Moving content from CMS pages to a blog - 301 or rel canonical?
-
Our site has some useful information buried in out-of-the-way CMS pages, and I feel like this content is more suited to our blog. What's my best method here?
1. Move the content to a blog post, delete the original page, and 301.
2. Move the content to a blog post, leave the original page up, and rel canonical.
3. Rewrite the content so it's not a duplicate, keep original page up, and post rewritten content on the blog.
4. Something else.
Some of this content has inbound links and some does not. Quite a bit of it gets long-tail traffic already. It just looks kludgy because it's on pages that really aren't designed for articles. It would look much nicer and be much more readable/shareable/linkable on the blog.
-
I would go with the 301 then. That way if anyone lands on your old site (say through a link) they'll be redirected to your blog, where you want them to be.
-
I would prefer that users end up on the blog version. So I am considering
CMS URL > 301 > Blog Post
CMS URL > canonical > Blog Post
Either way, the blog post would be the "correct" version of the content.
-
Well, what do you think is the better experience for the user? Both 301s and canonicals will transfer (most) of your link juice. Do you want users to end up on your CMS or on your blog? Depending on the answer, choose the 301 or canonical.
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
-
Question on Pagination - /blog/ vs /blog/?page=1
Question on Pagination Because we could have /blog/ or /blog/?page=1 as page one would this be the correct way to markup the difference between these two URL? The first page of a sequence could start with either one of these URLs. Clarity around what to do on this first page would be helpful. Example… Would this be the correct way to do this as these two URLs would have the exact content? Internal links would likely link to /blog/ so signal could be muddy. URL: https://www.somedomain.com/blog/
Technical SEO | | jorgensoncompanies
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.somedomain.com/blog/?page=1"> URL: https://www.somedomain.com/blog/?page=1
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.somedomain.com/blog/?page=1"> Google is now saying to just use the canonical to the correct paginated URL with page number. You can read that here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/ecommerce/pagination-and-incremental-page-loading But they do not clarify what to do on /blog/?page=1 vs /blog/ as they are the exact same thing. Thanks for your help.0 -
Home page duplicate content...
Hello all! I've just downloaded my first Moz crawl CSV and I noticed that the home page appears twice - one with an appending forward slash at the end: http://www.example.com
Technical SEO | | LiamMcArthur
http://www.example.com/ For any of my product and category pages that encounter this problem - it's automatically resolved with a canonical tag. Should I create the same canonical tag for my home page? rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com" />0 -
Rel canonical for partner sites - product pages only or also homepage and other key pages?
Hello there Our main site is www.arenaflowers.com. We also run a number of partner sites (eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/). We've relcanonical'd the products on the partner site back to the main (arenaflowers.com) site. eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013 rel canonicals back to: http://www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013). My question: Should we also relcanonical the homepage and other key pages on partner sites back to the main arenaflowers website too? The content is similar but not identical. We don't want our partner sites to be outranking the original (as is the case on kw flower delivery for example). (NB this situation may be complicated by the fact we appear to have an unnatural link penalty on af.com (and when we did an upgrade a while back, the af.com site fell out of the index altogether due to some issues with our move to AWS.) We're getting professional SEO advice on this but wondered what the Moz community's thoughts were.. Cheers, Will
Technical SEO | | ArenaFlowers.com0 -
Will rel=canonical work here?
Dear SEOMOZ groupies, I manage several real estate sites for SEO which we have just taken over. After running the crawl on each I am find 1000's of errors relating to just a few points and wanted to find out either suggestion to fix or if the rel=canonical will resolve it as it is in bulk. Here are the problems...Every property has the following so the more adverts the more errors. each page has a contact agent url. all of these create dup title and content each advert has the same with printer friendly each advert has same with as a favorites page several other but I think you get the idea. Help!!! .... suggestions overly welcome Steve
Technical SEO | | AkilarOffice0 -
Rel=canonical and Google analytics referrals
Hello guys, If I put (rel=can) from site1.com/page1 to site2.com/page1, will site2.com see in his Google Analytics that people are coming from site1.com in the referrals section or somewhere else? I can't find anything on the web about that. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | YST0 -
Is having "rel=canonical" on the same page it is pointing to going to hurt search?
i like the rel=canonical tag and i've seen matt cutts posts on google about this tag. for the site i'm working on, it's a great workaround because we often have two identical or nearly identical versions of pages: 1 for patients, 1 for doctors. the problem is this: the way our content management system is set up, certain pages are linked up in a number of places and when we publish, two different versions of the page are created, but same content. because they are both being made from the same content templates, if i put in the rel=canonical tag, both pages get it. so, if i have: http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp and http://www.myhospital.com/professional-condition.asp and they are both produced from the same template, and have the same content, and i'm trying to point search at http://www.myhospital.com/patient-condition.asp, but that tag appears on both pages similarly, we have various forms and we like to know where people are coming from on the site to use those forms. to the bots, it looks like there's 600 versions of particular pages, so again, rel=canonical is great. however, because it's actually all the same page, just a link with a variable tacked on (http://www.myhospital.com/makeanappointment.asp?id=211) the rel=canonical tag will appear on "all" of them. any insight is most appreciated! thanks! brett
Technical SEO | | brett_hss0 -
Effect of rel canonical on links
Has anyone done any experimentation on how Google treats links that are on a page that is being "rel canonical'd" to another page? For eg, example.com/b has a canonical pointing to example.com/a How does Google treat the internal links that are on page example.com/b?
Technical SEO | | Burgo0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0