Open Site Explorer Question
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In OSE I have 3 of my top 5 pages as store.com, store.com/Default.asp, and store.com/default.asp -- I have a canonical version of at store.com/default.asp.
I have inbound links coming to all three urls -- b/c OSE is listing these as seperate pages does that mean the link juice is not being consolidated? Or is this not something to worry about?
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Thanks for the reply,
I actually noticed something after testing this the internal linking ...the company logo points to default.asp and the sitewide 'home' points to /...I agree that that should be fixed. Now the next question is what the deuce is Default.asp?
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Thanks for the reply... the problem is that the CMS that hosts the store cannot 301 from default.asp to /. The strongest signal it can send on the homepage is a canonical link.
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You should go ahead and 301 redirect your different home pages to a single one. If not, your problem of getting links to all 3 may not cease. I'm not sure, however how OSE handles canonicalization if the pages are not redirected. Anyone else out there know?
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Here is a decent thread on this question regarding link juice from canonical links:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/do-canonical-tags-pass-all-of-the-link-juice-onto-the-url-they-point-to
Here is the response from SEOmoz staff member Dr. Peter J. Meyers:
"I have to disagree about link juice. In many cases, canonical tags will work much like 301-redirects, and do seem to pass link-juice. I've even seen experiments where people used canonical tags to move an entire domain. I wouldn't recommend it (except in rare cases), but it seemed to work.
I am concerned, though, that you're linking internally to one version, but then using canonical to point to another version. I find that's a bad idea - while it sometimes works, you're sending a mixed signal, and it can cause problems for your SEO efforts. I personally think that a truly canonical URL should be used consistently across the site, including in internal links. Internal links are one of your strongest canonicalization cues.
Unfortunately, it's hard to say if link-juice is being passed, given the mixed signal. I'm afraid there's no great way to measure it, at least on the level of the individual link. I should add that Google also isn't a big fan of setting a canonical to page 1 of search results. They'd generally rather you canonical to a "View All" or use rel=prev/next. Canonical isn't always a good bet for pagination these days."
Hope this helps out!
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