Rel - canonical vs 301 redirect
-
I have multiple product pages on my site - what is better for rankings in your experiance?
If I 301 the pages to 1 correct version of the product page - or if I rel caanonical to the one correct page?
-
You should read this http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066#301
Google seem to prefer 301 re-directs where possible, but in your case it may be much more straight forward to use the canonical tag. It was created pretty much for times where you have variations on a product (such as different colour shoes but otherwise identical, each with a separate page)
-
The Walrus is correct.
- Canonical the pages
- Update your sitemap.xml file to include only the canonical URLs you want Google to index
- Go into your Google Webmaster Tools account under: Site Configuration > Settings > URL Parameters - to help avoid unintentional duplicate content indexing as well
301 is more for obsolete pages that you want to point to new pages so you can retain PR (although 301's still lose a little bit of PR) and also used to avoid any guests from getting a 404 error from bookmarked or links pointing to that page.
-
Hi,
In my experience rel canonical if the product pages have an ID or session identification but are the same pages.
I only do 301 if the pages have different content os something like that.
Bye!
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
-
Help with 301 redirect code
Hi, I can't work out how to make this one work and would apreciate if someone could help.
Technical SEO | | Paul_MC
i have a series of folders from a old site that are in the structure:
/c/123456/bags.html (the "123456" changes and is any series of 6 digit numbers), and the "bags.html" changes depending on the product.
I need that to be 301 redirected to the following format:
/default/bags/bags.html0 -
Static site to wordpress - avoiding 301 redirects
Moving our static website to wordpress, pages currently end in the .htm extension and for reasons of me having to do all the moving myself and wanting to preserve link equity is there any way I can run the pages with a .htm extension in Wordpress? Tried using a plug-in by Daddy Design but it seems a bit hit and miss at times. I basically need to keep the url's the same as I will not be able to get the vast majority of my links altered to the new pages, plus I am doing this by myself!
Technical SEO | | Jon-C0 -
Can I Get Penalized for 301 Redirects (Too Many or In Any Scenario)?
A client of ours owns several domain names that are keyword similar to the domain they actually use to run their site. They are asking us if we should 301 redirect all of these websites to the domain they use. However, I don't want this to work against them and their site get penalized later for this. I have heard buying out competitors and redirecting their domain to yours is frowned upon and penalized when you get caught (they did not do this). We are also wondering if there is a limit as to how many domains you can 301 redirect and what type (keyword similar, misspellings, .net's, etc.) and if you are penalized after too many (i.e. >50). All of the domains in question are keyword/brand name similar only and do not exist as actual websites. We just want to do the right thing. Thank you for your help.
Technical SEO | | JCunningham0 -
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 -
301 Redirect & re-use
I have an old site which is being moved to a new tld due to re-branding. I understand I would do a series of 301 redirects from the pages of the old site to capture the authority and move to the new site. However, at some point in the future (probably 1-2 years) we may want to re-use the old site again for a different brand (it has a good brand, just not for what we're going after). Question is - can a redirected site be re-used at some point in the future? And if so, which site would new authority (links, etc.) go to?
Technical SEO | | uwaim20120 -
Google Webmaster redirect vs 301 redirect
OK assuming a client's website has the right tracking script (hopefully analytics isn't effected by this issue), ... what happens if the htaccess file has a 301 redirect to the www-address, but within Google Webmaster Tools, the address chosen to crawl by Google is the non-www address? How will Google handle and which address takes precedence in this situation? _Cindy
Technical SEO | | CeCeBar0 -
301 redirects for individual products - should I keep the old ones?
Hello We are just now starting up a niche site that will be the new home for a large group of products from an old site. Apart from straight up informative text links, we have set up 301 redirects for the 100 most important products from the old to the new site. Right now, we are in a transition period where we openly tell our visitors that we have a new site for this certain group of products. My question is: for how long should we keep the products on the old site? Can we remove them straight away, since our intentions of the 301 redirects is to preserve the serp positions for the most important products? Does it matter to google if we let the products remain on the old site for a while? Regards
Technical SEO | | jsigwid
Oskar0