Rel=canonical or 301 to pass on page authority/juice
-
I have a large body of product support documentation and there are similar pages for each of versions of the product, with minor changes as the product changes. The two oldest versions of this documentation get the best ranking and are powering Google snippets--however, this content is out of date.
The team responsible for the support documentation wants current pages to rank higher. I suggested 301 redirects but they want to maintain the old page content for clients still using the older version of the product. Is there a way to move a page's power to a more updated version of the page, but without wiping out the old content?
Considering recommending canonical tags, but I'm not sure this will get me all the way there either as there are some differences between pages, especially as the product has changed over time.
Thoughts?
-
Knowing that with a large body of documentation like this, the chances of being able to rewrite it all to combine into a single page are pretty slim (and knowing that might be a very negative user experience) you're really only left with the canonical tag option - assuming the older docs need to be maintained.
You're right to be concerned, as Google has been clear that canonical only applies to pages that have substantially identical content. Unfortunately, they do a really poor job of explaining just how much variation would be allowed.
Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us.
~ https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.htmlMy impression is that they would honour canonical in your use case.
Really, the only way to know is to select a couple of products' documentation pages and conduct a test. Canonicalise all old version to the current version and request re-indexing for each page. Then monitor the results (The new index monitoring tools in the new GSC are useful for this). You'll want to choose at least one test case that involves featured snippets - it would be incredibly useful to know if the FS transfers across to the new canonical page!
Do note that you'll need an ongoing process for managing the canonicals s each new iteration of documentation is added - all related pages will need to have their canonicals updated to point to the newest each time new docs are published.
Interesting conundrum. Please let us know the results if you decide to try a test!
Is that useful?
Paul
-
Please don't hijack someone else's question, zecase. Much better if you start your own question as it's completely unrelated to the current one.
Paul
-
Well is not as simple there are many factors involved as I see both of them have a low DA but probably you have some traffic, so the first thing that you need to know is which pages are ranking, the queries of those pages, Ideally the merger process should preserve the URL structure of both and make the redirection from the server
-
Basically, you have a problem because you are competing with your own content, So Google is select the old pages because from google perspective they are most trustable and have more value. So I suggest is merge them into a single one.
Let's take a simple example lets assume you have a car manufacturer like Toyota. You have a car model like Corolla and it was launched 2018 but this model has several versions L, LE, LE Eco, XLE, SE, and XSE.
So you can create a single page for each version with a parent page or parent category and it will look like this
But in your case based on what you mentioned Google has problems to determinate which one is the right one according to user intent. So, In that case, you can merge all those pages into a single master page so instead of creating several you put all your content in a single page divided into several sections (anchor links)
So your site will look like this
- www.toyota.com/corolla-2018/
- www.toyota.com/corolla-2018/#L
- www.toyota.com/corolla-2018/#LE
- www.toyota.com/corolla-2018/#XLE
This is a good example of how to integrate https://kinsta.com/blog/anchor-links/
Hope this info will answer your question
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
-
Is it good practice to use hreflang on pages that have canonicals?
I have a page in English that has both English & Spanish translations on it. It is pulled in from a page generated on another site and I am not able to adjust the CSS to display only one language. Until I can fix this, I have made the English page the canonical for both. Do I still want to use hreflang for English & Spanish pages? What if I do not have a Spanish page at all. I assume (from what I've read) I should not have an hreflang on the English page. Is this correct? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Rel Canonical for Exact Same Copy?
I've read about using rel canonical tags for product pages like "blue shorts" vs "red shorts" but if I have two pages with the exact same copy - different URL's - but same copy, can I use a rel canonical tag and be okay for duplicate content purposes? (There is is reason the page is exactly the same, at least for the time being, so I'm just focusing on how not to be get penalized as opposed to rewriting it at the moment). Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Http:// to https:// 301 or 302 redirect
I've read over the Q & A in the Community, but am wondering the reasoning behind this issue. I know - 301's are permanent and pass links, and 302s are temporary (due to cache) and don't pass links. But, I've run across two sites now that 302 redirect http:// to https://. Is there a valid reason behind this? From my POV and research, the redirect should 301 if it's permanent, but is there a larger issue I am missing?
Technical SEO | | FOTF_DigitalMarketing1 -
Canonical & rel=prev / next changes to website a good idea or not?
Hi all, I decided yesterday to make a load of changes to my website, and today i woke thinking, should i have done that! So below is an example of what i have done (i will try to explain clearly anyway), can you let me know if you think what i have done would harm or help my website in search results etc... ok, so lets take just one category - Cameras And it has the sub categories - box dome bullet it also has other sub categories (which are actually features, but the only way i can show them on my site is by having them as a sub-category with its own static page, and adding the products to these as secondary categories) vandal proof high resolution night vision previously i have it set up so that every single category / sub category / feature had its own static page, with a canonical tag to itself (i.e cameras.html canonical was to cameras.html, vandalproof.html canonical was to vandalproof.html). Any of the categories / sub cats / features that had more than one page were simply not in search results due to the canonical pointing to "Page 1"... What i have now done: Last night i decided to change all this, now for all categories / sub cats / features i have add rel=prev / next where applicable, and removed the canonical from second / third / fourth pages etc, but left the canonical on "page 1". I also removed any keywords from page 2,3,4 etc and changed descriptions to just page "X" + category name. So for example, page one looks like: and page two looks like: I also went a little further (maybe too far) and decided that the features pages would canonicalize back to cameras so for those i now have: Page 1: Page 2: Any advice is welcome on the above, in regards to which way may be better and why, and obviously if anything jumps out as a mistake... Please advise James
Technical SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
Adding Rel Canonical to multiple pages
Hi, Our CMS generates a lot of duplicate content, (Different versions of every page for 3 different font sizes). There are many other reasons why we should drop this current CMS and go with something else, and we are in the process of doing that. But for now, does anyone know how would I do the following: I've created a spreadsheet that contains the following: Column 1: rel="canonical" tag for URL Column 2: Duplicate Content URL # 1 Column 3: Duplicate Content URL # 2 Column 4: Duplicate Content URL # 3 I want to add the tag from column 1 into the head of every page from column 2,3, and 4. What would be a fast way to do this considering that I have around 1800 rows. Check the screenshot of the builtwith.com result to see more information about the website if that helps. Farris bxySL
Technical SEO | | jdossetti0 -
Is it better to guest post with or without using rel=author?
If I guest post on 50 blogs, all using rel=author so they are attributed to my Google Plus account, would the links be de-valued since they are self reference back to my own blog/website? Would it be better to guest post on a blog that doesn't use rel=author?
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050