301s Or Stick With Canonical?
-
Hello all! A nice interesting one for you on this fine Friday...
I have some pages which are accessible by 2 different urls - This is for user experience allowing the user to get to these pages in two different ways. To keep Google happy we have a rel canonical so that Google only sees one of these urls to avoid duplicates.
After some SEO work I need to change both of these urls (on around 1,000 pages). Is the best way to do this...
To 301 every old url to every new url
Or... To not worry as I will just point the indexed pages to the new rel canonical?
Any ideas or suggestions would be brilliant.
Thanks!
-
You got it!
-
I agree with Calin. Just a canonical would not be ideal because Google is not good at removing things from the index without a redirect or an explicit request in Webmaster Tools. Canonicals don't stack up in this regard.
-
Hi Calin,
Thank you very much for your response. Just to confirm I am understanding you correctly, you are suggesting
the following approach:1. Do a 301 Redirect on both old and currently indexed URLs
- www.example.com/tennis-shoes [currently canonicalised to www.example.com/tennis-shoes-2]
- www.example.com/tennis-shoes-2
To
www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes-2 [The URL we want google to index]
2. www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes [canonicalise to www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes-2]
The second step will prevent any duplicate content issues given the content will still be accessible
from this URL as well [www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes]Finally it shouldn't be a problem to have a canonical tag on the www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes-2
to itself as we might need just in case the URL is accessed say using a query string (www.example.com/products/tennis-shoes-2?type=sports)?Once again, thank you for taking your time to reply.
-
Hi Harry,
If I'm understanding your question, both the 301 and the rel=canonical would technically be correct.
However, if I were in your position and had two old URLs, let's call them:
And, I was changing my URL structure to:
I would implement a 301 redirect for the two old pages to the new page (the one that doesn't have the rel=canonical applied). Assuming of course you don't have website restrictions that would make the update problematic. Then add the rel=canonical tag to the duplicate page as you did before.
Moz has some really great resources as well that you can check out:
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
-
Hreflang Tags & Canonicals Being Used
We have a site on which both hreflang tags and canonicals are being used. There are multiple languages, but for this I'll explain our problem using two. There are a ton of dupe page titles coming up in GSC, and we're not sure if we have an issue or not. First, the hreflang tags are implement properly. UK page pointing there, US page pointing there. Further down the page, there are canonical tags - except the UK canonical tag points to the UK page, and the US version points to the US page. I'm not sure if this will cause an issue in terms of SEO or indexing. Has anyone experienced this before or does anything have any insight into this? Thanks much! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Snaptech_Marketing0 -
Canonical or No-index
Just a quick question really. Say I have a Promotions page where I list all current promotions for a product, and update it regularly to reflect the latest offer codes etc. On top of that I have Offer announcement posts for specific promotions for that product, highlighting very briefly the promotion, but also linking back to the main product promotion page which has a the promotion duplicated. So main page is 1000+ words with half a dozen promotions, the small post might be 200 words, and quickly become irrelevant as it is a limited time news article. Now, I don't want the promotion page indexed (unless it has a larger news story attached to the promotion, but for this purpose presume it is doesn't). Initially the core essence of the post will be duplicated in the main Promotion page, but later as the offer expires it wouldn't be. Therefore would you Rel Canonical or just simply No-index?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheWebMastercom0 -
Dealing with Canonical tag in volusion
Hi We have an ecommerce site where we have some returns/scratch /dented products identical to the original one. The onpage content of the damaged/original is pretty much identical with the damaged just having a describing the damage. I had wanted to make a canonical tag on the damaged product to the original so it would not be a problem of duplicate content but as it is a volusion site we dont have that option - it only canonicalizes back to itself! Any ideas what else I can do - cant really change the content much and I dont really want to deindex it so people find it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henya0 -
Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
Hello, We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago). So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present. Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it? Thanks in advance for your help. Tej Luchmun
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | luxresorts0 -
How far can I push rel=canonical?
My plan: 3 sites with identical content, yet--wait for it--for every article whose topic is A, the pages on all three sites posting that article will have a rel=canonical tag pointing to Site A. For every article whose topic is B, the pages on all three sites posting that article will have a rel=canonical tag pointing to Site B. So Site A will have some articles about topics A, B, and C. And for pages with articles about A, the rel=canonical will point to the page it's on. Yet for pages with articles about B, the rel=canonical will point to the version of that article on site B. Etc. I have my reasons for planning this, but you can see more or less that I want each site to rank for its niche, yet I want the users at each site to have access to the full spectrum of articles in the shared articles database without having to leave a given site. These would be distinct brands with distinct Whois, directory listings, etc. etc. The content is quality and unique to our company.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
Should canonical links be included or excluded in a sitemap?
Our company is in the process of updating our sitemap. Should we include or exclude canonical links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebRiverGroup0 -
How To Remve Rel Canonical Error from site
Hello friends, I have a site there I install all in one SEO plugin when I add my site at seomoz.org after the crawling results it so there are a penalty of Rel Conanical tag error but when I see my editor code there I see that all in one seo automatically giving rel conanical tag. Now I don’t understand that why seomoz giving these errors. Please help me to resolve this problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KLLC0 -
Another E-commerce Canonical Question
Hi guys, Quick question: one of our clients has an e-commerce site with a very poor canonical tag setup and thousands of pages of duplicate content. Let's use this as an example: BRAND > Category > Type > Color
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | elcrazyhorse
Four separate pages/URLs. The BRAND page lists all products.
The Category page lists all BRAND products for that category.
The Type page lists all BRAND products of a specific type in that category.
The Color page lists all BRAND products of a specific type in that category of a specific color. Anyway, these generate four separate URLs: /BRAND
/BRAND/Category
/BRAND/Category-Type
/BRAND/Category-Type-Color Avoiding duplicate content and product listings, I would appreciate your proposed canonicalization strategy/feedback.0