Big page of clients - links to individual client pages with light content - not sure if canonical or no-follow - HELP

[simplycary]

Not sure what best practice here is: http://www.5wpr.com/clients/

Is this is a situation where I'm best off adding canonical tags back to the main clients page, or to the practice area each client falls under?

No-following all these links and adding canonical?

No-follow/No-index all client pages?

need some advice here...

[SEO_Promenade]

Ya, I think that will be the best choice.

Good Luck!

[simplycary]

okay cool - appreciate the input man. i think im just going to no-follow/no-index all the pages. and the big plan strategy is to slowly optimize each individual page as time goes on

[simplycary]

problem is so many pages with light content - i feel like this is creating a situation where i have a small leak in a big boat - and fixing this page will plug that hole

[SEO_Promenade]

I like the option of placing a 301 redirect from /clients**/index.cfm** to**  /clients.**

Just remember to update both the links in your website menu as well as your sitemap.xml.

That will help with page load speed as well as having a very clean submitted sitemap.xml file.

[SEO_Promenade]

If each specific client page is not going to be optimized in a way to be found organically in search results and they only serves as a value page for users who are already on your site, I would probably go with no-index/no-follow.

My logic here is that with the "no-index" you are not takings any risks with duplicate page issues and with "no-follow" your are not passing away link juice for no reason.

I don't think placing a canonical tag to each client would be the best recommended option since the goal of the canonical tag is to simply notify the search engines that page X is really a duplicate copy of page Y. In other words, you are telling search engines that these pages are exact copies of one another and to please pass all the link juice of X to Y without being penalized.

[spencerhjustice]

I definitely wouldn't canonical them because as far as I can tell the content on the individual client pages is unique.

Honestly I don't see why you're worried. The pages all have unique content and contain no external links. If the main client page contained direct links to the clients' sites then I could see their being an issue but you shouldn't have to nofollow internal links.

[simplycary]

Maybe a 301 from /clients**/index.cfm** to /clients - is a better option than the canonical to maintain all link equity.

So you think adding a no-index to the links is best option - over a no-follow or even a no-index/no-follow?

I was thinking of adding a canonical tag on each client - to - their respective practice area to help build the authority and ensure importance of the practice areas

[simplycary]

that's what my plan of action is going to be - but for the mean time i need to figure out what the hell to do with these links

[georgexx]

That is a very impressive list of clients, however from a UX point of view it's far too many to list on one page.

Instead why not have a dozen or so featured clients which have more in depth case-study each explaining how you approached each project. Then the rest of the clients can be a non-linked list. Maybe you can show a small description on hover of each client.

That would satisfy the SEO aspect as well. You would have a few strong case-study pages, and the rest of the content will be indexed also, just all on one page. Hope this helps.

[SEO_Promenade]

Hi There!

I think the bigger issue here is that the page  http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ is a duplicate copy of **http://www.5wpr.com/clients/index.cfm . **

That being said, I think your best option here is to set up a canonical tag from one of the pages to the other. You will need to determine which page you will want to use as your primary page.

Right now the /clients**/index.cfm ** page has a lot more authority than the  **/clients/ **page. It is a shame that **/clients/index.cfm **is the page that is being linked through the website menu, since **http://www.5wpr.com/clients/ **is a lot more user friendly.

As far as each individual client's page, some are coming up as duplicate copies to other press releases, company sites, etc (per copyscape.com) while others are not. Looking at the title tag or the content through each of these client pages, they did not seem like major pages that you are targeting to be found organically in the search results, so I would probably just no-index those pages to be on the safe side.

That being said, I too am interested to know how others would handle this situation.

I hope that helps!