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.
Cross Canonicalization for domains with same menu
-
I have a client who took 3 pages from its main website and made them into their own domains. So that now, for example,
www.mainsite.com/page
redirects to
www.page.comThis is so users can be given access to the content on that specific page with ease.
Now, www.page.com has the same menu items as www.mainsite.com, so that users who select the menu items on www.page.com will be circled back to the main site.But this means that there are now different URLs for these pages.
ie:
On www.mainsite.com there is: www.mainsite.com/menu-item
(the content resides here)And on www.page.com there is: www.page.com/menu-item
(Which is basically "scaffolding" to support the page and a means to get around, so to speak.This is to make any and all pages accessible at either domain. ) I have only seen this type of URL on the Moz campaign crawl. In the real world, when a user selects a menu item from the www.page.com, it will circle back to www.mainsite.com/menu-itemSEO-wise, should I use cross-canonicalization to point www.page.com/menu-item to www.mainsite.com/menu-item? Or would this be splitting hairs since these are only seen on the Moz crawl?
-
@Shrine-SEO-Gal said in Cross Canonicalization for domains with same menu:
I have a client who took 3 pages from its main website and made them into their own domains. So that now, for example,
www.mainsite.com/page
redirects to
www.page.com
This is so users can be given access to the content on that specific page with ease.
Now, www.page.com has the same menu items as www.mainsite.com, so that users who select the menu items on www.page.com will be circled back to the main site.
But this means that there are now different URLs for these pages.
ie:
On www.mainsite.com there is: www.mainsite.com/menu-item
(the content resides here)
And on www.page.com there is: www.page.com/menu-item
(Which is basically "scaffolding" to support the page and a means to get around, so to speak.This is to make any and all pages accessible at either domain. ) I have only seen this type of URL on the Moz campaign crawl. In the real world, when a user selects a menu item from the www.page.com, it will circle back to www.mainsite.com/menu-item
SEO-wise, should I use cross-canonicalization to point www.page.com/menu-item to www.mainsite.com/menu-item? Or would this be splitting hairs since these are only seen on the Moz crawl?For SEO, using cross-canonical tags would help consolidate authority and avoid potential duplication issues, even though the structure is primarily for navigation and redirecting users to the main site. Adding canonicals from
www.page.com/menu-item
towww.mainsite.com/menu-item
signals to search engines that the main version resides on the main site, which is helpful in the long term.Since these URLs show up only in Moz crawls, this isn’t an urgent issue, but canonicalization helps clarify the content's primary source if search engines eventually pick up on
www.page.com/menu-item
. You might also want to set up redirects on these scaffold URLs if they don’t need to be indexed separately, which can further ensure consistency.
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
-
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Moving my domain to weebly
I am thinking of moving my html website to weebly. They offer a 301 redirect for my domain name. Is that ok for SEO?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao0 -
Redirect root domain to www
I've been having issues with my keyword rankings with MOZ and this is what David at M0Z asked me to do below. Does anyone have a solution to this? I'm not 100% sure what to do. Does it hurt ranking to have a domain at the root or not? Can I 301 redirect a whole site or do I have to do individual pages. "Your campaign is looking for rankings for the www version of the campaign but the URL resolves as a root domain. This would explain the discrepancy. Since there is no re-direct between the two, you can have brickmarkers.com 301 re-direct to www.site.com which will prevent you from re-creating your campaign to track the root domain. Once the re-direct is in place it will take a while for Google to show the www version in the results in which your campaign rankings will be accurate." Thanks
Technical SEO | | SeaDrive0 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
How to force a trailing slash after the domain name
My campaign analysis is predictably listing domain.com and domain.com/ as repeated content. I've searched and searched but cannot find a way to force a trailing slash on the end of the domain name unless there's a file or directory after it.. Is there a way to accomplish this using .htaccess
Technical SEO | | JollyBoy0 -
Block a sub-domain from being indexed
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle
Technical SEO | | kchandler0 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Secondary Menu - nofollow or other strategy?
We have a "secondary main menu" on a site that displays some popular pages of the site. They are in the main navigation of the site as subpages but we wanted to highlight them on every page of the site through this secondary menu. so this secondary menu is the same on every page of the site. So we have the main menu on the top of the site, subpages on the left and this secondary menu below the subpages (in a blue box so they stand out). Is this secondary menu confusing for the structure of the site or negative at all (in relation to robots, not UX)? Should we nofollow these links in the secondary menu? thanks for replies!
Technical SEO | | Motava0