How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?

[Virginia-Girtz]

Hello mozers!

I have a question about duplicate content for you...

One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term.

The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better!

The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue.

If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?

[Nozzle]

Since it is effectively the same content you should be able to rank the same page for both phrases.

You just need to include the new keyword within the existing content and test out a few title tag variations to find one that helps you move up the rankings for the new keyword without dropping your ranking for the old keyword.

The first thing I'd test would be to change your title tag from "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?" to "Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof - Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?". Wait until Google re-crawls the page and check how your rankings fared. If you lose your snippet or drop in rankings for the low volume phrase you can always test out the reverse, "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory? Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof", and see what happens then.

Don't be scared to test many variations, even long title tags that seemingly don't follow best practice. You can always change it back to the original and your rankings will go back to what they were before you tested (assuming your competitors didn't gain some awesome back links to overtake you).

Don't mess with the section of content that is being pulled into the featured snippet though so as not to lose that snippet.

[KristinaKledzik]

What I've usually seen with canonicals is that Google either removes the noncanonical page from its index, or it ignores your canonical and treats them as two separate pages. I haven't seen an example where a canonical lets you get the best of both worlds.

I agree with Nozzle - you can tweak your existing content to target both phrases! Google understands synonyms, so if anything, you're just creating a more all around relevant page.

Good luck!

Kristina