: How should I handle two different routes to the same place in a website hierarchy? How will this affect SEO? guys. I'm considering a complete overhaul of my site, and I have a dilemma.
guys. I'm considering a complete overhaul of my site, and I have a dilemma. I have multiple ways of getting to the same place, i.e.:
Home > Page 1 > Page 2 > Page 3
and
Home > Page 3
and possibly even
Home > Some Page > Page 3
It makes sense to do it this way logically (because of my categories), but what should I do about the pages? Of course, I don't want have duplicate content and get smacked by Google, but I don't want to the user to lose their place in the hierarchy/breadcrumbs.
Is this a good time to use the rel="canonical" tag? The only difference on the three pages would be the breadcrumbs or menus, depending upon how the user navigates to the page. I may do the rebuild in CodeIgniter, in which case I could use routes. Would that be the best option, here? I just don't want to confuse users, get smacked by Google, sacrifice usability, etc.
Thanks, guys!
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You will want to use rel="canonical" if the URL is different but the content is the same. At the very least rel="canonical" will not hurt your SEO value with Google. The only choice will then be which URL is the canonical one.
I would recommend putting the path that the user has traversed in the users cookies. Then build the breadcrumbs based on that cookie. Then there is one URL, not three. Googlebot sees a version without breadcrumbs (or with default breadcrumbs) since it comes in without a cookie.
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