Should you use the canonicalization tag when the content isn't exactly a duplicate?
-
We have a site that pull data from different sources with unique urls onto a main page and we are thinking about using the canonicalization tag to keep those source pages from being indexed and to give any authority to the main page. But this isn’t really what canonicalization is supposed to be used for so I’m unsure of if this is the right move.
To give some more detail: We manage a site that has pages for individual golf courses. On the golf course page in addition to other general information we have sections on that page that show “related articles” and “course reviews”.
We may only show 4 or 5 on each of those courses pages per page, but we have hundreds of related articles and reviews for each course. So below “related articles” on the course page we have a link to “see more articles” that would take the user to a new page that is simply a aggregate page that houses all the article or review content related to that course.
Since we would rather have the overall course page rank in SERPs rather than the page that lists these articles, we are considering canonicalizing the aggregate news page up to the course page.
But, as I said earlier, this isn’t really what the canonicalization tag is intended for so I’m hesitant.
Has anyone else run across something like this before? What do you think? -
Hey Fuel Interactive --
To answer your specific question, I would use the meta (noindex, follow) tag instead of the canonical. It doesn't pass authority, but it is the correct usage. It will strike the page from ranking consideration, and allow the overall course page to have less competition.
Another question for you: is the article listing page already ranking higher than the overall course page, or is this a worry? If it's a worry, I recommend testing it out first so you don't prematurely optimize. Just a thought.
Hope that helps -- Andrew
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
-
Duplicate content question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Is content on widget bar less 'seo important' than main content?
hi, i wonder if content on widget bar less 'seo important' than main content.. i mean, is better to place content and links on main cotent than on wordpress widget bar? What are the pros and cons? tx!
Technical SEO | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
Duplicate Content Issues with Pagination
Hi Moz Community, We're an eCommerce site so we have a lot of pagination issues but we were able to fix them using the rel=next and rel=prev tags. However, our pages have an option to view 60 items or 180 items at a time. This is now causing duplicate content problems when for example page 2 of the 180 item view is the same as page 4 of the 60 item view. (URL examples below) Wondering if we should just add a canonical tag going to the the main view all page to every page in the paginated series to get ride of this issue. https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=180&p=2 https://www.example.com/gifts/for-the-couple?view=all&n=60&p=4 Thoughts, ideas or suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Wordpress tags and duplicate content?
I've seen a few other Q&A posts on this but I haven't found a complete answer. I read somewhere a while ago that you can use as many tags as you would like. I found that I rank for each tag I used. For example, I could rank for best night clubs in san antonio, good best night clubs in san antonio, great best night clubs in san antonio, top best night clubs in san antonio, etc. However, I now see that I'm creating a ton of duplicate content. Is there any way to set a canonical tag on the tag pages to link back to the original post so that I still keep my rankings? Would future tags be ignored if I did this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Duplicate Content Vs No Content
Hello! A question that has been throw around a lot at our company has been "Is duplicate content better than no content?". We operate a range of online flash game sites, most of which pull their games from a feed, which includes the game description. We have unique content written on the home page of the website, but aside from that, the game descriptions are the only text content on the website. We have been hit by both Panda and Penguin, and are in the process of trying to recover from both. In this effort we are trying to decide whether to remove or keep the game descriptions. I figured the best way to settle the issue would be to ask here. I understand the best solution would be to replace the descriptions with unique content, however, that is a massive task when you've got thousands of games. So if you have to choose between duplicate or no content, which is better for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ryan_Phillips0 -
Duplicate page content errors in SEOmoz
Hi everyone, we just launched this new site and I just ran it through SEOmoz and I got a bunch of duplicate page content errors. Here's one example -- it says these 3 are duplicate content: http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-black-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-camel-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-gray-3inch You'll see from the pages that the titles, images and small pieces of the copy are all unique -- but there is some copy that is the same (after all, these are pretty much the same shoe, just a different color). So, why am I getting this error and is there any best way to address? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | ketanmv
Ketan0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hello, We have many pages in our crawler report that are showing duplicate content. However, the content is not duplicateon the pages. It is somewhat close, but different. I am not sure how to fix the problem so it leaves our report. Here is an example. It is showing these as duplicate content to each other. www.soccerstop.com/c-119-womens.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-120-youth.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-124-adult.aspx Any help you could provide would be most appreciated. I am going through our crawler report and resolving issues, and this seems to be big one for us with lots in the report, but not sure what to do about it. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SoccerStop
James0 -
Solution for duplicate content not working
I'm getting a duplicate content error for: http://www.website.com http://www.website.com/default.htm I searched for the Q&A for the solution and found: Access the.htaccess file and add this line: redirect 301 /default.htm http://www.website.com I added the redirect to my .htaccess and then got the following error from Google when trying to access the http://www.website.com/default.htm page: "This webpage has a redirect loop
Technical SEO | | Joeuspe
The webpage at http://www.webpage.com/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer." "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects." How can I correct this? Thanks0