Take a look at the competition here. There are far more qualified domains, that should out rank feedthehungry.org. The reason they don't is because "Feed the Hungry" is the brand. If you look, there are other relevant sites that appear with this query, but no where in the title can you see the exact match to the query. If you want to compete on a branded key term like this one, it is going to take strategic back linking and great on page content so that the engines can equate your domain as relevant to the topic.
![MonicaOConnor MonicaOConnor](/community/q/assets/uploads/profile/77304-profileavatar-1619583233183.png)
Posts made by MonicaOConnor
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Yes, they show because that is the name of their organization. It is their brand, not their key term. Does that make sense? That is an extremely competitive term. It is a branded key term as well, making it even more competitive because you have to compete with the actual brand name. So if you wanted to compete with them on that phrase, which has only about 700 searches per month, you would need to work extremely hard to get your brand associated with that topic.
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
No worries. We were all beginners once.
I would say your domain name should be the name of your company, your brand. Your key terms will be included in the URL for your categories and products. Stuffing the URL with key terms will not help you rank. Take the baby powder example. If your domain is babypowder.com and your category page is Baby powder, and your product page is entitled baby powder for infants, your URL would be www.babypowder.com/babypowder/babypowderforinfants which is not best practice.
If you make your brand johnsonandjohnson.com, your URL becomes www.johnsonandjohnson.com/babypower/babypowerderforinfants.
So, to answer your question, no having the keyword in the URL several times does not help you rank. Having a naturally flowing URL that contains your brand and key term is what will help you rank. Having the space in the domain name is frowned upon, it generally isn't best practice.
You want to avoid using the EMD, your domain should be your brand name, or business name. An EMD is a domain that exactly matches your key term, like babypowder.com.
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RE: Duplicate content problem
I would only use the Canonical tag if you don't want these pages to rank for anything in particular. When you set the authoritative page, you are eliminating the ranking potential of the non authoritative pages. Is it possible to get user generated content for these pages? Like reviews?
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RE: Duplicate content problem
Hi there,
If you have a lot of HTML coding on pages, with no content, your HTML coding is what is triggering the duplicate content. Because you have no content, the HTML is all the bots see and if it is really similar, there is nothing to tell them that there is anything unique on the pages.
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Take a look at this article about domains. It is very high level, and it breaks down the importance of brand vs. key term. Hopefully it can explain it a little better than I am doing right now, lol.
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
I disagree. I think that if there is any short term value it will be exactly that, short term. There is not enough value for the short term. It will eventually make it harder to rank and then you will have to start over. EMD (exact match domains) have lost significant ranking value. It is what comes after the .com that is important, what products are in your URL, what key terms you use, not what your domain is. It is too easy to manipulate, which is why it has lost its value.
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
The difference is web mentions vs Backlinks. If someone mentions your name, Blue Widgets Foundation, that is valuable in its own way, where as if you were using anchor text it would more likely be for a term you are trying to rank for, like a product or converting term. Not that you couldn't link to your name, because you can. Web Mentions are kind of how engines gauge the popularity of your brand name, and back linking is used to increase the rank of a particular key term and domain authority. Does that make sense?
So, it would be like saying "You can find household widgets (Backlink using key term) crafted by the Blue Widget Foundation (web mention - increases brand value and awareness)"
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RE: Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
I agree with Ryan. I would just add that the value of an exact match domain is no where what it was 3-4 years ago. The way that Google is evolving its algorithm encourage sites to have a "brand" and not a domain that has a highly competitive key term instead of the name of the business. It would be the difference in www.babypowerder.com or www.johnsonandjohnson.org. Baby powder might get more searches, but Google with associate JohnsonandJohnson.org with that term because they are related. Does that make sense?
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RE: Link value from high authority domains vs low authority domains. How big is the difference?
This is one of my favorite SEO topics. Link value is determined by 2 things (with a bunch of other small things as well, but two major things), traffic and the authority of the site directing traffic to your site.
So, think of the site's DA as its numeric reputation. Obviously the higher the DA, the more reputable and trustworthy the source, in most cases. I have come across pay day loan sites with DA of 70+, but the general atmosphere of the site was extremely spammy. The value of a link with a DA of 80 is far better than having 10 links to sites with DA of 8. The same number, but diluted value and obviously less reputable.
The link juice is generally passed through traffic, which is why links with images and videos that encourage a click are more valuable than just text at the bottom of a page buried in content. If you have a video on a page, above the fold, from Vimeo or YouTube, that would be considered an amazing link, because it will have a high CTR, drive traffic and is from an extremely reputable source. Link building is not about the quantity as much as it is the quality of the link. This is why content linking is important. Granted, that can't be your only form of back linking, it almost insures you will have relevant links to sources that can generate traffic to your site.
You back links are the highways and byways between Google and your Site. They show the engines that you hang out in good neighborhoods and you aren't trying to manipulate your site's value by creating "short cuts" through dark alleys with less reputable company.
Hope that helps.
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RE: Bing not indexing website for some weird quality reason
Have you thought about reaching out to Bing? They have a team of specialists that you can reach if you have set up a Bing Webmaster Tools account. That might be a really helpful resource in solving this problem.
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RE: Can you nofollow a URL?
Usually, you wouldn't 301 redirect this, you would use a canonical tag. If the value of the URL has a ton of negative link juice, is there any reason you can't 404 the page and start fresh on a new URL? That would be my advice. Even if you redirect the link, these are technically the same page, and the negative link juice will be passed through. I would cut my losses, get rid of the bad pages and start fresh.
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RE: Huge Traffic Drop without any change on website
I would just like to add that this could just be seasonality of your site, or events going on that generally affect search volume, like holidays or huge sporting events. Sometimes it isn't an issue with your site, but a general decrease in search volume.
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RE: Adwords Customizers - Possible to show different prices by country of visitor in adwords using adwords customizers?
Unfortunately, you will have to create different campaigns. That is the only level you can select options to geographically target.
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RE: Can i use "nofollow" tag on product page (duplicated content)?
Hi there,
I am in a very similar situation with multiple manufacturers on my EComm site. You are absolutely correct in adding uniquely valuable content to the category pages. You can use the category pages to target key terms and engage users. Content on category pages is especially useful for targeting branded and long tailed key terms.
In this case, the Canonical tags will not help you, because the duplicate content is not on pages within your domain. If you had the same product description on two products on your site, then the canonical tag would be appropriate. However, when you use that tag you are telling the engines that the authoritative page should be the page that ranks, which means there is a chance the other pages won't rank. If you use the "no follow" tag, your pages will not be crawled by bots, which means you have 0 chance of that page actually showing in search results.
I would also suggest getting some user generated content on the product pages. Customer reviews and comments will eventually leverage the duplicate content. Aside from that, reviews are uniquely valuable to searchers, in my opinion, they are the holy grail of content. What consumer doesn't value an actual person's opinion of a product above a carbon copied description?
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RE: Keyword ranking stuck in neutral... Suggestions needed
NAP is your name, address and phone number. Making sure that is consistent throughout the web is very important.
I would recommend getting some really good links with anchor text that includes your key terms. I think that is right next to great content on the list of most important things. Anchor text linking to the pages with the relevant key terms is a must.
If my key word were power tools in Michigan, I would find a related article and have the text on top of my link power tools in Michigan, and make sure the link goes to the page where I am targeting that key term.
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RE: Keyword ranking stuck in neutral... Suggestions needed
What kind of off page SEO are you doing? Is your NAP up to date? Do you have new links consistently? How about web mentions and social media? If your on page is 100% (assuming you are adding fresh content as well) then I would focus on the off page SEO. I know some SEOs would argue that back linking is on the way out, but it isn't out yet and it is still very much an important ranking factor.
Without seeing anything specifically I can't elaborate further, but Ryan has some great ideas listed here. I just wouldn't forget about the 360 degree view of SEO.
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RE: New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin
Videos from Youtube are great. Make sure you embed them with an http and not the standard http. Pinterest is a great link source, BBB if you have access to that.
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RE: New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin
So then the 10/17 update should have lifted the penguin cloud from your site. In my opinion it isn't the domain name that is holding you back, it is your link strategy. How much new content have you added to the site and how much have you grown your link profile? Do you compare your profile to your competitors? Have you checked your CTR on organic key terms to see if you have any response when you are on page one?
this is where I would start before I change my domain name. It just sounds like your SEO isn't competitive enough to keep you on the first page.
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RE: Why google stubbornly keeps indexing my http urls instead of the https ones?
Darn it, you are right, we added a new site, not a change of address, sorry about that. Apparently my coffee is no longer effective!
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RE: Have Questions about the Jan. 27th Mozscape Index Update? Get Answers Here!
I second that opinion, super exciting to get deeper information! Can't wait to dive in!
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RE: New Domain Name or Keep going - Help not Recovering after Penguin
My first question would be, how long ago did you get the message that your penalty was lifted? If there hasn't been a Penguin refresh since then you won't see the improvements in keyword rankings and domain authority until there is a refresh.
I think that if you are trying to improve your link profile you are in the wrong link neighborhoods. You should be targeting a handful of links monthly from sites with DA of 70+, unless you are linking to sources that will provide high amounts of traffic. You shouldn't worry about how many links you are building as opposed to the quality of the links you are building. Links are about **quality. **
I do not believe that changing your domain name is going to give you what you are looking for. If your business is in the UK you should have a ,uk address.
The most important thing to understand is that Penguin penalties aren't going to have rubber band effects. You have to wait it out and continue working hard every month to really see the improvement in SEO. It takes time, you won't see an immediate result. Knowing if there has been a Penguin refresh or not will tell you whether or not the work you are doing is actually benefiting your site. The refresh will give you the instant results you are looking for.
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RE: Why google stubbornly keeps indexing my http urls instead of the https ones?
Did you do a change of address in Google Webmaster Tools? Http and Https are considered different URLs, and you will have to do a change of address if you switched to a full https site.
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RE: Can you arrange Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percentage change?
You don't have to run a VLookup necessarily. You can align the data side by side and do a simple division formula to calculate the percentage of change. Just copy and paste the data into two columns, and use the IMSUB to find the difference, then divide for a percentage.
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RE: Google is not taking the title I set
I wonder if the title for your home page is in a different spot. I worked in a site in Volusion once that had a default meta title that would override what I entered on the home page. I am not sure what your platform is, or if you have an accessible template, but that is the only other thing I could think of that could cause this problem.
This seems elementary, but if you can't find a "default" meta title, I would just change the title again and see if it picks up in the next few days.
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RE: Can H1 and Meta title be exactly the same ?
I agree with Valeria completely. To elaborate, your title should read like a newspaper heading, and your H1 tag can be more descriptive and detailed. To make them exactly the same means that one of them will not be used to their full optimization potential. The two things should work together. I have always used by H1 tag to expand on my title tag, for example:
Title - Generac 6244 | 20kW Generator | 200a ATS Package
H1 - Generac 6244 Guardian Series 20kW Home Standby Generator with **200a Automatic Transfer Switch **
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RE: Google is not taking the title I set
Is it possible that the title tag just hasn't been updated in a crawl? Has the page been cached recently, specifically after you changed the title? I would give it a little time.
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RE: Multiple listings for the same product - how to avoid duplication?
I would add user generated reviews and comments. Even a product q&a option is helpful. If you can get enough unique content on those pages to outweigh the duplicate content then you shouldn't have any troubles. I would recommend the user generated reviews in this instance over canonical tags because it will prevent the pages from ranking. You are basically telling Google that one of those pages is the authoritative one, which will prevent he others from ranking. The duplicate content is the same way however, unless there is something uniquely valuable on those pages. In this case, customer reviews would solve both problems. There is nothing more valuable to a searcher than hearing what other people have to say about a product.
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RE: Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
This is a tough question. My first thought is do you have any user generated content on these pages? Is it possible to get some reviews on these location pages?
Secondly, I know that it takes time and money but there is nothing more important for successful SEO than **uniquely valuable content. **If you are expecting success with duplicate content or thin and missing content you will not get it. If I could only pick one thing to spend money and time on it would be Content Writing. I would start with your most valuable pages and get some expertly written and valuable copy on them asap.
As far as the problem being location pages, I would recommend using some REL Canonical tags instead of 301 redirecting the pages. I would pick your main location as the authoritative page. Having unique copy on the location pages, like user generated comments and reviews, is really the best way to solve your duplicate content issue. The canonical tags will help you in the interim, but, the best way to solve your issue it with unique content.
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RE: Does adding relevant keywords to social postings help with SEO?
Facebook and Twitter are no follow links, which means that there is no benefit at all to your link profile. I agree with Robert mostly. Since these links are no follow, the key terms will only help if users are searching the respective social media platforms for your product. The benefit to SEO from Social networks comes solely from the trust factor social signals send.
High engagement tells the engines that you are a reputable business, and, as we continue through 2015 most SEOs expect these social signals to increase in importance. I would recommend that you use your social media to build popularity and increase your audience. Stuffing your pages with keywords will have absolutely no effect on your SEO rankings.
The exception to this is Google Plus. Posts on Google Plus can influence the SERPs of people who are in your circles. For example, when I am logged into my MCC account and I search for one of my key terms, I often see my Google plus posts in the results. Other than that, there is no benefit to that platform either.
Here is another post with some more information I might have missed. Hope that helps!
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RE: Discontinued Product on a Ecommerce site
I couldn't agree with Massimilano more. That page still has value because it can potentially bring traffic to alternative products. I am not a fan of redirecting or 404ing a page that still brings traffic. And as a consumer I don't want to automatically be redirected to what I am not looking for. If I were chances are I would leave the site.
I would definitely add the page back to the navigation and make sure you don't remove anymore links. Then I would state the product is discontinued and add links to similar products. Here is an example of a page that I did on my site.
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RE: How Effective Are Links Between The Same Company's Websites With Different Domain Extensions?
Theoretically this is not a good strategy because the value of these links are minimal compared to links to domains hosted on other servers in different places. There is no technical penalty for this unless you are over abusing the quantity of links, but, the value of the links is extremely low.
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RE: Adwords Advice
You can't technically restrict targeting at the Ad Group level. Well, correctly anyway. If you are just using location derivative key terms you might have the correct ads showing.
At the campaign level you can tell Google to only show you ads in certain cities. That is what I would do. Set up three campaigns for the three cities and then you don't necessarily have to geo target the individual terms, you only have to geo target the wording in the ads.
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RE: User generated content (Comments) - What impact do they have?
I do think that negative comments hurt UX and eventually the bottom line. No one wants to work with a company that has ton of negative feedback. Which is exactly why user generated content is so important to the searchers. It is a candid review of a company or product. There can be in the middle reviews, like a 3 star rating because customer service was great but the product stinks. I think those kinds of comments and reviews are necessary and overall good for UX.
In my opinion as a consumer, I want to see the bad comments. I always use the example of shoes and clothes. I don't want to find out when I get a pair of shoes in the mail that the sizes run a little small. If I see that in the comments or reviews ahead of time I will know to buy a size bigger and save myself the trouble of returning the product. These kinds of "negative" reviews are useful to a searcher and I wouldn't remove them.
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RE: Reviews Duplicate Issue
If the use of the reviews is for the purpose of user experience there are review aggregates that will share reviews between two domains without placing them in the source code. This will leave out duplicate content penalties and it will not have any effect on SEO. Since the reviews will not be in the code, there will be no positive or negative SEO effects. Yotpo is an aggregate that displays reviews like an RSS feed, and it leaves them out of the source code.
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RE: User generated content (Comments) - What impact do they have?
User generated content in my opinion is extremely useful. It is unique, it is informative most of the time and it is valuable to future searches. In this instance I would be more concerned about the value to the searchers and to user experience than the SEO effects.
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RE: Why is Moz Crawl Diagnostics labelling pages as duplicate when they appear to be different?
I think that it is a good possibility. I wouldn't put Canonical tags on the product page however. The product page isn't the same as the category page, the html coding is just very similar between the two.
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RE: Why is Moz Crawl Diagnostics labelling pages as duplicate when they appear to be different?
I would add some content to these pages. When you look at the source code of those pages the html coding is almost identical. That is most likely what is causing the duplicate content error. There is no text to html ratio, it is all html coding.
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RE: Duplicate content issues - page content and store URLs
Are you using Canonical tags on any of these pages? If you aren't, you should, it will help the duplicate content issue somewhat.
If 1 product has 2 different URLs then it is technically 2 pages to the search engine. Canonical tags will help get rid of those errors as well.
If the content is copy and pasted it is duplicate content. If the content is thin then the html coding that is probably very similar on both pages is what the bots consider duplicate content because it is the only content. Your text to html ratio should be much greater. The engines don't need copy to be 100% identical in order to classify it as duplicate content. Those errors are important because it is telling you that the engines don't see those pages as relevant because they aren't uniquely valuable to the searchers.
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RE: If i was to drastically improve 5 critical things on my site, what would you suggest?
In addition:
• The content is the most important part of what needs to be fixed. Nothing is uniquely valuable. And from a consumer standpoint, I have no faith in your content marketing strategy based on the several grammatical errors, punctuation missteps and lack of uniform capitalization.
• There is nothing engaging about the graphics you have, everything is really cluttered. I am not sure why your page titles are showing in the upper left hand corner of the screen either, it is erroneous and it looks messy.
• I would add some user created content like reviews or images of cell phones and people using them. Something more relevant to what you are advertising.
• The copy on your site should advertise the uniquely valuable asset you can offer perspective clients that your competition cannot. I am not sure what that is from reading your site.
• The first thing I would do after fixing the content is updating the meta data to follow best practice. Moz has some great guidelines in their Learning SEO section.
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RE: Crawl errors
I would definitely fix them. The meta data is important to your site. It tells searchers and engines what your pages are about and leads to how relevant they are compared to your competition.
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RE: SEO SEA strategy
Hi Leonie,
I hate organic cannibalization. The company I am working for now had a monthly AdWords spend of 100k and 0 organic rankings. Of course, you need an AdWords campaign, but you shouldn't sacrifice the organic rankings to have a productive campaign.
I cleansed the AdWords account of everything I wanted to rank for organically. As the CTR increased organically the AdWords spend decreased. If the key term is on page 1 organically and paid you will exponentially increase your CTR, however you want to attract those clicks organically because CTR is important to your rankings.
Is the conversion rate higher through paid traffic? Just out of curiosity is the AdWords campaign affecting the conversion rate of organic traffic?
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RE: How would you handle this duplicate content - noindex or canonical?
I don't recommend no following either page. The Canonical tag should help with the duplicate content errors. If it were my site I would list all of the holidays on one page only by combining the two pages together. If you use the Canonical tag you will decrease your chances of having both pages rank, however you will be telling the engines which page is the authoritative page.
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RE: Google maps, G+ and Google reviews on right hand side of results page:
Those results are directly populated by your Google My Business account. You should make sure your Google Plus is working and you have verified your location with a PIN post card. Once your Google Plus is running and you are on Google Maps, you should start showing up there in branded queries.
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RE: Canonical Vs No Follow for Duplicate Products
I didn't think the engines could see the information. So if I understand you correctly you are saying that blocking the URLs in the .txt file is better than using a canonical tag right?
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Canonical Vs No Follow for Duplicate Products
I am in the process of migrating a site from Volusion to BigCommerce. There is a limitation on the ability to display one product in 2 different ways.
Here is the situation. One of the manufacturers will not allow us to display products to customers who are not logged in. We have convinced them to let us display the products with no prices. Then we created an Exclusive Contractor section that will allow users to see the price and be able to purchase the products online. Originally we were going to just direct users to call to make purchases like our competitors are doing. Because we have a large amount of purchasers online we wanted to manipulate the system to be able to allow online purchases.
Since these products will have duplicates with no pricing I was thinking that Canonical tags would be kind of best practice. However, everything will be behind a firewall with a message directing people to log in. Since this will undoubtedly create a high bounce rate I feel like I need to no follow those links. This is a rather large site, over 5000 pages. The 250 no follow URLs most likely won't have a large impact on the overall performance of the site. Or so I hope anyway. My gut tells me if these products are going to technically be hidden from the searcher they should also be hidden from the engines.
Does Disallowing these URLs seem like a better way to do this than simply using the Canonical tags? Any thoughts or suggestions would be really helpful!
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RE: How to delete specific url?
You can use Google Webmaster Tools if you do not have Screaming Frog. It will show you where the link is linked from and how long it has been reporting a 404.
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RE: Is it better to find a page without the desired content, or not find the page?
No problem, glad I could help!