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How Not To Use The Rel=”Canonical” Tag

On June 7, 2011, in Stuff we've learned, Web/Tech, by Philip Boyle
Rel=Canonical Usage

Typical proper use of the rel="canonical" tag (via SEOMoz.org)

One of the fun problems we have working at WhatClinic.com is trying to organise the millions of pages that result from listing tens of thousands of clinics in thousands of locations for thousands of treatments.

Our search results pages list up to 12 clinics at a time, and when they’re full they offer a great user experience. Lots of choice and lots of information is presented along with a simple way to contact whichever of the clinics takes your fancy.

However, not every combination of clinic type + location + treatment will have a full page of results. In fact with only a little knowledge you could probably guess the URL of a page with no results on it. The obvious solution to these empty pages is to return a 404 response code and not to link to the pages internally, minimising the chance that they’ll be found by users or search engines alike.

What’s Right For The User?

Add one clinic to the page though and we’re left with a quandary. Is this really a useful page for a user? Wouldn’t they like more choice? We know for instance that pages with more clinics on them have a better conversion rate, so would we be better off sending users to a “parent” location page instead, i.e. a location that contains the smaller location but should have more than one clinic on offer?

Another option available to us would be to fill the rest of the page with 11 of the nearest clinics to the location (which could be tens if not hundreds of miles away in some cases), but this would massively increase the duplication of data served across the pages on our site as clinics’ listings would appear in far more locations than they currently do.

Similar Pages – The Rel=”Canonical” Solution

We decided we’d like to see what effect the first option had, i.e. sending the users to a parent page, but we were uncomfortable with 301 redirecting every page that only had one clinic on it, so we decided to try a slightly softer approach.

Having read an article on SEOMoz about using the Rel=”Canonical” tag to get more than one keyword to rank for a given piece of content, we decided to try what we thought was quite a clever scheme that would serve the user and the search engines.

We would put a Rel=”Canonical” tag on our search results pages with only one clinic listed, and we’d hope to send people searching Google for Place A to the search results of Place B, which would contain the search results for Place A and more, giving the user a better choice.

Anchor Text Isn’t A Very Strong Ranking Signal For Pages With A Rel=”Canonical”

Unfortunately for us, the experiment hasn’t exactly gone to plan. We were cautious and only put the Rel=”Canonical” links on a subset of our one result pages, but even still we have enough data to see that for now at least none of the Place B pages are ranking for Place A keywords.

Of a sample set of 20 one result pages with a Rel=”Canonical” tag, 14 have been crawled and no longer appear in Google’s index, and searching using the “Place A” keyword for these pages doesn’t return the Place B search results page.

You might think, well Google have decided that the Place A and Place B pages aren’t sufficiently similar to be a valid use of the Rel=”Canonical” tag, and you might be right, but the fact that original Place A URLs are no longer appearing in the index seems to counter this supposition.

More likely it seems is that the anchor text of the links pointing at Place A pages isn’t a strong enough signal for the Place B pages to rank for keywords based on “Place A”.

Back To The Drawing Board

So it looks like we’re back to square one on this particular problem. I think the next thing to try is the option discussed above where we fill out the search results. It seems like a good thing to do for the user, but I am slightly worried about diluting our content by potentially overusing it. We’ll be sure to keep you posted about the results when we try it out.

Have you run any experiments with the Rel=”Canonical” tag yet? For what purpose, and what results did you see? Let us know in the comments.

 

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Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

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What To Expect In Your First Week As An Intern

On June 1, 2011, in Stuff we've learned, WhatClinic.com News, by Philip Boyle
office desk

Not *exactly* what our offices look like...

Eilis is an intern working with me on our digital marketing projects. We thought it might be interesting for other employers and prospective new interns to hear first-hand what it’s like for an intern going back into an office after some time off studying. Over to Eilis:

An internship is an excellent way to gain valuable hands-on experience in an area of academic or personal interest to any individual.  Following completion of my studies in Digital Marketing, I was delighted to join the team at Whatclinic.com to put my educational knowledge into practice.  Returning to college as a mature student, I already had extensive experience of working in an office environment and I felt confident that I would slot right back in, like riding a bike.

A Wake Up Call

The reality was a little different.  Although only absent from the workplace for over a year, I was shocked at how alien it felt to me on my first day.  I somehow had forgotten the morning race to get out of the house, the fighting for personal space on public transport and the vast number of clearly mad people rushing around at 8 am.  By the time I had reached the office I was already feeling a bit dishevelled and I hadn’t turned the PC on.

My interview had taken place in the offices in Westland Row so I was familiar with the set up.   The office was open plan and had a busy but relaxed atmosphere.  When I arrived at 10 am it was really positive for me that my workstation was set up, stationery was provided and I had a company email address!

My first task was to read some manuals as an introduction to SEO and Google Analytics.  Easy peasy, I thought, until the sales team got on the phones and technical questions started flying around the place.  I couldn’t hear my own thoughts and I couldn’t filter out the background noise.  I was starting to feel like a fish out of water.

Some Advice

Now that I am nearing the end of my first week, I am feeling a bit more human.  The best advice I could give to anyone starting an internship is to avoid placing needless pressure on yourself and be realistic.  It is important to remember that an internship is an opportunity to learn and that an employer, who has already seen potential in you, does not expect you to know everything about the job.

Be organised: make a note of any passwords required for applications and bookmark any recommended links.  If you haven’t been assigned a network drive, create a personal folder and save everything in a structured manner.

The first week is all about settling in and learning about the workings of the company.  You may be required to use an email service, an application or a browser you are not familiar with.  Take the time to familiarise yourself with these tools.  Refer to manuals and help sections where possible and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Be confident: ask questions where appropriate.  Obviously in a small company it is important not to absorb too much of your colleague’s work-time, but at the same time it is imperative to grasp the basics.   Jot down your questions and arrange an appropriate time to discuss them.  At this early stage you will be mostly turning to a mentor to answer specific questions.  Be sure to make notes so you do not need to ask the same questions again.

Finally don’t be afraid to mix with the rest of the staff.  It is important to integrate; it will make your experience at the company more enjoyable and it provides you will a bigger pool of people to direct your QUESTIONS at !!

 

About the author

Philip Boyle

Philip is the marketing manager at WhatClinic.com.

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