Will using query string in the URL and swapping H1s for filtered view of the blog impact SEO negatively?

[lina_digital]

This is a blog revamp we are trying to personalize the experience for 2 separate audiences.We are revamping our blog the user starts on the blog that shows all stories (first screen) then can filter to a more specific blog (ESG or News blog).  The filtered version for ESG or the News blog is done through a query string in the URL.  We also swap out the page’s H1s accordingly in this process, will this impact SEO negatively?

[Cesare.Marchetti]

The 2 versions would probably be seen as duplicate content.

I guess you should use  canonical  tags on the page. This will tell Google what the preferred version of the page is and so Google and avoid duplicate content at the same time.

This guide might help you too. https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/guide-to-clean-urls-for-seo-and-usability

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Cesare

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Lina,

This definitely could impact SEO. The key here is: what pages do you want to be in Google's index?

If you just want one blog homepage, the best strategy is canonicals, like Cesare said, plus telling Google that it should ignore the parameters that you use for the ESG and News blog. If you want the standard homepage, ESG, and News blog all to be  in Google's index, you'll want to canonical the homepage to it's URL with no parameters, then update the canonicals for the ESG and News blog once the filters are applied, so the canonicals include the parameters that make the ESG and News sections unique.

You can update which parameters Google pays attention to or ignores in Google Search Console, which we explained how to do in another Moz post here: https://moz.com/community/q/how-can-i-remove-parameters-from-the-gsc-url-blocking-tool

Good luck!

Kristina