Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical

    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.

    Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    5
    7273
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • ostesmorbrod
      ostesmorbrod last edited by

      A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page  is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google.

      The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way).

      So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible...

      What would be your recommendation on this issue?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Nigel_Carr
        Nigel_Carr last edited by

        Hi Kenneth,

        I think it depends on whether you truly operate as a local business within that city location.

        If you intend to advertise to a specific city then the intent changes from finding you on a national level to finding you at a city specific level. If you truly operate (and you haven't said) from that city location then you could really optimise the page as city specific so would rank highly in that local area.

        You could make the page different from the national page by including photos of the city with appropriate Alts and a little about the city itself. You'd find it relatively easy to rank at a local level for the page.

        If you do not operate at City level (with a local office) and are a national company simply targeting a specific city to sell to then I would canonicalize the page back to the generic. It begs the question though why you would want a city focused page in the first place and why the national one wouldn't suffice.

        I hope that clears (and not muddies!) your thinking!

        Regards

        Nigel

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • ostesmorbrod
          ostesmorbrod @Alick300 last edited by

          Thanks, that's a valid point!

          I've also seen Rand's great whiteboard Friday post. And one issue comes to mind:

          If the pages used for PPC campaigns have the same intent as the generic, with relevant actions/conversions for the customer, shouldn't these signals be available to Google? Hence rel=canonical would be the best solution? Or?...

          Rand did not mention a case like this as I recall, and I guess I'm not the only one with campaign pages...

          Thanks for replying to this! It's an interesting issue for my client.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • Alick300
            Alick300 last edited by

            Hi Kenneth,

            If your landing page is only for Paid campaign then you can no-index and nofollow because there is no impact of no-index and nofollow on PPC landing page as well the QS.

            but if you are using for both PPC and SEO then you should use rel=canonical and here is latest video on rel ="canonical"

            Hope this helps.

            Thanks

            ostesmorbrod 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • andy.bigbangthemes
              andy.bigbangthemes last edited by

              In my opinion, I would also noindex nofollow since these pages don't provide any true value when compared to the main one. I'm actually curious to see what others say here.

              Rand did a really good whiteboard friday on this recently -> https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical it may solve your question.

              Have a good day 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • yaelslater

                Conditional Noindex for Dynamic Listing Pages?

                Hi, We have dynamic listing pages that are sometimes populated and sometimes not populated. They are clinical trial results pages for disease types, some of which don't always have trials open. This means that sometimes the CMS produces a blank page -- pages that are then flagged as thin content. We're considering implementing a conditional noindex -- where the page is indexed only if there are results. However, I'm concerned that this will be confusing to Google and send a negative ranking signal. Any advice would be super helpful. Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater
                0
              • Tylerj

                Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?

                I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj
                0
              • SEO_Promenade

                When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?

                In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing  rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade
                0
              • fablau

                Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?

                Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                0
              • askotzko

                Does rel=canonical fix duplicate page titles?

                I implemented rel=canonical on our pages which helped a lot, but my latest Moz crawl is still showing lots of duplicate page titles (2,000+). There are other ways to get to this page (depending on what feature you clicked, it will have a different URL) but will have the same page title. Does having rel=canonical in place fix the duplicate page title problem, or do I need to change something else? I was under the impression that the canonical tag would address this by telling the crawler which URL was the URL and the crawler would only use that one for the page title.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | askotzko
                0
              • Grenadi

                301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?

                Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi
                0
              • nicole.healthline

                Robots.txt & url removal vs. noindex, follow?

                When de-indexing pages from google, what are the pros & cons of each of the below two options: robots.txt & requesting url removal from google webmasters Use the noindex, follow meta tag on all doctor profile pages Keep the URLs in the Sitemap file so that Google will recrawl them and find the noindex meta tag make sure that they're not disallowed by the robots.txt file

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
                0
              • Peter264

                All page files in root? Or to use directories?

                We have thousands of pages on our website; news articles, forum topics, download pages... etc - and at present they all reside in the root of the domain /. For example: /aosta-valley-i6816.html
                /flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
                /what-is-best-addon-t3360.html We are considering moving over to a new URL system where we use directories.  For example, the above URLs would be the following: /images/aosta-valley-i6816.html
                /downloads/flight-sim-concorde-d1101.html
                /forums/what-is-best-addon-t3360.html Would we have any benefit in using directories for SEO purposes?  Would our current system perhaps mean too many files in the root / flagging as spammy?  Would it be even better to use the following system which removes file endings completely and suggests each page is a directory: /images/aosta-valley/6816/
                /downloads/flight-sim-concorde/1101/
                /forums/what-is-best-addon/3360/ If so, what would be better: /images/aosta-valley/6816/ or /images/6816/aosta-valley/ Just looking for some clarity to our problem! Thank you for your help guys!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.