301 canonical'd pages?
-
I have an ecommerce site with many different URLs with the same product. Let's say the product is a hat. It's in:
a
b) mysite.com/collections/head-ware/hat
c) mysite.com/collections/stuff-to-wear-on-your-head/hat
Right now, A is the canonical page for B and C.
I want to clean up my site, so that every product only has ONE unique URL, which is linked to from all the collections. So B and C URL will be broken. Is it necessary that I 301 them if they were already canonical'd?
Based on the number of products I have, I would have to 301 1000+ URLs. I'm just trying to figure out what I need to do to avoid getting penalized.
thanks
-
Just to have you even more comfortable 404s doesn't hurt your site
-
Ok that's exactly what I was wondering. I'm not worried about link juice at all. I'm worried if Google's algorithm will flag me because all of a sudden we have these broken (although canocalized) URLs
-
If those pages are linked only internally to your website you may not need to put any 301 at all.
301 are useful only, as Federico said, if you want to save part of your external juice. If you have backlinks you want those websites to change those backlinks to the canonical page or if not 301 that page to the new one.
If those pages doesn't have any external backlink pointing to them they shouldn't be ranking at all since they're canonicalized to another one, so you'll just need to avoid internal traffic to them changing your internal structure.
-
Also you can run URLs B and C through Open Site Explorer to see where they are linked from, go and update those links to the new link and then the 301 redirect is just a safety net for any that have been missed.
-
Yes, you should put a 301 to the new and unique URL, so that if you have any backlinks to those pages you get the link juice anyway. Plus, it will avoid potential 404s.
Hope that 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
-
Change Google's version of Canonical link
Hi My website has millions of URLs and some of the URLs have duplicate versions. We did not set canonical all these years. Now we wanted to implement it and fix all the technical SEO issues. I wanted to consolidate and redirect all the variations of a URL to the highest pageview version and use that as the canonical because all of these variations have the same content. While doing this, I found in Google search console that Google has already selected another variation of URL as canonical and not the highest pageview version. My questions: I have millions of URLs for which I have to do 301 and set canonical. How can I find all the canonical URLs that Google has autoselected? Search Console has a daily quota of 100 or something. Is it possible to override Google's version of Canonical? Meaning, if I set a variation as Canonical and it is different than what Google has already selected, will it change overtime in Search Console? Should I just do a 301 to highest pageview variation of the URL and not set canonicals at all? This way the canonical that Google auto selected might get redirected to the highest pageview variation of the URL. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDCMarketing0 -
Should I use a rel=canonical to the home page
Hi guys, I have a site where the homepage is ranking for the term 'industrial flooring' around position 30 and the actual level 2 industrial flooring page is ranking well below at around position 60. I'm happy for the homepage to rank for this term and would like to see it improve, so here are my questions: 1: Is the existence of the level 2 page preventing the homepage from ranking higher due to keyword cannibalization etc.? 2: Would the use of the rel=canonical tag pointing from the level 2 page to the home page have a positive or negative impact on the homepage's rankings for 'industrial flooring'? 3: Is there anything else I'm missing? Greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blaze-Communication0 -
Can I dissavow links on a 301'd website?
So we are performing link removal for a client on his old website (A), which is being 301 redirected to his new website (B). We have identified toxic links on site A and are removing, once complete we will undo the current 301, confirm a new GWT account for website A, and then submit the disavow report. We would then like to reapply the 301 redirect to site B while we are waiting for Google to process the disavow report, the logic being we can retain some current rankings on site B while waiting for the disavow to process on site A. Has anyone had experience with this method? I foresee some potential issues here but am interested to here from others on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub1 -
What happen if a canonical tag points to a noindex page?
Hello,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
I have question. We have hundreds of affiliates that have implemented our datafeed on their websites, and to avoid duplicate content issues we are requiring them to put a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to our own original product page. So, for example, if an affiliate has a page about our Product 101, they will have to add a canonical tag pointing to the corresponding product page on our own website: www.ourwebsite.com/products/product101 Now, since many of our product pages have defined a "noindex" tag (due to Panda issues), may that be a problem? In other words: what kind of problems could cause having our affiliates defining a canonical tag on their own product pages pointing to the original product page on our website which have a "noindex" met tag defined? Maybe it is a stupid question we shouldn't worry about, but any thoughts about this scenario are very welcome! Thank you in advance.0 -
Canonical tag vs 301 in this Panda situation - trying to wrap my brain around this!
Here's the situation. Let's say you have a development site that was created on a subdomain such as examplesite.webdesign.com. When the new site, examplesite.com launches, the developer forgot to remove examplesite.webdesign.com from the index. As such, two copies of the site exist. Because the development site existed first, examplesite.com ends up being affected by Panda and drops out of the search results. As a result only the development site is visible on Google searches. I've been trying to wrap my head around whether using canonical tags or 301 redirects would be best. On one hand you could insert a canonical tag on each page of the subdomain to tell Google that the correct version to index is examplesite.com. On the other hand you could do a 301 redirect from every page of the development site to to examplesite.com. Now, here's where it gets complicated. Because the new site has been flagged as a Panda site, in either case will it need to see a Panda refresh in order to be included in the index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?
For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually0 -
Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
Currently in the process of redesigning a site. What i want to know, is what is the best way for me to restructure the url w/out it losing its value (page rank) other than a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marig0
