Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Rel=Canonical For Landing Pages
-
We have PPC landing pages that are also ranking in organic search. We've decided to create new landing pages that have been improved to rank better in natural search. The PPC team however wants to use their original landing pages so we are unable to 301 these pages to the new pages being created.
We need to block the old PPC pages from search. Any idea if we can use rel=canonical? The difference between old PPC page and new landing page is much more content to support keyword targeting and provide value to users. Google says it's OK to use rel=canonical if pages are similar but not sure if this applies to us. The old PPC pages have 1 paragraph of content followed by featured products for sale. The new pages have 4-5 paragraphs of content and many more products for sale.
The other option would be to add meta noindex to the old PPC landing pages. Curious as to what you guys think. Thanks.
-
I'm with you on using rel=canonical but the new pages are slightly different in that they have a lot more content for SEO purposes. The content definitely provides value to users but wondering if the extra content means Google will ignore canonical tag? Google mentions that canonical is good for duplicates where pages are very similar if not identical.
-
So we're also planning on A/B testing the original PPC pages. There are going to be 2 control pages vs 1 test (original URL). There are about 12 control pages.
Normally I would use rel=canonical for landing pages if the control page was actually ranking organically which is the case now but we're going to block them from search results when the new organic pages roll out. I'm assuming no indexing the test variations would be the best direction to take?
-
Yes, this is exactly what's happening
-
Yes, they don't want to change URLs in all their marketing campaigns (offline, email, social media, etc)
-
Hi,
In my view add content in existing PPC page which is ranking in search results and ask PPC team to create a new landing page.
PPC campaign performance won't be derailed by having a new landing page
Hope it helps!!!
Thanks
-
The canonical option would be the route I went with in this scenario.
If you are going to noindex them, make sure that you audit the pages to see what links are pointing to the pages. If there is value them, canonicalization would be a better approach.
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
-
Rel=canonical Weebly
My problem is with my website as it says I have duplicate page titles and contents because of a /index.html. It says the duplicate content is due to the fact that my homepage on my website is www.seacandytackle.com but it is also www.seacandytackle.com/index.html because I use weebly. How can I use the tag to fix this? It won't let me do a 301 redirect because it is a home page. How can I fix this? What code would I have to use and which url? Also it says that I have duplicate page content between http://www.seacandytackle.com/index.html and http://www.seacandytackle.comhttp://www.seacandytackle.com but I don't recall having any page that looks like http://www.seacandytackle.com http://www.seacandytackle.com from weebly. How can I fix this issue as well? Thank you for any help. Step by step implementation would be particularly helpful in using the rel= tags to fix these duplicate issues.
Technical SEO | | SeaCandyTackle0 -
Magento Dublicate Content (Noindex and Rel"canonical")
Hi All, Just looking for some advice regarding my website on magento. We by mistake didnt enable canonical tags and noindex tags so had a big problem with dublicate content from filter pages but also have URLs to Cats as Yes so this didnt help with not having canonical tags enabled. We now have everything enabled for a few weeks now but dont see much drop in indexed pages in google. (currently 27k and we have only 5k products) My question basically is how do we speed up noindexation of dublicate content and also would you change URL to cats as No so google just now sees the url to products? (my concerns with this is would leaving it to Yes help because it will hopefully read the canonical tags on products now) Thank you in advance Michael
Technical SEO | | TogetherCare0 -
Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?
If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Canonical tag for Home page: with or without / at the end???
Setting up canonical tags for an old site. I really need advice on that darn backslash / at the end of the homepage URL. We have incoming links to the homepage as http://www.mysite.com (without the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/ (with the backslash), and as http://www.mysite.com/index.html I know that there should be 301 redirects to just one version, but I need to know more about the canonical tags... Which should the canonical tag be??? (without the backslash) or (with the backslash) Thanks for your help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | GregB1230 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Two different canonical tags on one page
Due to an error, some of my pages now have two canonical tags on them. One is correct and the other goes to a nonsense URL (404 page). I know I should ideally remove the incorrect ones, but it's a big manual job. Are they doing any harm? Can I just leave them there and let Google figure it out? The correct ones are higher up in the code. Will this make a difference? Any help appreciated.
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Rel=Canonical, WWW vs non WWW and SEO
Okay so I'm a bit of a loss here. For what ever reason just about every single Wordpress site I has will turn www.mysite.com into mysite.com in the browser bar. I assume this is the rel=canonical tag at work, there are no 301s on my site. When I use the Open Site Explorer and type in www.mysite.com it shows a domain authority of around 40 and a few hundred backlinks... and then I get the message. Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to XXXXXX. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>? So if I click to see this data instead I have less than half of that domain authority and about 2 backlinks. *** Does this make a difference SEO wise? Should my non WWW be redirecting to my WWW instead because that's where the domain authority and backlinks are? Why am I getting two different domain authority and backlink counts if they are essentially the same? Or am I wrong and all that link juice and authority passes just the same?
Technical SEO | | twilightofidols0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0