Noindex, rel=cannonical, or no worries?

[osvaldas]

Hello, SEO pros,

We need your help with a case ↓

Introduction:

Our website allows individual contractors to create a webpage where they can show what services they offer, write something about themselves and show their previous projects in pictures. All the professions and services assigned accordingly are already in our system, so users need to pick a profession and mark all services they provide or suggest those which we missed to add.

We have created unique URLs for all the professions and services. We have internal search field and use a autocomplete to direct users to the right page.

**Example: **

PROFESSION

Carpenter (URL: /carpenters )

SERVICES

Decking (URL: /carpenters/decking)

Kitchens (URL: /carpenters/kitchens)

Flooring and staircases (URL: /carpenters/flooring-and-staircases)

Door trimming (URL: /carpenters/door-trimming)

Lock fitting (URL: /carpenters/lock-fitting)

Problem

We want to be found by Google search on all the services and give a searchers a list of all carpenters in our database who can provide a service they want to find.

We give 15 contractors per page and rank them by recommendations provided by their clients.

Our concern is that our results pages may be marked as duplicate since some of them give the same list of carpenters. All the best 15 carpenters offer door-trimming and lock-fitting. So, all the same 15 are shown in /carpenters, /carpenters/lock-fitting, /carpenters/door-trimming.

We don't want to be marked as spammers and loose points on domain trust, however we believe we give quality content since we gave what the searchers want to find - contractors, who offer what they need.

**Solution? **

1. Noindex all service pages to avoid duplicate content indexed by Google

OR

2. rel=canonical tag on service pages to redirect to profession page.

e.g. on /carpenters/lock-fitting page make a tag rel=canonical to /carpenters.

OR

3. no worries, allow Google index all the professions and services pages. Benefits of indexing it all (around 2500 additional pages with different keywords) is greater than ttagging service pages with no index or rel=canonical and loosing the opportunities to get more traffic by service titles.

We need a solution which would be the best for our organic traffic

Many thanks for your precious time.

[OrionGroup]

I would recommend:

If the page content is truly that similar to the the others, I'd recommend using the rel=canonical tag on service pages to point to the profession page as the authoritative page

OR

Add enough unique content to the service pages to allow them to not appear as non-duplicate. This would involve either having your in-house team developing useful content or forcing your users to enter a paragraph of text that would only be used on those service pages.

OR

Last resort, you could noindex the service pages to avoid duplicate content indexed by search engines. If you noindex, you will have more control over which pages you are telling the search engines are most important.

Scott O.

[jws8118]

In my opinion the best option for your organic traffic is to try and keep the service pages.  The caveat is that you need to substantially differentiate the content.  You should brainstorm options with your team but some ideas that come to mind are obviously changing title tags ,adding some service specific descriptions to the top of those pages, incorporating some unique service specific video, add links to service specific DIY/Guide/Warnings/Other related educational pre-sales material.

If that becomes too much work for this phase of the project my next suggestion would be rel=canonical back to the profession page.  Ensure your profession page is designed in a way that makes filtering to the service level the obvious call to action and you should be fine.  This will hinder your ability to target all of those service level keywords with service level URL's but you could still create content around those niches and drive links back to the profession page.

Hope this helps