Duplicate URL's

[fun52dig]

This post is deleted!

[Horizon]

Hi Gary,

Here are my thoughts on the questions you have asked:

Is my best coarse of action to implement 301 re-directs or go with canonical tags to fix this issue? - I would definitely do one or the other. I don't think there would be a huge difference between the two, but I personally would 301. Having multiple versions of the same page is duplication but also dilution of any link juice they're receiving from inbound links. 301 those to whichever version you're most comfortable with. I would suggest just / (as the root domain makes the most of link juice, in theory). Once this is implemented, you should see their overall domain stats increase. Included in this, it seems that they are not resolving non-www URLs, so you should implement something along the lines of this in their htaccess to resolve this:

Ensure www on all URLs.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^bobbyvans.com [NC]RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.bobbyvans.com/$1 [L,R=301]

This will make sure www.bobbyvans.com and bobyvans.com are not two different pages.

Cleaning up URLs - there's no reason why you shouldn't do this. In fact, it will more than likely help rather than hinder, as long as you 301.

Pretty simple really!

Best,

Matt

[TommyTan]

Hi Gary,

What you mentioned is correct.  You should either go with 301 redirect or use canonical tags to avoid duplicate content URL issue.

Regarding to your second question, your are also correct that the correct URl should be www.bobbyvans.com/park-ave.html.  This URL is clean and easier for bots to crawl.  301 redirecting all the old URLs to the new URLs will definitely be the best action you can take and I don't believe it will hurt your ranking.  However, keep in mind that you should not redirect everything to the home page but rather redirect it to a similar page.

The only problem with 301 redirect is that it make take a while for Search Engines to crawl.  So don't fret when you still don't see your old ranking after a while.

Attached is a video by Matt Cutts explaining redirection.  Hope it will help.

watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA&feature=player_embedded

[fun52dig]

Matt,

Do you know of any drawback by implementing both 301 re-directs along with placing canonical tags on the landing pages?

Or is this overkill?

Regards,
Gary

[Horizon]

Hi Gary,

Yeah, overkill for me. The crawlers won't actually be getting as far as to see the canonical. The 301 will take the crawlers right passed those pages straight to the homepage you want to display.

Cheers

Matt