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If you have duplicate websites how to make one canonical...

by Chloe Brooks
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi Guys
I have migrated to a new website but I want to keep my old website. The issue is that the new website is exactly the same in design and content. So google thinks its a duplicate site and will not rank the second (newest site). I want the newest site to rank and not the old one. BTW I cannot remove the old one because I have members there and making a 301 from the old one to the new one would not work in this case.

How can I tell google that I got a new site to count that one and not the old one?

Many thanks
Chloe
#canonical #duplicate #make #websites
  • Profile picture of the author Dharmi
    Obviously you cannot have same content website, as google will take it as duplicate content and so will never rank. Either you have to redirect or have to change content.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      Originally Posted by Dharmi View Post

      Obviously you cannot have same content website, as google will take it as duplicate content and so will never rank. Either you have to redirect or have to change content.
      That is the silliest answer today....eve thought the day is young. Ever heard of wikipedia, the largest, biggest duplicated website in the universe? They don't rank,do they? Amazon? Full of duplicate content, word for word, on tons of websites....and I know you know they don't rank,do they?

      The OP makes no sense. You migrate people over. Either manually yourself, or hire someone to do it automatically. Seriously. Then you can 301.

      At worse, you put a sign up on the site TELLING people to join again...

      Why on earth would you migrate to a new "site," but keep people slogging around the old?

      Makes no sense.

      Websites that do big memberships, like the WF, do not leave the old one up. They migrate people.

      Of course it begs the question, why not just change the domain name on the old site? Now that would be friggin easy....

      Paul
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  • Profile picture of the author Doug A
    You can use a 301 redirect which is a command used to tell the search engines that a page has permanently moved, and that you want them to index the brand new page... doing this you also tell them to drop the old one from the index.

    Another solution is to use a so called rel=canonical tag in your links. Example is <link href="http://www.example.com/canonical-version-of-page/" rel="canonical" /> ... this should be pretty easy if you are a little bit familiar with html code.

    Doug
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Chloe Brooks View Post

    Hi Guys
    I have migrated to a new website but I want to keep my old website. The issue is that the new website is exactly the same in design and content. So google thinks its a duplicate site and will not rank the second (newest site). I want the newest site to rank and not the old one. BTW I cannot remove the old one because I have members there and making a 301 from the old one to the new one would not work in this case.

    How can I tell google that I got a new site to count that one and not the old one?

    Many thanks
    Chloe

    You could always noindex all the pages on the old site to stop them ranking. Google will then start ignoring the the old site.

    Keep in mind followed backlinks are what most likely ranked the old site pages (assuming SERP competition per keyword) so without 301 redirects from the old site to the matching URLs on the new site odds are the new site/pages won't rank on Google SERPs unless you build new followed backlinks for the new site/pages. In other words, you'll be starting over with SEO.
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