Site splitting value of our pages with multiple variations. How can I fix this with the least impact?

[jdsnyc2]

Just started at a company recently, and there is a preexisting problem that I could use some help with. Somebody please tell me there is a low impact fix for this:

My company's website is structured so all of the main links used on the nav are listed as .asp pages.  All the canonical stuff. However, for "SEO Purposes," we have a number of similar (not exact) pages in .html on the same topic on our site.

So, for example, let's say we're a bakery.  The main URL, as linked in the nav, for our Chocolate Cakes, would be http://www.oursite.com/chocolate-cakes.asp.  This differentiates the page from our other cake varieties, such as http://www.oursite.com/pound-cakes.asp and http://www.oursite.com/carrot-cakes.asp.

Alas, fully indexed in Google with links existing only in our sitemap, we also have:

http://www.oursite.com/chocolate-cakes.html

http://www.oursite.com/chocolatecakes.html

http://www.oursite.com/cakes-chocolate.html

This seems CRAZY to me, because wouldn't this split our search results 4 ways?

Am I right in assuming this is destroying the rankings of our canonical pages? I want to change this, but problem is, none of the content is the same on any of the variants, and some of these pages rank really well - albeit mostly for long tail keywords instead of the good, solid keywords we're after.

So, what I'm asking you guys is: How do I burn these .html pages to the ground without completely destroying our rankings for the other keywords?  I want to 301 those pages to our canonical nav URLs but, because of the wildly different content, I'm afraid that we could see a heavy drop in search traffic.  Am I just being overly cautious?

Thanks in advance!

[MattAntonino]

I would not necessarily direct to the .asp canonical page immediately, although that would be my ultimate goal.

First, check the traffic on all 4 versions. Is the canonical the only one getting traffic now? Is it getting the most?

Second - is there any value on these pages or is it as blatantly duplicate as you indicated? If it's that bad, I would want it fixed asap too.

I suppose as far as the actual fix, yes I would 301 them to the canonical but it depends how "wildly different" the content really is. In your example, it's all about chocolate cake. Assuming that's part of what you are getting traffic on, how wildly different can chocolate cake really be?

You shouldn't see a massive drop in search traffic but it would be wise to run a bit of a test on one segment for say a month. Then do a month-over-month GA review and if it's worked out for you, continue to roll out full scale. But that depends on the size of the site, the potential impact, etc.

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi there,

I want to dig in a little about what's concerning you here. Are you worried that you're splitting link equity? Because, it's okay to have 4 pages about chocolate cakes. There's no penalty from Google for having multiple pages about the same thing - just think about how many pages Nordstrom has for black sweaters. There's actually a benefit to having multiple pages on the same topic, if you're willing to write unique content for each page. It means you can rank for more long tail keywords, just as you mentioned your .html pages do, since each page will have a slightly different angle.

So, if your question was about duplicate content, know that you're okay. Leave the URLs as they are, but tweak the page titles and headers so they more clearly target the long tail search term that they're ranking for. Link to the .html versions of /chocolate-cake from /chocolate-cake.asp so that's clearly the higher level page, and spend more time optimizing that.

If, on the other hand, what you're worried about is link equity, the idea that by having 4 pages about chocolate cakes (and 4 pages for every other other baked good), you're getting 25% of your link potential going to each page, making 4 PA 20 pages when you could have 1 PA 30 page, then there are a few things to look at.

If there are external links to all 4 pages, then your answer lies in your competition. Search for the primary keyword that you'd hope you'd rank for if you could combine link equity for all 4 pages with the Moz toolbar turned on. Look at your competition - would you be able to beat that? Does your DA compete with other pages? Would your potential link count, once you had links from all 4 similar pages, allow you to rank on the first SERP?

If you have no chance of ranking for your primary keyword, I suggest that you stick with your 4 variations and make sure you rank for a wide variety of terms around your core keyword. That'll get you more traffic, in the end.

If you could rank on the first page for your primary keyword once you redirected those links from the .htmls, try to consolidate the content from all 4 pages. If you're cautious like me, I would do it one page at a time, combining content from both pages, redirecting one page, and then making sure that the .asp page can rank for the long tail terms that the .html page I redirected was ranking for before moving on. If you're less cautious, you can do them all at once, but you may lose that long tail traffic.

Wow, that was a lot of "if"s! I hope I didn't lose you there. Also, I hope I answered the question you were getting at.

Let me know!

Kristina