Best Practice Approaches to Canonicals vs. Indexing in Google Sitemap vs. No Follow Tags

[Wavelength_International]

Hi There,

I am working on the following website: https://wave.com.au/

I have become aware that there are different pages that are competing for the same keywords.

For example, I just started to update a core, category page - Anaesthetics (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/) to focus mainly around the keywords ‘Anaesthetist Jobs’.

But I have recognized that there are ongoing landing pages that contain pretty similar content:

• https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/
• https://wave.com.au/asa/

We want to direct organic traffic to our core pages e.g. (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/).

This then leads me to have to deal with the duplicate pages with either a canonical link (content manageable) or maybe alternatively adding a no-follow tag or updating the robots.txt. Our resident developer also suggested that it might be good to use Google Index in the sitemap to tell Google that these are of less value?

What is the best approach? Should I add a canonical link to the landing pages pointing it to the category page? Or alternatively, should I use the Google Index? Or even another approach?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[effectdigital]

This all sounds good, just make sure before you proceed, you use GA to check what % of your SEO (segment: "Organic") traffic comes from these URLs. Don't act on a hunch, act on data!

[Wavelength_International]

Thank you for the comprehensive response this is greatly appreciated my friend.

Yes, I agree. I have since read further and have completely ruled out blocking (robots txt. etc) as an option.

I went back and read some more Moz/SEO articles and I think I have narrowed it down to either:

a) canonicals pointing from the landing pages to the core website category pages

b) NoIndex/Follow tags on the landing pages

Basically, I think the key contextual factors to keep in mind are that:

• The landing pages are basically just sent to people directly by our recruiters in emails and over the phone, so they are almost counted as direct traffic.
• It just contains a form and doesn't encourage click through into our core website beside logo etc. - we just want them to register directly on that page.
• Over the past year, the visits on the landing pages were much, much less, and the bounce rate and exit % was higher.
• my manager has told me to prioritise the SEO towards the core category pages as they see the landing pages as purely for UX/registrations/useful to internal business recruiting practices rather than encouraging organic traffic.

I think canonicals would probably work the best since in some cases the landing pages were ranking higher than the category pages and it should hopefully transfer a bit of ranking power to the category pages.

But perhaps you are right and I can batch apply canonicals monitor the results and then progress.

Once again, thank you for your response.

[effectdigital]

First of all keep in mind that Google has chosen the pages it is deciding to rank for one reason or another, and that canonical tags do not consolidate link equity (SEO authority) in the same way which 301 redirects do

As such, it's possible that you could implement a very 'logical' canonical tag structure, but for whatever reason Google may not give your new 'canonical' URLs the same rankings which it ascribed to the old URLs. So there is a possibility here that, you could lose some rankings! Google's acceptance of both the canonical tag and the 301 redirect depends upon the (machine-like) similarity of the content on both URLs

Think of Boolean string similarity. You get two strings of text, whack them into a tool like this one - and it tells you the 'percentage' of similarity between the two text strings. Google operate something similar yet infinitely more sophisticated. No one has told me that they do this, I have observed it over hundreds of site migration projects where, sometimes Google gives the new site loads of SEO authority through the 301s and sometimes not much at all. For me, the two main causes of Google refusing to accept new canonical URLs are redirect chains (which could include soft redirect chains) but also content 'dissimilarity'. Basically, content has won links and interactions on one URL which prove it is popular and authoritative. If you move that content somewhere else, or tell Google to go somewhere else instead - they have to be pretty certain that the new content is pretty much the same, otherwise it's a risk to them and an 'unknown quantity' in the SERPs (in terms of CTR and stuff)

If you're pretty damn sure that you have loads of URLs which are essentially the same, read the same, reference the same prices for things (one isn't cheaper than the other), that Google has really chosen the wrong page to rank in terms of Google-user click-through UX, then go ahead and lay out your canonical tag strategy

Personally I'd pick sections of the site and do it one part at a time in isolation, so you can minimise losses from disturbing Google and also measure your efforts more effectively / efficiently

If you no-index and robots-block URLs, it KILLS their SEO authority (dead) instead of moving it elsewhere (so steer clear of those except in extreme situations, they're really a last resort if you have the worst sprawling architecture imaginable). 301 redirects can shift ranking URLs and relevance, but don't pipe much authority. 301 redirects (if handled correctly) do all three things

What you have to ask yourself is, if you flat out deleted the pages you don't want to rank (obviously you wouldn't do this, as it would cause internal UX issues on your site) - if you did that, would Google:

A) Rank the other pages in their place from your site, which you want Google to rank

B) Give up on you and just rank similar pages (to the ones you don't want to rank) from other, competing sites instead

If you think (A) - take a measured, sectioned, small approach to canonical tag deployment and really test it before full roll-out. If you think (B), then you are admitting that there's something more Google-friendly one the pages you don't want to be ranking and just have to accept - no, your Google->conversion funnel will never be completely perfect like how you want it to be. You have to satisfy Google, not the other way around

Hope that helps!