Question

Our website has a featured article for one week on the front page, after which it is still accessible via it’s true URL. Now, we want to use the true URL in promotions and social networks so that the link to the featured article is always accurate.

In other words, our front page always shows the current feature. By typing in our domain you read the currently featured article. See below.

website.com/feature1.html <-- true URL of last week's feature
website.com/feature2.html <-- true URL of current feature
website.com <-- front page shows feature2.html (not a redirect)

I’m trying to figure out how to avoid the duplicate content. Which of these do you think is the best solution for SEO? I’m thinking #1.

1. Temporary redirect from true URL to front page ONLY while the feature is current.
2. Temporary redirect from the front page to the true URL. I don’t like this because I don’t like a redirect on the root of the domain.
3. Use canonical on the front page specifying the true URL. Don’t like this because website.com should be indexed.
4. Use canonical on the true URL specifying the front page ONLY while the feature is current.
5. I can make the content slightly different, however, it would not be significantly different.

Answer 1

In my opinion, you have to use rel=”canonical” and so the #4