Can I use canonical tags to merge property map pages and availability pages to their counterpart overview pages?
-
I have a property website, for each property are 4-5 tabs each with their own URL, these pages include the overview page which is content rich, and auxilliary pages such as maps, availability, can I use a canonical tag to merge the tabs with very little content to their corresponding overview page which is content rich?
I.e.
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview
This page has tabs for map, town info, availability which all have their own url i.e.
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/map
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/towninfoBecause these auxilary pages do not contain much content can I place a canonical tag in them pointing back to the content rich overview page at www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/overview?
-
I'd just add that if the solution chosen is noindex, to do the noindex, follow method, just to give the extra cue if there are links on those pages.
-
You could "noindex" them, which would mean search indexes would not list the content of those pages.
Keep in mind that Google doesn't penalize you for having little content, as long as it is unique. The challenge is found when you have a small amount of content wrapped in a page with a header, footer and sidebar with identical content as the rest of the site. If you do a word count you may find the overwhelming percent of that page's content is duplicate, which is a concern.
If you offered a blank page with a map that said "Map of 1000 block of Sesame Street taken January 2011" along with the image then you could index that page if you felt that might be something people might be interested in.
The determination you need to make is whether the content is of value to users. Is anyone likely to want to find these maps or other information directly from a search engine? If the answer is no, then it's fine to block them either in robots.txt or with a noindex tag.
-
So, for the pages with little content, should I just nofollow them so that they are not a part of the indexed site structure? These pages have very little content i.e. the maps page, so should I just add an exclusion to the page or the robots.txt file
-
In short, No.
Canonicals are designed to merge multiple URLs to the same page. For example if you have an "availability" page which can be sorted, your URLs might be:
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability/
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability/?sort_asc_field=price
www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability/?sorc_desc_field=price
Those four URLs all lead to the identical page. By using a canonical identifying "www.mywebsite.co.uk/property-1/availability" as your site's main page, it avoids confusion. All your link juice will apply to a single page, and Google will consistently direct users to the correct version of the page.
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
-
NoIndex tag, canonical tag or automatically generated H1's for automatically generated enquiry pages?
What would be better for automatically generated accommodation enquiry pages for a travel company? NoIndex tag, canonical tag, automatically generated H1's or another solution? This is the homepage: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/ You would enquire from a page like this: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation/sunshine-coast/twin-waters/the-sebel-twin-waters This is the enquiry form: https://www.discoverqueensland.com.au/accommodation-enquiry.php?name=The+Sebel+Twin+Waters®ion_name=Sunshine+Coast
Technical SEO | | Kim_Lazaro0 -
Should I keep writing about the same using rel canonical?
Hi, The service we provide has not so many searches per month. A long tail keyword that describes the service well has at the most 400 searches per month. We wrote a post for this keyword and we ranked number 1 for many months. Now we're on page 2 and I the truth is we stopped writing blog posts because we were raking well for our best keywords. I added a few new posts and lost ranking on my top keywords so I gave up, deleted them and recover the rankings for the keywords I wanted the most. The problem is that I have lost these positions and I know we're supposed to be updating the blog regularly. What would you suggest? Should we keep writing about the same thing and use rel canonical? There aren't that many keywords related to what we offer. I appreciate any ideas.
Technical SEO | | Naix0 -
Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP
Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under? No-following all these links and adding canonical? No-follow/No-index all client pages? need some advice here...
Technical SEO | | simplycary0 -
If the order of products on a page changes each time the page is loaded, does this have a negative effect on the SEO of those pages?
Hello, a client of mine has a number of category pages that each have a list of products. Each time the page is reloaded the order of those products changes. Does this have a negative effect on the pages' rankings? Thank you
Technical SEO | | Kerry_Jones2 -
Does rel= canonical combine link juice for 2 pages?
If two pages are very similar, and one should rel= canonical to the other, will the page authority pass from the page with rel= canonical to the target page? Also, what happens when you a page rel=canonical's to itself?
Technical SEO | | SkinLaboratory0 -
Home page canonical issues
I think I’ve got a canonical issue with a client’s site that I’m having problems with I’ve noticed in their analytics that they receive traffic from themselves. I’ve used ‘ rel canonical’ throughout the site to avoid any dup issues and I have 301’ed every other variation of the home page I can think of. I don’t have full access to the back end of the host to control any of the iis as it’s an asp site. They seem to be getting traffic from their site under the URL of, example.com I’ve 301 redirected www.example.com/home.asp www.example.com/default.asp www.example.com/index.asp to www.example.com And 'rel canonical' the home page to www.example.com but still seem to be having the same problem any ideas? Thanks
Technical SEO | | FarkyRafiq0 -
Canonical tag used on several pages?
Is it a bad idea to use rel=canonical from several pages back to one (if you are planning on no-indexing them)? Does this concentrate the “link juice” from those several pages back to one?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0