Use 301 or rel=canonical

[Hydraulicgirl]

I have a page on my site that is showing in search results at #9. I created another page on my site with the search term in the url. Wondering if I 301 or rel=canonical.

Thank you,

Kerry

[donford]

Hi Kerry,

My advice is 301. Canonical was originally designed for people who didn't have access to the server to create the 301 rules. Since we have used it for that purpose but also to deal with dynamic urls and url variations like (www.mysite.com/home vs www.mysite.com/home/)

If you are in fact using a new page as better version of the old, then you should 301 it to the old to the new. This will pass all the link juice your previous page has accumulated and your new page will be the one to appear in the index upon Google's next index pass of your site.

Hope that helps,

Don

[Hydraulicgirl]

Thanks Don,

One more Q.. Do I no-index no-follow the old page?

Thanks,

Kerry

[donford]

Hi Kerry,

If you use 301, then the no index no follow rule will never be read. That is because as soon as the page is requested the server redirects, in such case the meta rule tags in the html are never read. So in short I wouldn't worry about it if you're 301'ing.

You should however make sure you update any sitemaps you maybe using and change your internal linking to use the new url opposed to the old. You don't want your site to continue to link to a page that just gets 301 redirected by the server. That is just good practice.

Hope this helps,

Don