Canonical for 80-90% duplicate content help
-
Hi . I seem to spend more time asking questions atm.
I have a site I have revamped www.themorrisagency.co.uk
I am working through sorting out the 80-90% duplicated content that just replaces a spattering of geographical and band styles eg:
http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/greater-manchester/ 'manchester' being changed to :
http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/oxfordshire/ etc
So I am going through this slow but essential process atm.
I have a main http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/ page
My question is:
Would it be sensible to (using Yoast SEO plug in) use a canonical redirect as a temp solution from these dup pages to http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/
Rather than remove them
What are your thoughts as I am aware that the damage using a rel= could make it worse.
Thanks as always
Daniel
-
OK Seen Video thanks Wiqas, understand that Rel is a thorny thing. So I am not going to opt for that Brett thanks!
Suggestion is to no index /no follow until it is made unique and concentrate on the most imortant pages first and then submit those bit by bit. Necessary ?
Is it more beneficial to remove crap pages than to have them there even though they are indexed albeit at a low level.
-
Did you saw this Video by Rand : http://moz.com/blog/handling-duplicate-content-across-large-numbers-of-urls
It will give you Quite a Good idea What to Do..
-
Hi I would be mindful of using rel.
I would use a simpler more logical way and restructure the pages with original content and just use 301 redirection. This passes Googles website design guidelines available here:-
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
In particular:-
- You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.
Which is essentially what you have done/doing
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
Google-selected canonical: the homepage?
Hi guys,
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
I checked the product pages on our website with Google Search Console (URL Inspection), and the majority appear as
"URL is not on Google"
Coverage: "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical", and
Google-selected canonical: the homepage of the website (for all product pages) Our product pages are not identical to the homepage (content-wise), besides the top menu, header and footer, so how could I use the canonical tag in this case? I wouldn't want that the product pages to be seen as duplicates of the homepage. Thanks!0 -
International subdirectory without localized content - best practice / need advice
Hi there, Our site uses a subdirectory for regional and multilingual sites as show below for 200+ countries.
Local Website Optimization | | erinfalwell
EX: /en_US/ All sites have ~the same content & are in English. We have hreflang tags but still have crawl issues. Is there another URL structure you would recommend? Are there any other ways to avoid the duplicate page & crawl budget issues outside of the hreflang tag? Appreciate it!0 -
Yodle Possible Nightmare? Help Please!
Hi there all, I have a longtime client who got the big sales pitch from Yodle and ended up with a bunch of "marketing magic" items for $1649 a month including but probably not limited to: 1) An SEO package, 2) An Adversite with a keyword stuffed URL (looks like a crappy landing page but it has 3 or 4 pages), 3) a Google Adwords package and 4) a bunch of citation listing management. We already have a website (currently in the midst of a total overhaul) that has ranked pretty well on Google for our industry and we've been working hard on citation clean up/management all along. We also already have a Google Adwords account that is actually starting to pay off. Essentially, they sold him on things we didn't need with a bunch of talk about algorithyms and how they are winning so many awards and how they could get his phone ringing with 50-60 leads a month, etc. Blah, blah, blah. They were very loud about their "close relationship" with Google which is what I assume got him the most interested. Anyway, we got on the phone with them yesterday because I was really concerned about them wanting access to our Google My Business account and hearing that they would be changing the telephone # to their tracking # and the website address would be changed to the new one they made. I hear that kind of thing and I just think nightmare scenario with NAP stuff which is already a bit of a nightmare due to some other reasons (another story altogether). When I started questioning the support guy (who didn't really want to answer any questions directly), they backed off the GMB and citation talk and said that we would be able to customize the packages and they could get rid of that component and concentrate on Adwords and the lead generating "Adversite." So that's where we are right now. The support guy went on to tell me that Google allows 10 websites as long as you only have one GMB/+ listing but that is antithetical to anything I've ever known. I haven’t given them manager access to GMB or any citation stuff (and won't) and the Adwords campaign they're working on is apparently on they own dashboard as they have yet to ask me about access to our AW account. I guess the main thing I'm looking for is any guidance on how bad this is going to be for our Google rankings, etc. with the Adversite they created for us using a whole new web address for our company and a whole new telephone. Not to mention this Adwords campaign they're running that will be going to the new telephone and new website as well. It just seems like we're competing against ourselves in this scenario and splitting traffic and/or authority and kind of a recipe for a big setback. Any advice or suggestions here on how worried we need to be and if we should try to cancel before anything else happens (the site is already live and they also said the Adwords they’re doing is now live as well). Thank you so much in advance for any comments!
Local Website Optimization | | Pixelwik0 -
Should I use Rel-Canonicals links for a News site with similar articles each year
Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years. For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game. We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk". We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors). We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down. Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page? If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page? Thanks for the help.
Local Website Optimization | | YourMark.com0 -
Need Help - Google has picked up an overseas company with the same name and put it in search on the right
Hi All, Google has picked up a competitors logo from overseas (same name) and input it with the wikipedia excerpt on the right hand side of search. What the heck can I do to get this removed as its a serious legal/brand issue. See URL - http://www.google.com.au/webhp?nord=1&gws_rd=cr&ei=GcMeVuS0CMq-0gSR7Lm4BA#nord=1&q=cfcu Hope someone can help !! Cheers Dave http://www.google.com.au/webhp?nord=1&gws_rd=cr&ei=GcMeVuS0CMq-0gSR7Lm4BA#nord=1&q=cfcu
Local Website Optimization | | CFCU0 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Massive duplicate content should it all be rewritten?
Ok I am asking this question to hopefully confirm my conclusion. I am auditing a domain who's owner is frustrated that they are coming in #2 for their regionally tagged search result and think its their Marketer/SEOs fault. After briefly auditing their site, the marketing company they have doing their work has really done a great job. There are little things that I have suggested they could do better but nothing substantial. They are doing good SEO for the most part. Their competitor site is ugly, has a terrible user experience, looks very unprofessional, and has some technical SEO issues from what I have seen so far. Yet it is beating them every time on the serps. I have not compared backlinks yet. I will in the next day or so. I was halted when I found, what seems to me to be, the culprit. I was looking for duplicate content internally, and they are doing fine there, then my search turned externally...... I copied and pasted a large chunk of one page into Google and got an exact match return.....rutro shaggy. I then found that there is another site from a company across the country that has identical content for possibly as much as half of their entire domain. Something like 50-75 pages of exact copy. I thought at first they must have taken it from the site I was auditing. I was shocked to find out that the company I am auditing actually has an agreement to use the content from this other site. The marketing company has asked the owners to allow them to rewrite the content but the owners have declined because "they like the content." So they don't even have authority on the content for approximately 1/2 of their site. Also this content is one of three main topics directed to from home page. My point to them here is that I don't think you can optimize this domain enough to overcome the fact that you have a massive portion of your site that is not original. I just don't think perfect optimization of duplicate content beats mediocre optimization of original content. I now have to convince the owners they are wrong, never an easy task. Am I right or am I over estimating the value of original content? Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | RossM0