Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
-
Hi Folks,
I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places.
When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation.
We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page.
Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page?
I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change.
So, what are your thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Are you using a CMS, or some inhouse solution? If it is a CMS, in many cases you should be able to update that CMS so that the 2 links are generated but the page itself isn't generated twice.
Another option if 2 pages must exist, would be to set a canonical on both pages to the 1 main location for the content, while using a pushstate on the url to manipulate the browser into the main pathing. Although the more I think about that one, it may not be a 100% viable option.
-
I agree - but as with many things, there's politics involved. . . . . I'll leave it at that.
-
Although, depending on Craig's site structure, it could be a simple, one-time set up of the htaccess so all Link 2's 301 to the Link 1's.
For example, if when creating website.com/category1/product1, it also creates a duplicate page on /category2/product1, he could use regex so that all products under /category2/ redirect to the /category1/ product URL.
You're right that it's still not the most elegant of solutions, but it's a simple enough way to make sure users are where you want them to be without requiring any effort every time you create a new page - and it shouldn't upset Googlebot.
-
Yes, you absolutely can redirect this link. However I think your time would be better spent focusing on a solution that prevents this from happening long term. You will continually have to redirect new content as long as this continues to work as is.
-
Redirecting the 2nd link would probably be the best option, in my opinion. If the 2nd link has an integral part of the site structure and navigation, but you don't want users (or Google) to access that duplicate page, I don't see how you could do it any other way if your client insists that the 2nd page has to be created.
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
-
What Can I Do To Improve The SEO of My Site?
We have a website that is ranking okay but we can't seem to get past #6 or #7 for a specific national keyword, "self storage software". We are working on a more effective back-linking strategy right now, but we really are having a hard time identifying steps to take besides that. If anyone can help me out and give me some suggestions I would be very appreciative. Maybe even seeing a competitive analysis from someone else would help catch something that I am not seeing. Website is www.storageunitsoftware.com Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | kenturley0 -
Linking to my Site so I should Link Back?
I remember hearing a few years ago that it was a good practice to link back to a site that was linking to you. My company's site was referenced and linked to in a news article. The news company has an above average domain authority, which is pretty good for my company's backlink profile. Is it still or was ever a "best practice" to link back to this website/domain? I feel like linking back was a best practice, but when I try to search this, all I get back is backlinking 101 and backlinking articles. Nothing really answering my question straight forward. Thanks for any help.
Technical SEO | | aua0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee
Hi Everyone My site received a notification of unnatural links in Webmaster Tools and the site has had a penalty applied. I can see there are a lot of links from a site : linguee.com .de. nl. ect ..more than 30k of them! I am not sure where did those links come from! The suddenly appeared over the weekend. Does anyone has similar experience before and any suggestion? Thanks Ricky
Technical SEO | | SEO-SMB0 -
Does Google differentiate between a site with spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack?
I've be tasked with figuring out how to recover our rankings as we are likely being hurt by an algorithmic penalty. I have no idea if this was the workings of a previously hired SEO or the result of negative SEO, **how does Google differentiate between a site with bad/spammy link building practices from a victim of a negative SEO attack? **
Technical SEO | | Syed_Raza0 -
Will Links to one Sub-Domain on a Site hurt a different Sub-Domain on the same site by affecting the Quality of the Root Domain?
Hi, I work for a SaaS company which uses two different subdomains on our site. A public for our main site (which we want to rank in SERPs for), and a secure subdomain, which is the portal for our customers to access our services (which we don't want to rank for) . Recently I realized that by using our product, our customers are creating large amounts of low quality links to our secure subdomain and I'm concerned that this might affect our public subdomain by bringing down the overall Authority of our root domain. Is this a legitimate concern? Has anyone ever worked through a similar situation? any help is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ifbyphone0 -
Can hotlinking images from multiple sites be bad for SEO?
Hi, There's a very similar question already being discussed here, but it deals with hotlinking from a single site that is owned by the same person. I'm interested whether hotlinking images from multiple sites can be bad for SEO. The issue is that one of our bloggers has been hotlinking all the images he uses, sometimes there are 3 or 4 images per blog from different domains. We know that hotlinking is frowned upon, but can it affect us in the SERPs? Thanks, James
Technical SEO | | OptiBacUK0 -
Best practices for controlling link juice with site structure
I'm trying to do my best to control the link juice from my home page to the most important category landing pages on my client's e-commerce site. I have a couple questions regarding how to NOT pass link juice to insignificant pages and how best to pass juice to my most important pages. INSIGNIFICANT PAGES: How do you tag links to not pass juice to unimportant pages. For example, my client has a "Contact" page off of there home page. Now we aren't trying to drive traffic to the contact page, so I'm worried about the link juice from the home page being passed to it. Would you tag the Contact link with a "no follow" tag, so it doesn't pass the juice, but then include it in a sitemap so it gets indexed? Are there best practices for this sort of stuff?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Are site wide links bad for web developers?
Like many web dev companies, we put an anchor text credit (varying the anchor text) in the footer of clients' sites. As it's a footer link, it's site wide. This strategy's been troubling me for a while and I've been anticipating a drop in our rankings ... especially in light of Penguin. But it hasn't happened. Any other developers our there taken a hit by having site wide links? anyone have any views on this? Anyone want to comment on the spurious and unlikely scenario that Google may recognise that web dev companies have always used site wide credits and may therefore be overlooking / not penalising them?
Technical SEO | | 2Stroke0