What I've usually seen with canonicals is that Google either removes the noncanonical page from its index, or it ignores your canonical and treats them as two separate pages. I haven't seen an example where a canonical lets you get the best of both worlds.

I agree with Nozzle - you can tweak your existing content to target both phrases! Google understands synonyms, so if anything, you're just creating a more all around relevant page.

Good luck!

Kristina

I would recommend setting up each country's subdirectory as separate properties in Google Search Console. Then, go to original Search Console, and click on Search Traffic > International Targeting, click the tab Country, and identify which country you're targeting users in.

That should give GSC enough information to not flag the content as duplicate.

Good luck!

It's for different regions as well. Check out the link I shared. Google lists the reasons for hreflang. The second reason is:

"If your content has small regional variations with similar content, in a single language. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland."

For any duplicate content you have between countries, use hreflang to differentiate regions. Google lays out how to do that here.

Hope this helps!

It's best practice to redirect, but if that's not an option, the canonical route should help the problem a lot! You'll probably lose some link equity with this route, but it should clear up duplicate content issues from Google's side.

Hi Eroc,

Yep, this is a super common issue for SEOs. My company's site has reviews load in JavaScript, and Google even crawls and indexes those as if they're separate pages.

Google wants to read everything it can, so you've got to figure out the cost/benefit of this situation. If you really do have all of the product information, I'd guess that visitors entering through page 2 of reviews wouldn't be the worst thing, especially since Google would probably choose the page with the reviews most relevant to the query.

The main issue from my perspective is wasting Google's crawl budget on your extra review pages. If that's an issue that will significantly help your site (likely if you have a lot of products), you'll want to noindex those reviews like Ikea. There's no other method that will stop Google from wasting it's crawl budget.

Hope this helps!

Kristina

Hi Jcobo,

A good way to check to see if Google understands your content is to use Google Search Console and fetch the page as Googlebot. Look at Googlebot's version of the page - does it see the content in the table?

Like Logopedia said, HTML tables are extremely SEO friendly, so I'd be surprised if Google can't read your content.

On the flip side, tables are often not particularly user friendly. Why do you have a page full of your products? How is that valuable for a visitor? If Google doesn't think a page is user friendly, it won't rank it well.

Hope this helps steer you in the right direction!

Kristina

I would try to keep the same data, but organize it in a way that looks good on a screen the width of a mobile phone. HTML tables render the same way on a phone as they do on a desktop, they're just more likely to get smooshed.

I recommend playing around with your HTML using Google Chrome's Inspect option, and changing your device to a relatively small smartphone. Then build a table that looks good there.

If your table has too many columns, I'd recommend dividing the table into multiple tables, so you have the same data but in fewer columns for each table.

Good luck!

Kristina

Canonicals can pass link juice (see Dr. Pete's comment here), but it's at Google's discretion. I've seen it go both ways.

The best way is to only link the one version you've chosen as the canonical. I'm not familiar with Magento - is that something that you can change easily? I think it'd be worth the time you'd invest in making that change.

Whoa, this is a weird one.

I saw that you posted this on Google's forums as well, and they suggested that this might be the Japanese keyword hack. Did you look into that? If that's not it, did you try loading the URLs that are showing up on the Wayback Machine? It's possible that someone who owned this site before your client created these pages.

Either way, the answer is to double check that your 404 pages really are 404ing. If that doesn't remove them from the index fast enough, you can actually create all of those pages, with a noindex tag, add them all to a sitemap, and submit them to Google. But the 404ing is really your long term solution.

Good luck!

Hey Ryzippy,

Google really doesn't want to penalize site owners for making web design decisions without taking their crawler into account, so I don't think there will be a problem. That said, I'd recommend that you upload the new design to a test group first, just in case.

This is not a risk-free solution, though, so I'd also recommend that you push back on your web developer. Is there really no way to use the same H1 for both the mobile and desktop design? This is exactly what responsive design is for, to use the same HTML elements, but different CSS based on the screen width.

Anyway, good luck, and check back in here to let other SEOs know if using multiple H1s will cause a problem!

Best,

Kristina

It's hard to say how much traffic you'll lose from the merge. Like Logan said, you'll definitely lose a bit when you first move, but long term, you'll need to look at your competition to figure out if it's better to keep the pages separate or combine them.

I don't recommend keeping pages A, B, and C if you're going to hide them from the main structure of your site. Pages get most of their Page Authority from internal links (unless they're link bait), so they won't be able to rank anyway.

That said, here's how I'd estimate the loss of traffic from the move:

1. Use Google Search Console to determine the primary keyword/s for page A, B, and C
2. Use a tool like Open Site Explorer to determine the number of links A, B, and C have. (Bonus: look at the websites linking to A, B, or C. If those are resource pages, there's a good chance their webmaster will update their links to page D, which will help with the traffic dip. If they're from news articles, you'll probably have to rely on 301s.)
3. Search for each of those top keywords and look at your competition. Does the competition closely target the term? Will page D seem as relevant to the keyword as A, B, or C did?
4. Now, look at the Page Authorities of the competition for each keyword. Will page D, which will have a combo of links from A, B, and C, blow your competition out of the water? About match it? Still be a bit behind?
5. Here's the part that's really tough: for each keyword, estimate where page D would rank, given how well it targets the keyword and how many inbound links it has.
6. Estimate the % increase or drop in traffic based on adjusted click through rate. You can find this by playing around in Google Search Console to find a time when your site ranked in a different position, or by using average click through rates, like here.
7. Once you're done, put together your estimated percent increases or drops in traffic to estimate how the new page will perform. (I recommend you look at a percent change because adding up totals only for top keywords won't take long tail keywords into account, and you'll almost definitely come up with a much lower count than you're currently getting.)

Not the easiest process in the world, and your estimate will almost definitely be wrong, since you make a lot of assumptions along the way. But it should give you an idea of whether you'll eventually gain or lose traffic from the move, once that initial Googlebot confusion wears off.

Hope this makes sense! Let me know if you have any questions!

Kristina

That's true, they append parameters tracking where you came from, which looks like it can affect the navigation you're seeing on the left. They're making sure that Google doesn't get confused by using a canonical on their pages, like Mike, Eric and I have recommended.

Hi there,

Like Mike and Eric have said, I'd recommend using a canonical tag on the men's and women's pages to the version of the page that shows both genders' shoes/clothing.

That said, I just want to make sure this is the best path for your site. If it makes more sense for your site to point people to shoes and clothing by gender, shouldn't that be what you show in Google's search results? I'm a woman, and generally search for "women's shoes" since otherwise I often end up on pages that show men's options.

Let us know if these solutions work!

Kristina

Agree with Oleg above; that's not a good solution if this lasts years, though.

Is there any chance you could serve the old site using the current URLs?

Google uses URLs as unique identifiers, which means that if you redirect to URLs that are only for the old site, it'll think you've created new pages. New pages mean a month or so of low rankings, before your page has a proven click through rate and gets some links.

If you use your current (and future) URLs to load the old site, though, Google won't see that as a site overhaul, it'll see it as content modifications on a pre-existing page.

Hope this helps! If 302s or using the same URL isn't an option, let us know so we can brainstorm more solutions with you.

Best,

Kristina