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I will provide you a fictional scenario.

We have an url named example.com/swimming-pools which has all the swimming pools without any particular filters.

Then we have other urls like /swimming-pools/[countryName], multiple like swimming-pools/germany and swimming-pools/england etc

Then we have other urls /swimming-pools/germany/berlin etc with city names.

Approaches.

  1. All the different urls are unique by default and rank separately on google search My issue with this (in my humble understanding) is that they compete against each other! and it is very hard to bring our example.com high in search result for swimmming pools

  2. The second approach I can think of is that we use canonical urls in meta tags to at least "group" all city results to the country, like this: For the url /swimmming-pools/germany/berlin the canonical url will still be https://example.com/swimming-pools/germany so without the city Then maybe all the different city urls will bring the "seo juice" to the country one and help it rank higher.

Am I correct in my assumptions ?

Also please seo experts give your advice in this situation what is the best approach (it does not need to be 1 or 2 above you can suggest yours)

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  • Do you have any data suggesting the country and city pages are cannibalising the traffic from /swimming-pools?
    – Pete
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 10:58
  • I do not know how to research this part. Can I use google analytics for this ?
    – Kristi Jorgji
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 12:53

2 Answers 2

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I disagree with the assumption that child pages are hindering the ranking of your parent pages.

The child page is delivering accurate content to the user. If I'm looking for swimming pools in Berlin, it makes perfect sense to land on /swimming-pools/germany/berlin. This logical connection is precisely why Google presents these results.

If the content is unique enough, keep it that way. If the content doesn't differ from the parent page, it isn't needed. I would specify a canonical URL to direct it to the parent page.

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  • Hi thanks for the insight. The content layout and design is the same but the content itself of course differs. Based on the city someone looks into there will be different pools showing up. BUT if someone looks into country pools, some same pools that might show also there. So a couple of same pools might show in Berlin or Germany url.
    – Kristi Jorgji
    Commented Jul 25, 2023 at 9:58
  • That's fine, there's enough difference there to justify their own pages. I think that's the right approach because people from Berlin would prefer to see local listing rather than options for the entire country.
    – Pete
    Commented Jul 25, 2023 at 10:32
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Same Content

If the content in your city url /swimming-pools/germany/berlin is nearly identical to the country one swimming-pools/germany then you should be using canonical to point the city ones back to the country.

Different Content

If the content is different then

  • Leave as is if you want to index the city ones. You cant have it both ways.
  • Don't index the city one. Use the meta tag to mark them noindex.
  • Use a canonical to point the city one to the country. But effectively the city ones will no longer be indexed.
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  • The page layout and design is the same but the shown swimming pools might be different. Some might be the same if it happens that a pool in Berlin in top rated and also shown under /germany but others can be different.
    – Kristi Jorgji
    Commented Jul 24, 2023 at 12:54

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