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    4. Canonical Chain

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    Canonical Chain

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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    • Nigel_Carr
      Nigel_Carr last edited by

      This is quite advanced so maybe Rand can give me an answer?

      I often have seen questions surrounding a 301 chain where only 85% of the link juice is passed on to the first target and 85% of that to the next one, up to three targets. But how about a canonical chain?

      What do I mean by this:?

      I have a client who sells lighting so I will use a real example (sans domain)

      I don't want 'new-product' pages appearing in SERPS. They dilute link equity for the categories they replicate and often contain identical products to the main categories and subcategories. I don't want to no index them all together I'd rather tell Google they are the same as the higher category/sub category. (discussion whether a noindex/follow tag would be better?)

      If I canonicalize

      new-products/ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 to

      /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17/kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217

      I then subsequently discover that everything in kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217 is already in /kitchen-lighting-c17 and I decide to canonicalize those two - so I place a /kitchen-lighting-c17 canonical on /kitchen-ceiling-lights-c217. Then what happens to the new-products canonical?

      Is it the same rule - does it pass 85% of link equity back to the non new-product URL and 85% of that back to the category? does it just not work? or should I do noindexi/follow

      Now before you jump in:

      Let's assume these are done over a period of time because the obvious answer is:

      Canonicalize both back to /ceiling-lights-c1/kitchen-lighting-c17

      I know that and that is not what I am asking.

      What if they are done in a sequence what is the real result?

      I don't want to patronise anyone but please read this carefully before giving an answer.

      Regards

      Nigel

      Carousel Projects.

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

        Anyone have any more thoughts on this please?

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

          OK, thanks for that - I'm still a bit cynical about that amd am pretty sure that doesn't go for a redirect chain but: The reason I asked for the person answering to read the question properly was so that I wouldn't get half an answer

          please could someone read it all the way through and give me their thoughts?

          Thanks.

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

            Full link juice is now passed through redirects.   Google stopped dinging the value of links that pass through a redirect about a year ago.   More info here....

            http://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608

            Nigel_Carr 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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