Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!

[vetofunk]

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?

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Yep, I completely agree.

[vetofunk]

So you agree that I should do the canonical URL then as well?

[Roman-Delcarmen]

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/cellucor

301 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.html

CONCLUSION

If you ask me I would use this option
B - https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor

But I would make some modifications and point the other page to this one using canonical tag
B - https://www.campusprotein.com/protein-powders/cellucor

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