Pricing value pages

[eGInnovations]

We have the main pricing page here: https://www.eginnovations.com/product/pricing

Then depending on what you click, you'll be taken to the appropriate form on one of these pages:

• https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=audit
• https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=saas
• https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=perpetual
• https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=subscription

How should I handle these? Noindex, follow? Set a canonical? I keep getting notifications that these are duplicate content, but it's just a way to keep the form fills organized. Thanks for your help!

[effectdigital]

Ah the bane that is parameter variant URLs. Mostly duplicate, tiny differences - Google doesn't usually like them (there are exceptions, but here it's clear that there's a genuine / flagged problem).

No-index / robots.txt are a bit over-the-top for this kind of stuff in my opinion. Obviously you can't use redirects to consolidate as in this situation that would prevent users from accessing the stated form variants (not cool).

You have two sensible options:

1) Canonical (using canonical tags) the parameter hooked forms to their non-parameter based ("pricing") parent (https://www.eginnovations.com/product/pricing)

2) Canonical the less used form variants to the one which is most often used (e.g: all parameter form variants to https://www.eginnovations.com/product/request-quote?pricetype=perpetual - which is stated to be the 'popular' option) - and let them all sit separately to the parent (which contains no forms, this page: https://www.eginnovations.com/product/pricing).

My preference would be to try option 2 so Google at least has a chance of indexing the pricing URL _and _the most popular form variant. If you **still get duplication notices **then go nuclear and slam option 1 down.

When you put a canonical tag on a page referencing another URL as the canonical version, the active page (the one with the canonical tag on it) becomes non-canonical and is usually de-indexed by default. So no need for crazy robots or no-index Meta shenanigans.

Hope that helps!

[eGInnovations]

Thanks for your help!

[effectdigital]

Absolutely not a problem