Canonical URL on search result pages

[9868john]

Hi there,

Our company sells educational videos to Nurses via subscription.

I've been looking at their video search results page: 
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd

When you click on a category, the URL appears like this:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=9&name=Acute+Surgical+Nursing
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=6&name=Medications

Would this be an instance where i'd use the canonical tag to redirect each search results page?

Bearing in mind the /cpd page is under /Nursing cpd, and that /Nursing cpd is our best performing page in search engines, would it be better to refer it to the 'Nursing CPD' rather than 'CPD' page?

Any advice is very welcome, 
Thanks,
John

[davebuts]

Hi John,

Just having a quick look at the site I can see a lot of room for improvement!

These category pages are being indexed correctly and ranking well for specific searches (eg. Correctional Services Nursing cpd) so I wouldn't recommend using canonical tags the way you are suggesting. All pages of your site should have a canonical tag pointing to themselves, but I wouldn't be using them to pass authority to other pages in this case.

The URL structure is a bit of a mess so it would be good if you could improve it from:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=9&name=Acute+Surgical+Nursing
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd?view=category&cat=6&name=Medications
To something like:
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd/acute-surgical-nursing/
http://www.nursesfornurses.com.au/cpd/medications/

You should also pay some attention to the duplicate Page Titles and Meta Descriptions throughout the site

Cheers,

David

[9868john]

Thanks David,

Thanks for your response, very helpful

I agree, there is a lot of room for improvement. Its written on an old .aspx CMS platform and i'm having a real nightmare trying to get used to it.. It ain't no Wordpress - that much is clear!

Page titles + descriptions were the first things I was going to get started on, I've just been defining the core keywords before I get going!

Cheers