Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!
-
Hi Everyone,
I a currently migrating a Magento site over to Shopify Plus and have a question about best practices for using the canonical URL.
There is a competitor that I believe is not doing it the correct way, so I want to make sure my way is the better choice.
With 'Vendor Pages' in Shopify, they show up looking like: https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor. Not as clean. Problem is that Shopify also creates https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor. Same products, same page, just a different more clean URL. I am seeing both indexed in Google.
What I want to do is basically create a canonical URL from the URL with the parameter that points to the clean URL. The two pages are very similar. The only difference is that the clean URL page has some additional content at the top of the page. I would say the two pages are 90% the same. Do you see any issue with that?
-
Yep, I completely agree.
-
So you agree that I should do the canonical URL then as well?
-
So both are related to a brand name (protein powder)
Whenever content on a site can be found at multiple URLs, it should be canonicalized for search engines.three main ways to do this: Using a 301 redirect to the correct URL, the rel=canonical attribute, or using the parameter handling tool in Google Search Console.
A - https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor
B - https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor301 redirect
In many cases, the best way to combat duplicate content is to set up a 301 redirect from the "duplicate" page to the original content page.When multiple pages with the potential to rank well are combined into a single page, they not only stop competing with one another; they also create a stronger relevancy and popularity signal overall. This will positively impact the "correct" page's ability to rank well.Rel="canonical"
Another option for dealing with duplicate content is to use the rel=canonical attribute. This tells search engines that a given page should be treated as though it were a copy of a specified URL, and all of the links, content metrics, and "ranking power" that search engines apply to this page should actually be credited to the specified URL.Meta Robots Noindex
One meta tag that can be particularly useful in dealing with duplicate content is meta robots, when used with the values "noindex, follow." Commonly called Meta Noindex,Follow and technically known as content=”noindex,follow” this meta robots tag can be added to the HTML head of each individual page that should be excluded from a search engine's index.This should be the optimal format for your URL
http://www.example.com/category-keyword/subcategory-keyword/primary-keyword.htmlCONCLUSION
If you ask me I would use this option
B - https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucorBut I would make some modifications and point the other page to this one using canonical tag
B - https://www.campusprotein.com/protein-powders/cellucorIF THE ANWER WERE RIGHT DONT FORGET TO MARK IT AS A GOOD ANSWER
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
-
Duplicate content: using the robots meta tag in conjunction with the canonical tag?
We have a WordPress instance on an Apache subdomain (let's say it's blog.website.com) alongside our main website, which is built in Angular. The tech team is using Akamai to do URL rewrites so that the blog posts appear under the main domain (website.com/more-keywords/here). However, due to the way they configured the WordPress install, they can't do a wildcard redirect under htaccess to force all the subdomain URLs to appear as subdirectories, so as you might have guessed, we're dealing with duplicate content issues. They could in theory do manual 301s for each blog post, but that's laborious and a real hassle given our IT structure (we're a financial services firm, so lots of bureaucracy and regulation). In addition, due to internal limitations (they seem mostly political in nature), a robots.txt file is out of the question. I'm thinking the next best alternative is the combined use of the robots meta tag (no index, follow) alongside the canonical tag to try to point the bot to the subdirectory URLs. I don't think this would be unethical use of either feature, but I'm trying to figure out if the two would conflict in some way? Or maybe there's a better approach with which we're unfamiliar or that we haven't considered?
Technical SEO | | prasadpathapati0 -
Is there an percentage of duplicate content required before you should use a canonical tag?
Is there a percentage (approximate or exact) of duplicate content you should have before you use a canonical tag? Similarly how does Google handle canonical tags if the pages aren’t 100% duplicate? I've added some background and an example below; Nike Trainer model 1 – has an overview page that also links to a sub-page about cushioning, one about Gore-Tex and one about breathability. Nike Trainer model 2,3,4,5 – have an overview page that also links to sub-pages page about cushioning , Gore-Tex and breathability. In each of the sub-pages the URL is a child of the parent so a distinct page from each other e.g. /nike-trainer/model-1/gore-tex /nike-trainer/model-2/gore-tex. There is some differences in material composition, some different images and of course the product name is referred multiple times. This makes the page in the region of 80% unique.
Technical SEO | | punchseo0 -
Duplicate Content - What's the best bad idea?
Hi all, I have 1000s of products where the product description is very technical and extremely hard to rewrite or create an unique one. I'll probably will have to use the contend provided by the brands, which can already be found in dozens of other sites. My options are: Use the Google on/off tags "don't index
Technical SEO | | Carlos-R
" Put the content in an image Are there any other options? We'd always write our own unique copy to go with the technical bit. Cheers0 -
What's best practice for blog meta titles?
I have the option of placing meta titles on the actual blog, or on the blog category on my site. Should I have separate meta titles for each blog or bundle them under a category and try to drive traffic to the category? Can anyone help with best practice?
Technical SEO | | Lubeman0 -
Will rel canonical tags remove previously indexed URLs?
Hello, 7 days ago, we implemented canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues that had been caused by URL parameters. These "duplicate content" had already been indexed. Now that the URLs have rel canonical tags in place, will Google automatically remove from its index the other URLs with the URL parameters? I ask because we have been tracking the approximate number of URLs indexed by doing a site: search in Google, and we have barely noticed a decrease in URLs indexed. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | yacpro130 -
Blocking URL's with specific parameters from Googlebot
Hi, I've discovered that Googlebot's are voting on products listed on our website and as a result are creating negative ratings by placing votes from 1 to 5 for every product. The voting function is handled using Javascript, as shown below, and the script prevents multiple votes so most products end up with a vote of 1, which translates to "poor". How do I go about using robots.txt to block a URL with specific parameters only? I'm worried that I might end up blocking the whole product listing, which would result in de-listing from Google and the loss of many highly ranked pages. DON'T want to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?productid=1234 WANT to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?mode=vote&productid=1234&vote=2 Javacript button code: onclick="javascript: document.voteform.submit();" Thanks in advance for any advice given. Regards,
Technical SEO | | aethereal
Asim0 -
Access To Client's Google Webmaster Tools
Hi, What's the best/easiest way for a client to grant access to his Google Webmaster Tools to me? Thanks! Best...Michael
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
A sitemap... What's the purpose?
Hello everybody, my question is really simple: what's the purpose of a sitemap? It's to help the robots to crawl your website but if you're website has a good architecture, the robots will be able to crawl your site easily! Am I wrong? Thank you for yours answers, Jonathan
Technical SEO | | JonathanLeplang0