying to avoid this (if possible). I have already created an XML sitemap for the static pages and am now looking at incorporating the dynamic product pages but am not sure what is the best approach. The URL structure for the products are as follows: http://www.xyz.com/products/product1-is-really-cool
Technical SEO | | seekjobs
http://www.xyz.com/products/product2-is-even-cooler
http://www.xyz.com/products/product3-is-the-coolest Here are 2 approaches I was considering: 1. To just include the dynamic product URLS within the same sitemap as the static URLs using just the following http://www.xyz.com/products/ - This is so spiders have access to the folder the products are in and I don't have to create an automated sitemap for all product OR 2. Create a separate automated sitemap that updates when ever a product is updated and include the change frequency to be hourly - This is so spiders always have as close to be up to date sitemap when they crawl the sitemap I look forward to hearing your thoughts, opinions, suggestions and/or previous experiences with this. Thanks heaps, LW0 -
Landing Page URL Structure
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
Technical SEO | | briankb0 -
Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization
I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content. The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?
Technical SEO | | Jom0