Best use of Canonical Tag with Mini-Websites

[Qwikvid]

Hello,

I was wondering what the best way would be to implement Canonical Tags in kind of a unusual situation. The company I work for creates single property websites for real estate agents. We register a URL such as 123MainSt.com - however through DNS we redirect that to a path. For example:

http://www.944milmadadr.com would redirect to:

https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV

If we wanted to rank high in the search engines for our clients: "944 Milmada Dr" - Would it be the best practice to Canonical: http://www.944milmadadr.com ?

Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!!

Jason

[Jan_Januska]

Hello Jason,

no, it wouldn’t.
If you use canonical on https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV, search engines will be led to http://www.944milmadadr.com. And there they will be redirected back to https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV.

This solution will lead to infinity loop with unpredictable behaviour of search engines.
Btw. status code with the redirect is 302. I think better solution is to use code 301.

You have a few other options:

• Use only domain 944milmadadr.com: 
  Advantage: Domain will be shown in search results.
  Disadvantage: If the domain expires, you will lose all link juice.
• 301 redirect from 944milmadadr.com to qwikvid.com:
  Advantage: You don’t have to keep domains for years.
  Disadvantage: qwikvid.com domain in search results.

sfR1u

[benesmartin]

Hey Jason,

Are the domains you register brand new? Because if they are, it wouldn't make a difference if you redirect them to the second domain or not. In this case, they wouldn't have any back links to get the link juice from.

The only reason for registering a new domain would be from the strategic perspective. You would prevent the competition to register it sooner and also you might want to run a new business on those domains. Regarding SEO, it wouldn't make a difference.

Anyway, if you want to rank high for your clients, I'd recommend to read this thread from Q&A.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

[Qwikvid]

Thank you guys both to the feedback and links!! This helps a bunch!