Index an URL without directly linking it?
-
Hi everyone,
Here's a duplicate content challenge I'm facing: Let's assume that we sell brown, blue, white and black 'Nike Shoes model 2017'. Because of technical reasons, we really need four urls to properly show these variations on our website. We find substantial search volume on 'Nike Shoes model 2017', but none on any of the color variants.
Would it be theoretically possible to show page A, B, C and D on the website and:
- Give each page a canonical to page X, which is the 'default' page that we want to rank in Google (a product page that has a color selector) but is not directly linked from the site
- Mention page X in the sitemap.xml. (And not A, B, C or D).
So the 'clean' urls get indexed and the color variations do not?
In other words: Is it possible to rank a page that is only discovered via sitemap and canonicals?
-
That's an interesting question. Yes, I don't see why you couldn't rank such a page—I have had some pages accidentally rank in an even less likely situation. (Marketing pages that accidentally got exported into the sitemap.)
But even if you make the different color choices canonical to the color choice page, a canonical is a suggestion and if Google decides that people are really, really looking for blue shoes when they do this search, that is the page that will rank.
[Is there a reason you can't have the color choice page along with the individual colors? You could strengthen the signals for the choice page by having more links to it.]
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
-
Keywords in URL
I have an ecommerce store and i am using moz to get it into the best seo situation... my question is this..... I want to know how important it is to have the targeted keyword actually in the product page url.... I working on meta title and description which is good, but if i start changing all my product urls, it has major impact on the work i have to do since i would have to redo all my product links in ads, and all my product urls in emails, etc. So how much of a part do the urls play in seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bkhoward20010 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Domain.com/old-url to domain.com/new-url
HI, I have to change old url`s to new one, for the same domain and all landing pages will be the same: domain.com/old-url I have to change to: domain.com/new-url All together more than 70.000 url. What is best way to do that? should I use 301st redirect? is it possible to do in code or how? what could you please suggest? Thank you, Edgars
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edzjus3330 -
URL Optimisation Dilemma
First of all, I fully appreciate that I may be over analysing this, so feel free to highlight if you think I’m going overboard on this one. I’m currently trying to optimise the URLs for a group of new pages that we have recently launched. I would usually err on the side of leaving the urls as they are so that any incoming links are not diluted through the 301 re-direct. In this case, however, there are very few links to these pages, so I don’t think that changing URLs will harm them. My main question is between short URLs vs. long URLs (I have already read Dr. Pete’s post on this). Note: the URLs I have listed below are not the actual URLs, but very similar examples that I have created. The URLs currently exist in a similar format to the examples below: http://www.company.com/products/dlm/hire-ca My first response was that we could put a few descriptive keywords in the url, with something like the following: http://www.company/products/debt-lifecycle-management/hire-collection-agents - I’m worried though that the URL will get too long for any pages sitting under this. As a compromise, I am considering the following: http://www.company/products/dlm/hire-collection-agents My feeling is that the second approach will give the best balance between having the keywords for the products and trying to ensure good user experience. My only concern is whether the /dlm/ category page would suffer slightly, but this would have ‘debt-lifecycle-management’ in the title tag. Does this sound like a good approach to people? Or do you think I’m being a little obsessive about this? Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Hash URLs
Hi Mozzers, Happy Friday! I have a client that has created some really nice pages from their old content and we want to redirect the old ones to the new pages. The way the web developers have built these new pages is to use hashbang url's for example www.website.co.uk/product#newpage My question is can I redirect urls to these kind of pages? Would it be using the .htaccess file to do it? Thanks in advance, Karl
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
For those of you that used LINK DETOX.
Did you go ahead and remove all the TOXIC and HIGH RISK links? Just the toxic? Were you successful with the tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
The missing link?
Hello and Welcome Moz friends! Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem. On my website I've optimized our content to match the keywords I have selected for the site. I constantly am Re-writing articles, reading SEOMoz on tips and tricks how to make link juice flow. Yet only one of my keywords ranks decently, the rest never show up. I have the hardest time getting traffic to my site, and sales after that. Maybe I am implementing something incorrectly or there is something I am not doing. www.FrontlineMobility.com If you have any tips or anything to give me I would gladly accept it, any criticism is also appreciated. Thank you Friends, hopefully you can help me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Does URL format affect Keyword effectiveness for a URL?
I am looking at our site structure, and don't want to have to rebuild the way the site was linked together based on it's current folder structure so I am wondering what option would work better for our URL structure. I will uses car categories as an example of what I am talking about, but you can insert any category structure you like. For example I would like to have pages like this: www.example.com/ford-convertibles
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SL_SEM
www.example.com/chevy-convertibles But instead due to the site structure I will need to have pages like this: www.example.com/ford/convertibles
www.example.com/chevy/convertibles But wonder if I shouldn't do the following to ensure the proper phrase is known for the page: www.example.com/ford/ford-convertibles
www.example.com/chevy/chevy-convertibles The "/ford/ford-convertibles" just seems odd to me as a human, but I haven't seen anything on how well a keyphrase in a URL split by /'s does and I know dashes for phrases are fine. This means I am inclined to go with the"/ford/ford-convertibles"style because it keeps the keyphrase separated by dashes even if it is a bit repetitive. There will be other pages too like "/ford/top-10-fords-ever" but I don't wonder about that since it isnt "ford/ford-xxxxx" Thoughts on whether /'s in a keyphrase are as good as dashes?0