: Rel="canonical" change ranking Ok we have a website that is ranking number1 for a VERY NICE keyword. We would prefer if a different website gets that top spot. Question Lets refer to the

@Harper822

rel="canonical" specify unique and single version of a page. If you want to rank other specific page instead of current page, you need to transfer page rank strength for the current page to target page.

for this, first you need to create a permanent redirect to new page.
Additionally work on second page.

this work will be:
make target page as much good as current ranking page
user friendly

Google search algorithm judge pages by quality and relevancy to user experiences. It is dynamic. To maintain ranking, you need to apply techniques mentioned above.

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@Heady270

In short: no. Canonical is a kind of recommendation to use another site for ranking because of slightly duplicate content. If you want to let rank another site you should:


move the ranking content from the site 1 to the site 2, which should rank in the future
301 redirect site 1 to site 2


If you only redirect site 1 to site 2, without moving of content, Google will be able to read the body of the site 1 despite of redirect and think, it would be a soft-404, which could result in missing ranking transition from site 1 to the site 2

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@Ann8826881

A few questions for you - is the page on site1 and site2 essentially duplicates of each other? Or is there different content on both? If the pages are basically the same content (or exactly the same content), the most appropriate answer is to redirect the page on site1 to site2 and have that redirect return with a 301 status response code. The redirect will tell Google that the page has moved elsewhere and Google may decide to rank site2 in spot 1. If you are okay risking losing the ranking, then go this route.

The canonical is probably not the best route. A rel canonical is seen by Google as a suggestion. They could ignore it altogether or they could see it as a redirect. Personally, I've seen more instances of this approach hurting rankings than the redirects. Here is more about what Google says about cross domain canonical tags. googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
Ideally, the best answer is to leave site1 as the ranking domain since you have a decent ranking if you really want to keep the ranking and don't want to risk ranking loss. What is your reason for wanting to switch sites? Is there a way you can adjust content or design on site1 to accomplish the same thing? If you can alter site1's content or design (though, in hopefully small ways as to not be enough change to affect the ranking), then you'd be in the safest category of not risking a ranking loss.

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