: Should I optimize back end pages? My website is an e-commerce based site and therefore has a few back-end duplicate content issues that im trying to fix. I have added the canonical tag to
My website is an e-commerce based site and therefore has a few back-end duplicate content issues that im trying to fix. I have added the canonical tag to the majority of my back-end category pages which are the same/similar to the front end pages, my question is shall I optimize the back end pages in the hope they pass some form of link 'juice'? Or shall I leave them un-optimized as they currently are (so they don't rank against current pages?).
There is no direct link to the back-end category pages but these pages do contain links to back-end product pages if this has an effect? As ive heard that you shouldn't really link to pages that have used these tags.
More posts by @Rambettina238
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I would suggest removing those pages from the site. As you said, these pages are in the backend, so they are not adding any value to the users. Also, you have similar pages with the similar keywords targeted on the front end site so why we need extra pages.
You should delete those pages from your website. If they are receiving any traffic from search or any referral links then add 301 redirect and move all the visitors to the new pages. It is seo friendly way to move your traffic from one page to another.
Do not forget to block these pages in robots.txt file and deindex it. If you keep the pages as it is then there are chances that Google crawler will get confuse between two similar pages and they will outrank you for the targeted keyword.
I am assuming that you're using a custom e-com script which doesn't explicitly block the back end pages from search engines. Otherwise, there is no reason for backend pages to be indexed.
Considering your backend pages fall within an admin sub-category, you may include in in robots.txt
user-agent: *
disallow: /admin/
If the admin is within a sub-domain, you may use the following
user-agent: *
disallow: admin.example.com
Adding this will make sure that all your backend pages falling either under the subcategory or subdomain won't be indexed by search engines.
Here's my answer considering your comments.
Back end pages shouldn't be indexed by search engines because they are useless for visitors. It means that optimizing SEO of these pages is not necessary.
To no-index these pages, you can use the no-index meta tag for the <head> section of your pages and add these pages to your robots.txt. If you can't modify the <head> section, you can use the no-index feature with your .htaccess file if you use Apache as a web server (described here).
For a non indexed web page, the rel="canonical" is useless.
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