{"id":15130,"date":"2022-08-15T11:50:28","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T11:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/canonicalize-noindex-similar-content\/456006\/"},"modified":"2022-08-15T11:50:28","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T11:50:28","slug":"when-to-canonicalize-noindex-or-do-nothing-with-similar-content-via-sejournal-joshuacmccoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marketingnewsbox.com\/?p=15130","title":{"rendered":"When To Canonicalize, Noindex, Or Do Nothing With Similar Content via @sejournal, @joshuacmccoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picture your content as you do yourself. Are you carrying some baggage you could get rid of? Carrying something you want to keep but maybe want to repurpose or see differently?<\/p>\n

This is no different when it comes to website content. We\u2019ve all likely sat around as a group of minds thinking about the content we would like to slice off our website but realize there is still a need for it, whether it is for a specific prospect, internal team, etc.<\/p>\n

While we look for ways to slim our websites as much as possible for content management purposes, we also want to do the same to appease crawling search engine bots.<\/p>\n

We want their, hopefully, daily visit to our websites to be fast and succinct.<\/p>\n

This hopefully shows them who we are, what we are about, and ultimately \u2013 if we have to have content that can\u2019t be removed \u2013 how we are labeling it for them.<\/p>\n

Luckily, search engine crawlers want to understand our content just as much as we want this of them. Given to us are chances to canonicalize content and noindex content.<\/p>\n

However, beware, not doing this correctly could render important website content misunderstood by search engine crawlers<\/a> or not read at all.<\/p>\n

Canonicalize?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\"WhenScreenshot by author, July 2022<\/span>\"When<\/div>\n

Canonical tags<\/a> provide a great way of instructing search engines: \u201cYes, we know this content is not that unique or valuable, but we must have it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It can also be a great way to point value to content originating from another domain or vice versa.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, now is your time to show the crawling bots how you perceive website content.<\/p>\n

To utilize, you must place this tag within the head section of the source code.<\/p>\n

The canonical tag can be a great way to deal with content that you know is duplicate or similar, but it must exist for user needs on the site or a slow site maintenance team.<\/p>\n

If you think this tag is an ideal fit for your website, review your website and address site sections that appear to have separate URLs but have similar content (e.g., copy, image, headings, title elements, etc.).<\/p>\n

Website auditing tools such as Screaming Frog<\/a> and the Semrush Site Audit<\/a> section are a quick way to see content similarities.<\/p>\n

If you think there might be some other similar content culprits out there, you can take a deeper look with tools such as Similar Page Checker<\/a> and Siteliner<\/a>, which will review your site for similar content.<\/p>\n

Now that you have a good feel for cases of similarity, you need to understand if this lack of uniqueness is worthy of canonicalization. Here are a few examples and solutions:<\/p>\n

Example 1:<\/strong> Your website exists at both HTTP and HTTPS<\/a> versions of site pages, or your website exists with both www. and non-www. page versions.<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong> Place a canonical tag to the page version with the most significant amount of links, internal links, etc., until you can redirect all duplicating pages one-to-one. <\/em><\/p>\n

Example 2:<\/strong> You sell products that are highly similar where there is no unique copy on these pages but slight variations in the name, image, price, etc. Should you canonically point the specific product pages to the product parent page?<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong> Here, my advice is to do nothing. These pages are unique enough to be indexed. They have unique names differentiating them, and this could help you for long-tail keyword instances.<\/p>\n

Example 3:<\/strong> You sell t-shirts but have a page for every color and every shirt.<\/p>\n

Solution:<\/strong> Canonical tag the color pages to reference the parent shirt page. Each page isn\u2019t a particular product, just a very similar variation.<\/p>\n

Use Case: Canonical Tagging Content That\u2019s Unique Enough To Succeed<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Similar to the example presented above, I wanted to explain that sometimes, slightly similar content can still be appropriate for indexation.<\/p>\n

What if it was shirts with child pages for different shirt types like long sleeves, tank tops, etc.? This now becomes a different product, not just a variation. As also previously mentioned, this can serve successful for long-tail web searches.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a great example: An automotive sales site that features pages for car makes, associated models, and variations of those models (2Dr, 4Dr, V8, V6, deluxe edition, etc.). The initial thought with this site is that all variations are simply near duplications of the model pages.<\/p>\n

You may think, why would we want to annoy search engines with this near duplicative content when we can canonicalize these pages to point to the model page as the representative page?<\/p>\n

We moved in this direction but still, the anxiety on whether these pages could succeed made us move to canonically tag each respective model page.<\/p>\n

Suppose you canonically tag to the parent model page. Even if you show the content importance\/hierarchy to search engines, they may still rank the canonicalized page if the search is relatively specific.<\/p>\n

So, what did we see?<\/p>\n

We found that organic traffic increased to both child and parent pages. It\u2019s my opinion that when you give credit back to the child pages, the parent page looks to have more authority as it has many child pages which are now given back \u201ccredit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monthly traffic to all these pages together grew five times.<\/p>\n

Since September of this year, when we revised the canonical tags, there is now 5x monthly organic traffic to this site area, with 754 pages driving organic traffic compared to the 154 recognized earlier in the previous year.<\/p>\n

\"MonthlyScreenshot by author with Semrush, July 2022<\/span>\"Monthly<\/div>\n

Don\u2019t Make These Canonicalization Mistakes<\/strong><\/h3>\n