-1

I read lots of answer in canonical-url tag, but I could not get a good answer for my question.

I have a web design company. Mainly I provide two service.

  1. Digital Marketing
  2. Web Design

There are separate two page for Digital Marketing (example.com/digital-marketing-service) and Web Design (example.com/web-design-service).

But I have mentioned my services on home page also. That is the main part of home page.

When I am looking at my competitions for keywords like Web Design company in [Country Name], Digital marketing company in [Country Name] in local search result 90% are for main domain, not for the internal URLs.

So I am optimizing the my home page also targeting both keywords.

This is my problem.

Is it good idea to add following code to example.com/web-design-service and example.com/digital-marketing-service pages. 

<link rel='canonical' href='http://www.example.com/' />

The idea is optimize the home page for "Web Design in [Country Name]" , "Digital Marketing in [Country Name]" keywords.

Improve this question
6
  • The canonical tag is for resolving duplicate content by telling Google which page is your preferred page to have in the search results. A canonical tag won't help you. You are creating multiple pages that you want to have indexed. They are not duplicate (at least they shouldn't be). A canonical tag on one of them would cause Google not to index it.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jun 29, 2017 at 9:13
  • @StephenOstermiller "A canonical tag on one of them would cause Google not to index it". I have heard this before also? But are you sure about that? But I have seen many pages indexed even having canonical tag for other pages...... Even one of my competitor using the method what I suggest here. Still that site in first page and even internal pages are also indexed(but not in the first page)
    – Damith Ruwan
    Jun 29, 2017 at 9:35
  • Yes. That is the point of canonical tags. Can you link to a page with a canonical that is indexed?
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jun 29, 2017 at 9:40
  • @StephenOstermiller I can't publicly display that URL. I am sorry. I just send a email mentioning what is the website using ostermiller.org/contact.pl?regarding=StackExchange. Can you check it please? I think it is not about just one and two pages. Seems like almost all pages are link to the home page. Can you please check the email.
    – Damith Ruwan
    Jun 29, 2017 at 9:52
  • I can confirm that the site that you linked to has everything canonical to the home page. Google has said that they may ignore the canonical tag if they think it is incorrectly implemented. That must be what is happening here. The canonical tag isn't helping that site rank, Google just isn't honoring it. A few years ago, mis-implementing canonical tags like that would have been disastrous. Your entire website except the home page would have been de-indexed. I had a client in that situation.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Jun 29, 2017 at 10:01

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

NO. Do not use canonical in above situation.

Firstly, homepage or inner page can be ranked in a similar way. If inner pages are optimised properly then inner pages will generate more traffic, not the home page. You may like to learn about DA & PA.

Generally, if a company offers very specific service then their main ranking is on the homepage as the homepage is more optimised.

Understanding Canonical: If you got a page which can be accessed using more than one URL then using canonical is recommended. In your situation that's not the case.

As you indicated, you provide more than one service so i would recommend to focus on respecitve pages and not the homepage. So, eventaully you will have more ranking in your inner apges and it will work absolutely fine.

Improve this answer
1

Not a good idea. For the following reasons:

  1. This page will not provide good answer for either topic.
  2. This page will be optimized for 2 completely different topics and to rank it you'll have to add some content related to each topic thus confusing the SE.

The reason you see main pages at the top for these queries is because these are very competitive keywords. And still there are only 3 main pages in top 10 for "web design" https://i.stack.imgur.com/vyt0y.jpg

Forget about ranking our pages for top keywords and start with a long tail, there's plenty of traffic in the long tail for these niches: https://i.stack.imgur.com/vyt0y.jpg

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.