Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
-
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created.
We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale.
The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
-
I'm with you on using rel=canonical but the new pages are slightly different in that they have a lot more content for SEO purposes. The content definitely provides value to users but wondering if the extra content means Google will ignore canonical tag? Google mentions that canonical is good for duplicates where pages are very similar if not identical.
-
So we're also planning on A/B testing the original PPC pages. There are going to be 2 control pages vs 1 test (original URL). There are about 12 control pages.
Normally I would use rel=canonical for landing pages if the control page was actually ranking organically which is the case now but we're going to block them from search results when the new organic pages roll out. I'm assuming no indexing the test variations would be the best direction to take?
-
Yes, this is exactly what's happening
-
Yes, they don't want to change URLs in all their marketing campaigns (offline, email, social media, etc)
-
Hi,
In my view add content in existing PPC page which is ranking in search results and ask PPC team to create a new landing page.
PPC campaign performance won't be derailed by having a new landing page
Hope it helps!!!
Thanks
-
The canonical option would be the route I went with in this scenario.
If you are going to noindex them, make sure that you audit the pages to see what links are pointing to the pages. If there is value them, canonicalization would be a better approach.
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
-
Rel=Canonical for filter pages
Hi folks, I have a bit of a dilemma that I'd appreciate some advice on. We'll just use the solid wood flooring of our website as an example in this case. We use the rel=canonical tag on the solid wood flooring listings pages where the listings get sorted alphabetically, by price etc.
Technical SEO | | LukeyB30
e.g. http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/?orderBy=highestprice uses the canonical tag to point to http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/ as the main page. However, we also uses filters on our site which allows users to filter their search by more specific product features e.g.
http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm/
http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/natural-lacquered/ We don't use the canonical tag on these pages because they are great long-tail keyword targeted pages so I want them to rank for phrases like "18mm solid wood flooring". But, in not using the canonical tag, I'm finding google is getting confused and ranking the wrong page as the filters mean there is a huge number of possible URLs for a given list of products. For example, Google ranks this page for the phrase "18mm solid wood flooring" http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm,116mm/ This is no good. This is a combination of two filters and so the listings are very refined, so if someone types the above phrase into Google and lands on this page their first reaction will be "there are not many products here". Google should be ranking the page with only the 18mm filter applied: http://www.kensyard.co.uk/products/category/solid-wood-flooring/f/18mm How would you recommend I go about rectifying this situation?
Thanks, Luke0 -
Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?
If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Is rel=canonical needed for URLs with Google Analytics query strings?
If a page URL has Google Analytics query strings, does the page need a canonical tag? e.g., something.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=mar-2013-nsl I have rel=canonical on all our pages because some of them will be accessed via URLs that have non-Google strings. The strings are only for marketing purposes, not for identifying a specific page to display. e.g., something.com/?source=acme Should I only implement the canonical tag on the pages that might have non-Google marketing strings in the URL?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
Incorrect rel canonical , impacts ?
Incorrect use of canonical code.. and why have they used the strange code surrounding it. Hi there seo guys, I need some help.. a site I am working on has used the rel canonical tag incorrectly. they have used the code on the cannon page not on the duplicate pages.. there is also some other strange code with it. I will show and hide the url.. However I wanted to know if this would stop google bots crawling this page correctly as they dont seem to rank very well either.. here is the code:
Technical SEO | | ibusmedia0 -
I know I'm missing pages with my page level 301 re-directs. What can I do?
I am implementing page level re-directs for a large site but I know that I will inevitably miss some pages. Is there an additional safety net root level re-direct that I can use to catch these pages and send them to the homepage?
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0 -
Any Positive Experiences with Rel=Next Rel=Prev for pagination?
Hi Mozzers! Can you share your experience and observations in implementing rel=next rel=prev on sites you've worked on?
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Rel="canonical" for PFDs?
Hello there, We have a lot of PDFs that seem to end up on other websites. I was wondering if there was a way to make sure that our website gets the credit/authority as the original creator. Besides linking directly from the PDF copy to our pages, is anyone aware of strategy for letting Google know that we are the original publishers? I know search engines can index HTML versions of PDFs, so is there anyway to get them to index a rel="canonical" tag as well? Thoughts/Ideas?
Technical SEO | | Tektronix0
