301 Redirect or Canonical Tag or Leave Them Alone? Different Pages - Similar Content
-
We currently have 3 different versions of our State Business-for-Sale listings pages - the versions are:
**Version 1 -- Preferred Version: **
http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx
Title = California Business for Sale Ads - California Businesses for Sale & Business Brokers - Sell a Business on Business Broker
Version 2:
http://www.businessbroker.net/Businesses_For_Sale-State-California.aspx
Title = California Business for Sale | 3124 California Businesses for Sale | BusinessBroker.net
Version 3:
http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml
Title = California Businesses for Sale at BusinessBroker.net - California Business for Sale
While the page titles and meta data are a bit different, the bulk of the page content (which is the listings rendered) are identical. We were wondering if it would make good sense to either (A) 301 redirect Versions 2 and 3 to the preferred Version 1 page or (B) put Canonical Tags on Versions 2 and 3 labeling Version 1 as the preferred version. We have this issue for all 50 U.S. States -- I've mentioned California here but the same applies for Alabama through Wyoming - same issue.
Given that there are 3 different flavors and all are showing up in the Search Results -- some on the same 1st page of results -- which probably is a good thing for now -- should we do a 301 redirect or a Canonical Tag on Versions 2 and 3? Seems like with Google cracking down on duplicate content, it might be wise to be proactive.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
- Matt M
-
Thanks for the response.
Do you think we need to stay consistent - for example if we decide to use this version - http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx as the preferred version - should we use this as the preferred version for all states -- even if this version is not the ranking version for a particular state?
Thanks again,
- MM
-
Does it matter which version is getting ranked the best in the eyes of Google in terms of which URL's we chose to 301?
If I was doing this I would redirect the pages that rank lowest. The page that ranks highest is there for a reason.
**If we 301 a version that is getting ranked well in Google, does this hurt us in any way? **
I don't know... but your other pages are not ranking as well for a reason.
STICK WITH A WINNER! (However, I might work to improve that page.)
-
Hello, you provided a very good response to the question I posed last year. We never pulled the trigger on this change and now it is back on the radar screen. I was hoping you'd be willing to answer a follow-up question for us. Does it matter which version is getting ranked the best in the eyes of Google in terms of which URL's we chose to 301? I started to look at where we rank for certain "state" related keywords -- i.e. Utah Businesses for Sale, etc.. If we 301 a version that is getting ranked well in Google, does this hurt us in any way? For example, if we decide to 301 redirect Version 3 (http://www.businessbroker.net/listings/business_for_sale_california.ihtml) to this page -- http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale.aspx - if Version 3 ranks well for keywords like California Business for Sale, etc..
Thanks in advance for any help/guidance on this.
Below is original post.
- Matt M
-
Yes, I would do 301 redirects.
I would do that to consolidate my link power into a single page and eliminate the potential for duplicate content problems.
-
Thanks for the quick response -- quick question - when you say "eliminate" do you mean to 301 redirect these pages? These are all existing pages that are indexed by Google and have various search positions. Thanks again.
- Matt
-
I agree with EGOL. Are the pages being generated? How many search queries will end with the same information?
It looks like your doing URL ReWriting now since the url:
http://www.businessbroker.net/State/California-Businesses_For_Sale_test.aspx
shows the same information. Start adding canonical to all pages so that the above link will not be seen as duplicated content.
-
I looked at version 1 through 3 for California and agree that these pages are substantially similar.
If this was my site I would eliminate version 2 and version 3 and put all of my linkjuice into version 1.
I would not do this without some analytics... and might try an experiment with a couple of states before doing it across the site. However, my bet is that one version will pull about as much traffic as all three versions combined.
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
-
If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?
Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress1 -
Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?
We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).0 -
Can Googlebots read canonical tags on pages with javascript redirects?
Hi Moz! We have old locations pages that we can't redirect to the new ones because they have AJAX. To preserve pagerank, we are putting canonical tags on the old location pages. Will Googlebots still read these canonical tags if the pages have a javascript redirect? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
How can you indexed pages or content on pages that are behind a pay wall or subscription login.
I have a client that has a boat of awesome content they provide to their client that's behind a pay wall ( ie: paid subscribers can only access ) Any suggestions mozzers? How do I get those pages index? Without completely giving away the contents in the front end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BizDetox0 -
Do I need to use canonical tags if I'm 301 redirecting pages?
I just took a job about three months and one of the first things I wanted to do was restructure the site. The current structure is solution based but I am moving it toward a product focus. The problem I'm having is the CMS I'm using isn't the greatest (and yes I've brought this up to my CMS provider). It creates multiple URL's for the same page. For example, these two urls are the same page: (note: these aren't the actual urls, I just made them up for demonstration purposes) http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Omnipress
http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/bossman.cmsx (I know this is terrible, and once our contract is up we'll be looking at a different provider) So clearly I need to set up canonical tags for the last two pages that look like this: With the new site restructure, do I need to put a canonical tag on the second page to tell the search engine that it's the same as the first, since I'll be changing the category it's in? For Example: http://www.website.com/home/meet-us/team-leaders/boss-man/ will become http://www.website.com/home/MEET-OUR-TEAM/team-leaders/boss-man My overall question is, do I need to spend the time to run through our entire site and do canonical tags AND 301 redirects to the new page, or can I just simply redirect both of them to the new page? I hope this makes sense. Your help is greatly appreciated!!0 -
Is a 301 Direct with a canonical tag Possible ?
Hi All, Quick question , Are we correct in thinking that for any given URL it's not possible to do a 301 redirect AND a canonical tag? thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
301 redirect for duplicate content
Hey, I have just started working on a site which is a video based city guide, with promotional videos for restaurants, bars, activities,etc. The first thing that I have noticed is that every video on the site has two possible urls:- http://www.domain.com/venue.php?url=rosemarino
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino I know that I can write a .htaccess line to redirect one to the other:- redirect 301 /venue.php?url=rosemarino http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino but this would involve creating a .htaccess line for every video on the site and new videos that get added may get missed. Does anyone know a way of creating a rule to rewrite these urls? Any help would be most gratefully received. Thanks. Ade.0