Canonical URL Question

[DRTBA]

Hi Everyone

I like to run this question by the community and get a second opinion on best practices for an issue that I ran into.

I got two pages, Page A is the original page and Page B is the page with duplicate content. We already added** ="Page A**" />** to the duplicate content (Page B).**

**Here is my question, since Page B is duplicate content and there is a link rel="canonical" added to it, would you put in the time to add meta tags and optimize the title of the page?

Thanks in advance for all your help.**

[coremediadesign]

Since you're using canonical link, which indicates that the source of the page content is actually from the different page I would simply use the same meta tags as the original page. The canonical option is telling search engines that the page which you're actually viewing is the same as the canonical so it gives the credit to the one specified in the canonical url.

Here's an interesting point found at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

"Is it okay if the canonical is not an exact duplicate of the content?
We allow slight differences, e.g., in the sort order of a table of products. We also recognize that we may crawl the canonical and the duplicate pages at different points in time, so we may occasionally see different versions of your content. All of that is okay with us."

This would indicate that it won't make much of a difference if you have different meta tags, but it is usually a better idea to have it as identical as possible.

I hope this helps.

[DRTBA]

Hi Sebastian. Thank you for replying to my question and the link to the Google Web Master Central Blog with more information and resources which was very helpful.

[coremediadesign]

Thanks DRTBA - glad you've found it useful.

[DRTBA]

Just curious but with your name Sebastian, do you speak French? The reason I ask is because it's a very popular name here in Quebec.

[coremediadesign]

I'm afraid I don't - though I certainly would like to - it's a very nice sounding language.

[DRTBA]

Yes it is. I try to speak it as I don't know it perfectly either but it is a nice language.