How do I properly use the canonical tag to avoid negative effect from having identical content on 2 url’s?
-
To illustrate… I have same website uploaded at 2 locations (url’s). Only the domain extensions are different.
www.myexample.com
www.myexample.orgThe benefit is that I may run some promos on one location and not the other to help in product surveys/testing. The website content is 98% identical and I understand this content duplication may cause SEO problems. The domain I wish to use for rankings etc is www.myexample.com
1) How do I go about avoiding seo problem? Do I need to place the canonical tag at www.myexample.org ie
2) Do I also place the exact same tag at the .com location or not necessary there?
- Is there an alternative or more effective option to resolving the problem?
-
Swiftseo
I, personally, would not have two sites with varying domains that are near identical. No matter what the reason, I think there is more negative than positive. I can name multiple reasons for why using this for testing is flawed, first and foremost.
I would pass on the canonical and instead use a 301 redirect of "testing site" to main site. That way, if there is anything in the way of link juice to pass it gets done. If you need help with how to on 301, there are various places to go or place a question in Q&A.The main thing you are hurting with this methodology is yourself. You have two sites competing against each other.
hope this helps,
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
-
Should I use canonical tag in these cases?
Should I use canonical tag in these cases? On the page itself (with the tag pointing to itself) On pages that doesn't have duplicate versions
Technical SEO | | GoMentor0 -
Canonical Tag when using Ajax and PhantomJS
Hello, We have a site that is built using an AJAX application. We include the meta fragment tag in order to get a rendered page from PhantomJS. The URL that is rendered to google from PhantomJS then is www.oursite.com/?escaped_fragment= In the SERP google of course doesnt include the hashtag in the URL. So my question, with this setup, do i still need a canonical tag and if i do, would the canonical tag be the escaped fragment URL or the regular URL? Much Appreciated!
Technical SEO | | RevanaDigitalSEO0 -
Custom hreflang tags in WP & using with Yoast
Hi My clients dev has added custom fields for adding hreflang tags to head of pages such as: "Rel Type", "The URL", and "Language Code" Am i right in thinking that until a different language/country version of the site is created these can remain empty or should they still be populated once added say with some sort of global reference or best left blank since will leave the head content global by default ? Also how important is it to add charset to the language code ? since seems optional ? Also this set up is on WP multi-site with Yoast and devs asked me the below: _One thing to note is that Yoast generates its own "canonical" tags - so if _
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
_you are going to use hreflang tags and canonical tags then you don't need to _
_add a canonical using the custom fields I have set up - Yoast has that _
sorted. _But if you are going down the route of NOT having any canonical tags - and _
_using a x-defult for the hreflang tags, I will need to try and suppress the _
_Yoast canonical tag so you can do this. Much depends on your approach and _
what you think is best. So how do i know if using canonicals or x-default, i take it best simplest to leverage Yoast and hence not add canonicals to custom fields ? Isnt x-default just for indicating language selectors/redirector not specific to 1 region? So long as havnt got those then good to proceed with Yoasts generated canonicals ? Cheers dan0 -
Missing Meta Tags - "thousands" using WooCommerce?
Recently took a site live for a client using WP/WooCommerce to replace their antiquated shopping cart site and have encountered thousands of "Missing Meta Description Tag" errors. Have researched and tried a couple different approaches, but nothing really seems to fix this problem. I'm happy to continue to research, but have never encountered this problem before. Anyone else encountered similar? If so, how did you fix? Which resources to start with? 2VKDRVx
Technical SEO | | twelvetwo.net0 -
Structuring URL's for better SEO
Hello, We were rolling our fresh urls for our new service website. Currently we have our structure as www.practo.com/health/dental/clinic/bangalore We like to have it as www.practo.com/health/dental-clinic-bangalore Can someone advice us better which one of the above structure would work out better and why? Should this be a focus of attention while going ahead since this is like a search engine platform for patients looking out for actual doctors. Thanks, Aditya
Technical SEO | | shanky10 -
Notice - canonical tag
I've got several errors pointing to canonical tag, but do not know how to solve.Any help? Rel Canonical Found 6 days ago <dl> <dt>Tag value</dt> <dd>http://www.yougraph.com/</dd> <dt>Description</dt> <dd>Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical.</dd> </dl> <a class="more expanded">Minimize</a>
Technical SEO | | nlopes1 -
Technical question about site structure using a CMS, redirects, and canonical tag
I have a couple of sites using a particular CMS that creates all of the pages under a content folder, including the home page. So the url is www.example.com/content/default.asp. There is a default.asp in the root directory that redirects to the default page in the content folder using a response.redirect statement and it’s considered a 302 redirect. So all incoming urls, i.e. www.example.com and example.com and www.example.com/ will go to the default.asp which then redirects to www.example.com/ content/default.asp. How does this affect SEO? Should the redirect be a 301? And whether it’s a 301 or a 302, can we have a rel=canonical tag on the page that that is rel=www.example.com? Or does that create some sort of loop? I’ve inherited several sites that use this CMS and need to figure out the best way to handle it.
Technical SEO | | CHutchins1
