Transferring link juice from a canonical URL to an SEO landing page.

[partnerf]

I have URLs that I use for SEM ads in Google.  The content on those pages is duplicate (affiliate).  Those pages also have dynamic parameters which caused lots of duplicate content pages to be indexed.  I have put a canonical tag on the Parameter pages to consolidate everything to the canonical URL.  Both the canonical URL and the Parameter URLs have links pointing to them.  So as it stands now, my canonical URL is still indexed, but the parameter URLs are not.  The canonical page is still made up of affiliate (duplicate) content though.

I want to create an equivalent SEO landing page with unique content.  But I'd like to do two things 1) remove the canonical URL from the index - due to duplicate affiliate content, and 2) transfer the link juice from the canonical URL over to the SEO URL.  I'm thinking of adding a meta NoIndex, follow tag to the canonical tag - and internally linking to the new SEO landing page.  Does this strategy work?  I don't want to lose the link juice on the canonical URL by adding a meta noindex tag to it.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Rob

[Carson-Ward]

Sorry this took a while to address! I would definitely not noindex a URL that is canonical. Rather, make the organic version (the version that can be reached by navigating the site - don't try to rank with a very similar page that floats outside the standard site structure) the canonical URL. It's fairly standard practice to noindex, follow PPC landing pages, and it works fine. Unless the PPC landing pages are somehow being linked to, there's not really any need to add canonical tags or internal links.

If the PPC pages do have links, it's usually because they've found their way into the primary structure at some point. In these cases you can 301 consolidate the pages or use canonical tags for exact duplicates. Again, it doesn't really matter except in the very rare cases where PPC pages have valuable external linking domains.

[partnerf]

Carson,

Thanks for your response.  I had been planning to no-index the canonical page because the canonical version has affiliate (duplicate) content in it.  My new SEO page has unique content, and is different than the other SEM pages - both the root canonical page, as well as its parameter URL's.  So as it stands now, I am consolidating the SEM pages (parameter pages) using a canonical - pointing to the root SEM URL (which also has affiliate content).  Then I am no-indexing, follow that page - and linking to the new SEO page using a link in the breadcrumbs to pass the link juice.

If I don't do this, my only alternative is to try and make the SEM page be the same as the SEO page and canonicalize the SEO page - but that will handcuff me quite a bit as far as the SEO page is concerned as I would be limited in design, etc.  Does that make sense?

Thanks for your interest and response.

Rob

[partnerf]

Carson,

BTW - thanks for answering my question - that was a complicated question, and it took some thought on your part to answer it.  I appreciate it.

Also - I see you are in the Salt Lake City area.  I am moving to SLC in the next few months.  Currently I'm traveling there for business one week per month.  It would be neat to meet you in person.  Let me know if you are interested, and maybe we can connect in person one of these days.

Rob

[Carson-Ward]

Sure, let's get a coffee! Feel free to PM me when you get here.

[Carson-Ward]

This is a little hard to talk through without seeing it, but I think I see where you're coming from. You have content on the current canonical page that third-party affiliates are also using on their sites - is that right?

Is the content different enough that you can't just canonical the SEM pages over to the organic page? In any case, I think your solution is fine as long as the organic page is the page that can be found through navigation. If the SEM pages don't have external links (I don't know why they would) it's really not a big deal - even adding links is probably unnecessary because it's not going to help much from an orphaned SEM page with no link equity.

[partnerf]

Yes, I am actually one of those third party affiliates, so I need to remove those pages from the index as currently there are 61,000 pages indexed (all duplicate, affiliate content).

As I slowly build SEO pages I plan to index my SEO side of the site bit by bit. The strange thing is that teh SEM pages do have links, they are coming organically just from being in the publics eye.  In a way its a nice problem to have, as I'm hoping to capture the juice and funnel it over to the new SEO pages.  make sense?

Best,

Rob

PS - i'm up for coffee anytime.  I'll let you know when I'm in town.