Canonicalization - Some advice needed :)

[MarkScully]

Will do - cheers Matthew

I'll probably take you up on that offer.

[Ci3reR]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks very much for your explanation. I think I get to understand it better now

Many thanks,

Christian

[aalcocer2003]

Hello Mathew and Mark congrats for the great support and highlights.

In the light of what you are explaning here could you please supoport me in this question concerning Canonical or 301 redirect? My issue is in terms of SEO when doing canolical.

I have a page with a long post title and url path name (more than 70 caracters and 115). This page has many visits but I am changing the SEO website structure according to SEOMOz and forums guidelines for the length names so: I WILL CREATE A DUPLICATE PAGE WITH THE SAME INFO.

This issue has been marked as an issue in the SEO tools, for long names>70 and url path names>115

My question is which option should I use and you would recommend me?

1. OPTION 1: Ideally I would like to keep the old post, so I should use the canonical tag, but my main concern is if the search engines in terms of SEO, even the canonical has been done, will penalise my SEO as there is still a post with bad SEO optimising, or if this is not the case because I already used the canonical. The duplicate content would still exist!

2. OPTION 2: Eliminate the post and redirection 301 to the new page to keep the juice.

I would prefer option 1, as I keep both post and page, but only if searchengines do not penalise my SEO as they detect a long post name and url path name.

Thank you very much for the help,

Antonio

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Antonio,

I hope you're well and not pulling your hair out in frustration just yet.

There are a few factors that you need to consider before making a decision on this:

1. Would changing the URL of the post give more traffic through the search engine than you are currently getting?

2. How would this impact the existing links that have been built to the original URL.

Remember that if you are going to change the URL of a page, this will just look like a new webpage to Google. All of the Facebook likes, Google+ +1's, links, etc will be going to the previous URL. Not only that, if you do a 301 redirect to the new URL, you will only transfer some of the link juice that you have made.

URL changes really should be a last resort and need to be thought out properly at the start of the webpage creation. In the case of Mark (above), I have recommended that he change the URLs because they are all dynamic and the benefit of changing these pages vs not, wins.

Let me know the URL of the page in question and I will take a look and tell you what I think.

Matt.

[adamlcasey]

Hi Marcus thanks for your help so far. I've emailed you my URL's for a better look at the issue I'm facing.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, as per the email, it is exactly as above.

We can check the two versions of the URLs.

Confirm they both have the same canonical URL

then check both URLs using the info:URL command in Google to verify that in both instances, with and without final slash, the URL returned as indexed includes the final slash as per the canonical.

Any problems, give me  a shout!
Marcus

[MarkScully]

What's everyones opinion canonicali URL being setup site-wide?

[Dr-Pete]

Seems like Matt and Marcus have you on the right track. With a real-estate site, duplicates and near-duplicates are very common, since you're adding and removing properties all the time and there are many search options and categories. I do agree that search-friendly URLs, long-term, where each property has a fixed URL, are definitely the best bet. In the meantime, though, a solid canonical structure helps a lot.

Ease into it - don't go sitewide in one fell swoop without a plan, unless you're having clear ranking problems. Start with your biggest problem areas, monitor/measure, and work from there. You can always check for indexed duplicates by running a Google search like:

site:daft.ie intitle:"176 Rathgar Road"

In this case, I'm not seeing any index issues, although I think Matt's concerns are valid.

I'd also consider rel=prev/next for search results pages, as that can help focus Google, too. Again, take it one step at a time and start with the biggest problems. It'll mitigate your risk all around.