301, Canonical, and Page Authority
-
I have been trying to find an answer to this question for awhile now but I am having trouble.
I have a clients site that I need to redirect and Canonical the pages to correct duplicate content issues and title tags however, the issue with this client is that some of the www. pages have a higher PA than non-www and the reverse is true. I am wondering if there is an issue with chasing the PA to get the highest PA per page (even if this means the site is going to be a mix of www. and non-www. pages)?
I am extremely new to SEO so I apologize ahead of time if I missed this in the forum.
-
Jarno,
Thank you for the answer. Great insight!! I appreciate your help with this issue.
-
Dear Andrea,
You don't have to apologize when you ask a question. Everyone started off at the beginning with SEO and we all had to learn one way or the other. Like my father used to say: There is no such thing as a dumb question....(I strongly disagree with him however...;-p
For your question I don't really think there is one short answer. Best case situations are always the hardest to describe but I can tell you this from my own experience with redirecting and canonicalization of url's. Do not mix up the www. and non-www. www. is a subdomain of your name.com (so www. is a subdomain of test.com just as cms.test.com is a subdomain). Using 2 versions will only make things far more complicated then you are looking for. I would choose just one version of the site. Personally I use www.domainname.com because www. is what people associate with internet but non-www is also perfectly fine (it might even be a little better for SEO since your working on your rootdomain but I'm not 100% sure about that).
Don't focus to much on the value of a page after all when you redirect 301 to a new page you'll redirect linkjuice just as well so the new page will become higher scoring in time. Be carefull with the canonical tag, it's just used to tell the search engines which page is the original one. When you use canonical the wrong way you might undo everything you're trying to do with 301 redirects (for instance moving a site from one place to another).
Well I hope my answer was a bit helpful to you. If not, please let me know what you want to know and I'll try to help you as good as I can.
kind regards
Jarno
-
Great! Thank you for clarifying that!
-
Hi Andrea,
If you are going to 301 either all www to non www pages or vice versa then you will be consolidating both page versions into one and you do not really need to worry about chasing the PA as you say. 301s pass along almost all of the link value etc from the original page to the final page.
It is more to the point to decide which version you want to use (www or non), implement the 301s and then just be consistent in regards linking and usage from then on. I suppose it is good practice to limit unneeded 301s as much as possible, so if you have no other reason to go with one version or the other then the version with the most external links might be the best one to choose for the final urls.
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
-
Missing canonical tag error - office pages
Moz is throwing an error for our office pages (10 office pages in the format /office/location-1; /office/location-2 etc) but the content is different. How should we handle the canonical tag? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AztekMedia0 -
Page grader says we are keyword stuffing but we arn't. Page source shows different story.
Hi community! We have just run a page grader for the keyword 'LED Bulbs' on whichledlight.com and it comes up that we are keyword stuffing! However, a brief look at the source for the homepage and there's only 6 times that LED Bulbs pops up. We do have the non plural version of the word 'LED Bulb' on the page 27 times.. do we think that would contribute to the keyword stuffing? Thanks!!
On-Page Optimization | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS. My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
Imiges on own page???
Can somebody help me to explain why when I click on an image in a post it goes to its own page?? And why if I click on other image it does not go anywhere?? this is one of the posts: http://villasdiani.com/beach-wedding-at-a-luxury-boutique-hotel/ what is good or bad?? On most of the images SEOmoz is reporting that I am missing meta description!
On-Page Optimization | | VillasDiani0 -
Canonical Help?
This canonical thing is brand new to me and I'm trying to wrap my mind around it. Here is my situation: I use Wordpress. I am showing duplicate content with the following url's http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/ http://crosstrainingandfitness.com/online-workout-blog/page/2/ Would setting a canonical link solve this? If so, what do I put in the Canonical box for this category (online workout blog). I use Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin. Any help is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | carbbon0 -
Why is On-Page showing canonical wrong?
I'm trying to use the On-Page report card and it's saying that my rel=canonical is wrong, I've looked and I can't see anything wrong with it, am I missing something? The url is www.harrisonlighting.co.uk/childrens-lights.html
On-Page Optimization | | HarrisonLighting0 -
Correct use of Canonical link vs 301 redirect
Hi All, Seeking yet more advice. SEOMOZ tools have told me I have duplicate content on one of my sites and I am keen to clean this up. I am not to familiar with the following so thought I would ask. The duplicate content is shown on : www.mysite.com www.mysite.com/index.html Obviously I only see index.html when I check the code so what is the best method of resolving the duplicate content, Canonical or 301? Can you give me an example 🙂 Thanks all
On-Page Optimization | | wedmonds0 -
Domain authority
Wondering why my domain authority has dropped after about three months of trying to implement the best practices suggested on this site. Can anyone help?
On-Page Optimization | | MauiCoffee0