Canonical for 80-90% duplicate content help

[Agentmorris]

Hi . I seem to spend more time asking questions atm.

I have a site I have revamped www.themorrisagency.co.uk

I am working through sorting out the 80-90% duplicated content  that just replaces a spattering of geographical and band styles  eg:

http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/greater-manchester/ 'manchester' being changed to :

http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/oxfordshire/ etc

So I am going through this slow but essential process atm.

I have a main http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/ page

My question is:

Would it be sensible to (using Yoast SEO plug in)  use a canonical redirect as a temp solution from these dup pages to http://www.themorrisagency.co.uk/band-hire/

Rather than remove them

What are your thoughts as I am aware that the damage using a rel= could make it worse.

Thanks as always

Daniel

[Brett-Harland]

Hi I would be mindful of using rel.

I would use a simpler more logical way and restructure the pages with original content and just use 301 redirection. This passes Googles website design guidelines available here:-

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

In particular:-

• You're merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.

Which is essentially what you have done/doing

Hope this helps

[Asjad]

Did you saw this Video by Rand : http://moz.com/blog/handling-duplicate-content-across-large-numbers-of-urls

It will give you Quite a Good idea What to Do..

[Agentmorris]

OK Seen Video thanks Wiqas, understand that Rel is a thorny thing. So I am not going to opt for that  Brett thanks!

Suggestion is to no index /no follow until it is made unique and concentrate on the most imortant pages first and then submit those bit by bit. Necessary ?

Is it more beneficial to remove crap pages than to have them there even though they are indexed albeit at a low level.