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
-
I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
Technical SEO | | undrdog990 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
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 -
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 -
Blog post summary pages
I'm wondering post-panda if its wise to block access to blog post summary pages like this one: http://www.howtotradestocks.org/blog/page/15/ Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | | jkundrotas0 -
Singular vs plural in urls
In keyword research for an ecommerce site, I've found that widget, singular gets a lot more searches than widgets, plural AND is much less competitive. Is it better for SEO purposes to have the URLs (and matching title tags) in the catalog as /brass-widget.html, /steel-widget.html, etc., or /brass-widgets.html, etc.? I'm worried that a) searches for widgets will pass by the singular urls but not vice versa, and b) the singular form will strike visitors as bad grammar. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | AmericanOutlets0 -
How best to redirect URL from expired classified ads?
We have problem because our content are classifieds. Every ad expired after one or two mounts and then ad becomes inactive and we keep his page for one mount latter like a same page but we ad a notice that ad is inactive. After that we delete the ad and his page but need to redirect that URL to search results page which contains similar ads because we don't want to lose the traffic form that pages. How is the best way to redirect ad URL? Our thinking was to redirect internal without 301 redirection because the httacces file will be very big after a while and we are thinking to try a canonicalization because we don't want engine to think that we have to much duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | Donaab0