Demoting a URL (not-WMT Related)

[GTO_Pharma_SEO]

I have a pharmaceutical brand that treats two diseases, but wants to primarily promote one. We want searches for "brand dosing" to go to Side A, but currently "brand dosing" goes to Side B. BUT, I want "brand dosing Side B" to still show up in organic search, so a noindex on Side B, or canonicalization of Side A, won't work.

Essentially, I want any searches that are not specific to a disease treatment to go to Side A, and then specific Side B related searches, go to Side B.

Because this is a client paying me to optimize their site, I obviously want to optimize their whole site, so only optimizing Side A, or unoptimizing Side B, aren't solutions I want to employ.

I don't think a solution exists, but I figured my fellow Mozers would know best.

Thanks in advance,

[GlobeRunner]

Christa, if you're not able (or don't to) use a canonical tag, then you're left to do a few things:

• optimize the site so that there are more internal links to the preferred page
• keep that page "fresh" by updating it's content on a regular basis
• get more links to that page from other sites
• get social media mentions and work on 'engagement' on social media that mentions the preferred page.

Don't think of it as 'demoting' one particular page, I would work heavily on promoting the preferred page so that it's stronger overall via social media and links.

[GTO_Pharma_SEO]

Hey Eric,

Appreciate the positive attitude!

This is definitely a good jumping off point for my team and I. I only say that because pharma is heavily regulated so things like link building and branded social media are almost always disapproved. And content updates go through a lengthy legal process before they can be published.

We're already promoting the pages by using more internal links to Side A. But I still definitely like the attitude adjustment!