URL for offline purposes

[Paul78]

Hi there,

We are going to be promoting one of our products offline, however I do not want to use the original URL for this product page as it's long for the user to type in, so I thought it would be best practice in using a URL that would be short, easier for the consumer to remember.

My plan:

Replicate the product page and put it on this new short URL, however this would mean I have a duplicate content issue, would It be best practice to use a canonical on the new short URL pointing to the original URL? or use a 301?

Thanks for any help

[SanketPatel]

If you are thinking of promoting that product offline, you can block that page in your robots.txt file or alternatively you can also put noindex, nofollow robot tag in that page. Search engine will not going to index that page as its blocked for all bots so no duplicate content issue will arise.

[Paul78]

Hi there,

I have just read this post:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

What is the purpose of the canonical tag in this instance if you can you block that URL in robots.txt?

Thanks

[SanketPatel]

By using canonical tag we can tell Google, which is the original version of page. Dr pete has written nice post on it few days back.

Here is the URL: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/which-page-is-canonical

Hope this will solve your concern.

[Matt-Williamson]

I would create a 301 redirect from your new short URL to your original product page as you are essentially just creating a new path to it and not new content.

Here is a post about canonicalisation from Matt Cutts - http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

And another useful insight from SEOMoz on how to deal with duplicate content - http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content

Hope this helps

Blurbpoint is also correct using his method will also work - blocking the page in a robots.txt file or using the meta-tags no index, no follow will also stop duplicate content issues! The down side is that any links that your short URL acquires will not pass any link juice unlike with 301s or canonicalization.

[Paul78]

Hi Matt,

I really do not want to create a 301, as I want to see stats in Analytics for this short URL.

I have actually used a canonical, do you recommend removing this and using disallow in robots.txt?

Thanks.

[Visiblics]

H,

IMO you can simply disallow the URL with robots.txt. There is no other alternative for this.

Regards,

[Matt-Williamson]

I don't think you need to remove this Gary if that is the case - take a look here for an updated 2012 article on rel="canonical" from the horses mouth

- http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394

This might help you.

[Paul78]

I read this in Dr.Pete's article in seomoz

Know Your Crawl Paths

Finally, an important reminder – the most important canonical signal is usually your internal links. If you use the canonical tag to point to one version of a URL, but then every internal link uses a different version, you’re sending a mixed signal and using the tag as a band-aid. The canonical URL should actually becanonical in practice – use it consistently. If you’re an outside SEO coming into a new site, make sure you understand the crawl paths first, before you go and add a bunch of tags. Don’t create a mess on top of a mess.

Would this cause me an issue using the method I have used?

Also should I use a canonical on the original URL pointing to itself?

Thanks

[Matt-Williamson]

Well I am assuming all your sites internal links are already pointing to the original product page, so in relation to this, as long as you don't create any internal links pointing to your duplicate friendly URL for offline you will be fine and implementing it as DR Pete instructs. Canonical links should be on all pages that are duplicates of the target page which is part of the canonical tag.

[Dr-Pete]

I agree with Matt - as long as your primary, internal links are consistent, it's ok to use a short version for offline purposes. The canonical tag is perfectly appropriate for this.

The other option would be to use a third-party shortener that has built-in tracking, like Bit.ly. It uses a 301-redirect, but also captures the data. If you're just doing a test case, this might be easier all-around.