Best Strategy for FAQ & Canonical?
-
I have an FAQ database setup on my site and there's about 30 questions in 6 categories so 5 questions per category which is a pretty good page size for one category. I'm trying to determine the best strategy for publishing them from both a user and SEO standpoint.
From a user standpoint, I want to have one page per category. Dumping them into a page with all 30 questions is not user-friendly and some categories are very unrelated to others. I should note that Google did already index a page that does have all the questions on it, but I was just planning on changing that page to just have 6 links to each of the category pages so then I don't have to bother with 301 redirect or removing the pages in the site's Search Console.
There's also an option to to link the questions for the entire FAQ or from the category list to one page with just that question and answer.
So my thinking at this point is to as I said, just change the page that has all 30 questions to a list of the categories and link to category pages having the questions for that category and disable the individual question pages.
Or would it be beneficial from an SEO page to have google index the individual question pages and link back to the category page and put a canonical tag on the category pages? In other words the question then becomes, index the category pages or index the individual question pages?
The other issue is the answers for some of the questions are lengthy, multiple paragraphs, and the FAQ has the option to have a hide/unhide feature on the answers so you can easily see all the questions first then expand the answers on the ones you are interested in. However I thought I heard Google discounts (doesn't ignore) content that is by default hidden on page load. I guess this would then give a reason for going with the indexing of the individual question pages. But it seems to me, you can't put the canonical tag on the category pages and point it to the individual question page. And if you put the canonical tag on the individual question page linking it to the category page, then the individual page won't necessarily get indexed will it?
-
I think I've come to the same conclusion. On many blog sites you may have multiple recent posts on the home page and then individual post pages for those same posts. Similar to FAQs. Google is smart enough to see, oh this is just another type of organization of this content that exists on individual pages.
It appears even though pages higher in the hierarchy are supposed to carry more weight, that Google favors indexing the individual pages deeper down than the "category" pages higher up.
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
-
Whats the best practice for acquisition?
Hi, My company have just bought out a competitor. We wan't to dissolve their website and if possible steal some of their link juice. The site hasn't got any spammy links or 404's so i'm not worried in that department. What I am not sure about is which of the following is best practice? a. Redirect every single page (even pages like /?checkout) to a relevant page on our website. b. Only redirect important pages, category pages, contact pages etc and leave the other pages to 404? c. Redirect the important pages to a relevant URL and redirect the less important pages to our homepage. d. Redirect the entire domain to our home page (i assume this isn't a good idea) e. Don't redirect any of the pages just delete the site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyHoodless0 -
Best SEO Strategy
Hi fellow Mozers: I have a question about strategy. I have a client who is a major real estate developer in our region. They build and sell condominiums and also built and manage several major rental apartments. All rental properties have their own websites and there is also a corporate website, which has been around for many years and has decent domain authority (+/- 40). The original intent of the corporate website was to communicate central brand positioning points, attract investors and offer individual profiles of all major properties. My client is interested in developing an organic search strategy which will reach consumers looking to rent apartments. Typical search strings would include the family whose core string would be 'apartments in Baltimore.' (Currently, the client runs PPC for each one of their properties. This is expensive and highly competitive.) In doing research, we've found that there are two local competitors who are able to break on to Page 1 and appear beside the National 'apartment search guides' who dominate the Page 1 SERPS (like apartments.com). The two local competitors have websites of either the same or lower authority than our client's; one has a better link profile, the other is comparable. Here's our problem: our local competitors only build and manage apartments. So, then, the home pages and all the content of their sites ONLY talk about apartment rental related information. Our client's apartment business is actually larger in scope than either local competitor but is only one of their major real estate verticals. So my question is this: if we want to build out a bunch of content which will rank competitively with our local competition, are we better off creating a new area of the corporate site, creating targeted content and resources appropriate for apartment seekers OR would we be better off creating an entirely new site, just devoted to the same? I'm wondering if a new section will ever rank well against competitors whose root domains actually feature content which is only rental related? Likewise, I'm wondering whether we'd be giving up too much, in terms of authority, by creating an entirely new site? I've also only found examples in the industry where an entirely new site was created, so it makes me question the strategy of building out a rental-specific section of a site which also contains information about their condo business. For instance, the Related Companies are a huge builder in the East; they have a corporate site and a site called https//relatedrentals.com . Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Is Google ignoring my canonicals?
Hi, We have rel=canonical set up on our ecommerce site but Google is still indexing pages that have rel=canonical. For example, http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/novelty.html?colour=7883&p=3&size=599 http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/novelty.html?p=4&size=599 http://www.britishbraces.co.uk/braces/children.html?colour=7886&mode=list These are all indexed but all have rel=canonical implemented. Can anyone explain why this has happened?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HappyJackJr0 -
Canonicals Passing Link Juice?
After having read this thread, the answer seems to be a tentative "Yes", but I am curious if I am doing this wrong, or causing myself problems, for a specific situation. We have a thread on the forums that has over 50,000 views for that thread alone. No doubt many people have linked to it across the web, and it ranks very well with Google. But we are dealing with a major problem in that the main portion of our site (home page and core content) which are the most important, aren't ranking in Google at all. A big part of this is because that part of the site hasn't been updated in years, whereas the forum is updated daily. By users. We've begun putting out quality content in our News Center lately, and hoping to start boosting its presence in Google. We have an article on the exact same topic that the forum thread covers. I was thinking of putting a canonical on that thread, pointing to the article, and hopefully pointing some very powerful link juice, popularity, and traffic into our news center articles. People can comment there as well if they like. Are there any potential downsides to doing this? My hope is that the forum thread loses rankings and the article takes on its rankings. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
Are articles still benificial and how best to promote them?
Hello, I'm trying to promote a new site doing things differently moving forward if needed in order to prevent getting google slapped while being as efficient as possible.. We have a main site which manufacturers materials. we also have a blog on blogger.com every week someone in our office writes an article about something related to our area of work and within the article has a varied keyword or two embedded within the article they are writing... My questions are as follows: -1- should be change our blog site address from oursite.blogger.com to blog.oursite.com?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
-2- would it be beneficial to have a link from our main site to the oursite.blogger.com
-3- We also have a ezine account, would it be beneficial to also post this same article perhaps with some minor changes to our ezine account so that it would start to get more visibility from other sites or is this now possibly a no no?
-4- should we be now usin nofollow links in our articles? if we do use nofollow links aren't we losing the benefit? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated0 -
How to Best Establish Ownership when Content is Duplicated?
A client (Website A) has allowed one of their franchisees to use some of the content from their site on the franchisee site (Website B). This franchisee lifted the content word for word, so - my question is how to best establish that Website A is the original author? Since there is a business relationship between the two sites, I'm thinking of requiring Website B to add a rel=canonical tag to each page using the duplicated content and referencing the original URL on site A. Will that work, or is there a better solution? This content is primarily informational product content (not blog posts or articles), so I'm thinking rel=author may not be appropriate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams0 -
Canonical Meta Tag
Can someone explain how this works and how necessary is it? For example, I have a new client, who is ranking WITHOUT the www in their domain, but they have a good deal of backlinks already that have www in it. When I set up google webmaster tools I made 2, one for WWW and one for WITHOUT and there are diffenet numbers of backlinks for each. I have no idea what do about this or if I should even do anything. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheGrid0 -
Help with canonical tag
hello- i got this recommendation <dl> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Add a canonical URL tag referencing this URL to the header of the page</dd> <dd>from my "report card" and i see also that i have a lot of issues with duplicate content but i really dont have any duplicate content on my site.</dd> <dd>the crawl has apparently marked every post in my blog as duplicate page content.</dd> <dd>and the "use canonical tag" suggestion keeps appearing as a fix to my problems.</dd> <dd>could you please help me with ------How do i create a canonical tag?</dd> <dd>is it just rel=canonical?</dd> <dd>and where do i put it?</dd> <dd>i should put it on every page right?</dd> <dd>or with CSS my webmaster could probably do it very quickly right?</dd> <dd>i get the basic concept behind rel=canonical but i cant say i fully understand it -</dd> <dd>i need some help with regard to how and where this tag should be placed.</dd> <dd>thanks,</dd> <dd>erik
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ezpro9
</dd> <dd>.</dd> </dl>0