Do non-canonical pages need to worry about things like Alt Text, H1 tags, etc?

[SimonZM]

Just wanted to confirm, if we have multiple similar pages, with all of their canonicals pointing towards the prime page, does it impact SEO rankings at all if the non-canonical pages were missing alt text from their images, or shared duplicate or multiple H1 tags? Basic SEO page construction stuff?

I know some will hurt user CTR but wanted to make sure that SEO crawlers don't care about them even if indexed.

[Seenlyst]

Hello Simon,

I'm guessing these pages are the landing pages for your PPC campaign because you don't care if they are being indexed. If that's the case I would:

• Add noindex meta tag to all the other similar page.
• Have all these other pages canonical to your prime landing page.

I think it doesn't matter anymore for the alt tag or other elements.

Hope this answered your question.

Regards,
Joseph Yap

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi Simon

It is best practice to ensure that all Titles, Descriptions, H1, content and ALT tags are filled in correctly. The problem you may have (and I have experienced this with one of my clients recently - so it isn't theory!) is that Google may distrust the canonical if it sees that those two pages are not in fact similar.

The essence of the canonical is that both pages fulfil the same intent for the user. If that is not the case then they should be separate pages. If it is the case then it stands to reason that they are the same or markedly similar content. If you miss out any of the elements that there is a strong argument to treat them as two different pages.

If Google then re-indexes a canonicalised page then two 'similar' pages end up in search which will drop both pages!

So contrary to what Joseph says - it is actually very important to do this I hope that helps.

Kind Regards

Nigel