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.
Cross Canonicalization for domains with same menu
-
I have a client who took 3 pages from its main website and made them into their own domains. So that now, for example,
www.mainsite.com/page
redirects to
www.page.comThis is so users can be given access to the content on that specific page with ease.
Now, www.page.com has the same menu items as www.mainsite.com, so that users who select the menu items on www.page.com will be circled back to the main site.But this means that there are now different URLs for these pages.
ie:
On www.mainsite.com there is: www.mainsite.com/menu-item
(the content resides here)And on www.page.com there is: www.page.com/menu-item
(Which is basically "scaffolding" to support the page and a means to get around, so to speak.This is to make any and all pages accessible at either domain. ) I have only seen this type of URL on the Moz campaign crawl. In the real world, when a user selects a menu item from the www.page.com, it will circle back to www.mainsite.com/menu-itemSEO-wise, should I use cross-canonicalization to point www.page.com/menu-item to www.mainsite.com/menu-item? Or would this be splitting hairs since these are only seen on the Moz crawl?
-
@Shrine-SEO-Gal said in Cross Canonicalization for domains with same menu:
I have a client who took 3 pages from its main website and made them into their own domains. So that now, for example,
www.mainsite.com/page
redirects to
www.page.com
This is so users can be given access to the content on that specific page with ease.
Now, www.page.com has the same menu items as www.mainsite.com, so that users who select the menu items on www.page.com will be circled back to the main site.
But this means that there are now different URLs for these pages.
ie:
On www.mainsite.com there is: www.mainsite.com/menu-item
(the content resides here)
And on www.page.com there is: www.page.com/menu-item
(Which is basically "scaffolding" to support the page and a means to get around, so to speak.This is to make any and all pages accessible at either domain. ) I have only seen this type of URL on the Moz campaign crawl. In the real world, when a user selects a menu item from the www.page.com, it will circle back to www.mainsite.com/menu-item
SEO-wise, should I use cross-canonicalization to point www.page.com/menu-item to www.mainsite.com/menu-item? Or would this be splitting hairs since these are only seen on the Moz crawl?For SEO, using cross-canonical tags would help consolidate authority and avoid potential duplication issues, even though the structure is primarily for navigation and redirecting users to the main site. Adding canonicals from
www.page.com/menu-itemtowww.mainsite.com/menu-itemsignals to search engines that the main version resides on the main site, which is helpful in the long term.Since these URLs show up only in Moz crawls, this isn’t an urgent issue, but canonicalization helps clarify the content's primary source if search engines eventually pick up on
www.page.com/menu-item. You might also want to set up redirects on these scaffold URLs if they don’t need to be indexed separately, which can further ensure consistency.
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
-
Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?
Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms1 -
Redirect multiple domains to 1 domain or not?
Hi there, I have client who has multiple domains that already have some PA and DA. Problem is that most websites have the same content and rank better on different keywords.
Technical SEO | | Leaf-a-mark
I want to redirect all the websites to 1 domain because it’s easier to manage and it removes any duplicate content. Question is if I redirect domain x to domain y do the rankings of domain x increase on domain y? Or is it better to keep domain x separately to generate more referral traffic to domain y? Thanks in advance! Cheers0 -
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Parked domain is first in search results
We have several brand related domains which are parked and pointing to our main website. Some of these websites are redirecting using a 302 (don't ask, that's a whole other story), but these are being changed. But it shouldn't matter what type of redirect they are no? Since there has never been any traffic and they are not indexed? But it seems that one of them was indexed: exotravel.vn. A search for our brand name or the previous brand name (exotravel and exotissimo) brings up this parked domain first! How can that be? The domain has never been used and has no backlinks. exotravel.vn is redirecting and I submitted a change of address weeks ago to Google, but its still coming up first in all brand name searches for exotissimo or exotravel.
Technical SEO | | Exotissimo0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0 -
Using hyphenated sub-domains or non-hyphenated sub-domains? What is the question! I Any takers?
For our corporate business level domain, we are exploring using a hyphenated sub-domain foir a project. Something like www.go-figure.extreme.com I thought from a user perspective it seems cluttered. The domain length might also be an issue with the new Algorithm big G has launched in recent past. I know with past experience, hyphenated domains usually take longer to index, as they are used by spammers more frequently and can take longer to get out of the supplementary index. Our company site has over 90 million viewers / year, so our brand is well established and traffic isn't an issue. This is for a corporate level project and I didn't have the answer! Will this work? anyone have any experience testing this. Any thoughts will help! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0