How similar do pages need to be in order to utilize the canonical tag

[SEI]

Here is my specific situation. My company released new versions of a few documents in the fall.  I was hoping that over time the old version would decline and the new version would rise but after 6 months the old version continues to rank #1 and the new version #3. The old version needs to stay on our site but users should really be getting to the most recent version. I think utilizing the canonical tag would solve the issue but i am concerned because the content on the actual pages is not duplicate but it is updated. Below are the two URLs to see the differences in the content.

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/06tr008.cfm

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm

Is this an appropriate situation to use the canonical tag? If not, is there a better solution.

[RyanPurkey]

One option, aside from the canonical tag, is to put the new content on the old URL and add an archive tag to the older articles, like 10tr033-archive.cfm. Or, if that's not workable, create a new URL and 301 redirect all articles to that page and only ever keep your latest article there, but link to the older ones.  By redirecting several articles to a new page and then linking out to the older ones from there on new URLs that new article page should out-rank all others and continue to do so as you update it.

[SEI]

Thanks for the response. Should I take that you advise against the utilizing the canonical tag for this scenario since you offered alternatives?  Both of these alternatives make sense but I am not sure they are workable solutions within my site governance.

[GeorgeDavis]

I do not think they need to be all that similar.  In one of Rand's examples he talked about in last weeks WBF he stated that he just did a blanket rel canonical on his old site to his new one and 2 days later everything was working as intended.  When I went to check how he did it, it wasn't even specifically one page to another, he just added the rel canonical to the header file.

Your case is much more specific and involves doing it on on url only, not a whole domain.  If I were in your position I would definitely give it a shot.

Quote from last weeks whiteboard friday :

The second example is even niftier and suggests some very cool applications as well, and so I want to point this one out. I was frustrated because for the last few years a very old domain that I created, I don't know, back in the late '90s, early 2000s, Randz.net was ranking really well for my name. I think it was ranking number 3 actually for my name, for Rand Fishkin in Google. I was always kind of frustrated because it's an old domain. I haven't updated in forever. I need to do the WordPress reinstall. I don't even know where the server login is. Whatever. It's kind of defunct at this point, and I haven't updated it in years. But I have this new blog, RandFishkin.com/blog. I really wish I could this one ranking because it has some good content on there, a bunch of posts that have been on Hacker News and some interesting things. It's much more current and updated. I do once a month at least put something new on there. So, what I did is I took very page in the header of the WordPress template, I took every page and I put a cross-domain rel=canonical to this URL. So every page at Randz.net now says canonical version is RandFishkin.com/blog. You know what happened? Two days, literally 48 hours, like the next time they crawled Randz.net, bang, RandFishkin.com/blog ranking number 3 for my name. It hadn't even ranked on page 1 or 2. I think it was on page 3 or 4 up until that point. So, just awesome to be able to put this, the page that I really want in the search results and kind of retire my old blog from being searchable.

-Rand Fishkin (Source)

[RyanPurkey]

Right. I just wanted to give you other options aside from the canonical tag, but if your site governance doesn't allow for these solutions the canonical tag as described by SSCDavis should work well.

[SEI]

Thanks! I will try it and see how it goes

[cbarron]

I have a similar question. One of my pages is a help and questions page about completing a conversions and the other is the actual campaign landing page. While the subject of both pages is similar the content is not. Is the rel canonical tag appropriate here? I

[KeriMorgret]

Hi Conor,

Welcome to the Q&A forum! Since this is an old topic, it may not get too much visibility. You may want to start a new question in its own thread.

[cbarron]

Super thanks for the heads up. I will start an new topic.