PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
-
Hello,
We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product.
We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful.
My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content?
Thanks.
-
Hey Bob
I think you should forget about any kind of perceived conventions and have whatever you think works best for your users and goals.
Again, look at unbounce, that is a custom landing page with a homepage link (to share the love) but not the general site navigation.
They also have a footer to do a bit more link love but really, do what works for you.
Forget conventions - do what works!
Hope that helps
Marcus -
I see, thanks! I think it's important not to have the ecommerce navigation on the page promoting the pdf. What would you say is ideal as far as the graphical and navigation components of the page with the PDF on it - what kind of navigation and graphical header should I have on it?
-
Yep, check the HTTP headers with webbug or there are a bunch of browser plugins that will let you see the headers for the document.
That said, I would push to drive the links to the page though rather than the document itself and just create a nice page that houses the document and make that the link target.
You could even make the PDF link only available by email once they have singed up or some such as canonical is only a directive and you would still be better getting those links flooding into a real page on the site.
You could even offer up some HTML to make this easier for folks to link to that linked to your main page. If you take a look at any savvy infographics etc folks will try to draw a link into a page rather than the image itself for the very same reasons.
If you look at something like the Noobs Guide to Online Marketing from Unbounce then you will see something like this as the suggested linking code:
[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
[
](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
Unbounce – The DIY Landing Page Platform
So, the image is there but the link they are pimping is a standard page:
http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/
They also cheekily add an extra homepage link in as well with some keywords and the brand so if folks don't remove that they still get that benefit.
Ultimately, it means that when links flood into the site they benefit the whole site rather than just promote one PDF.
Just my tuppence!
Marcus -
Thanks for the code Marcus.
Actually, the pdf is what people will be linking to. It's a guide for websites. I think the PDF will be much easier to promote than the article.I assume so anyway.
Is there a way to make sure my canonical code in htaccess is working after I insert the code?
Thanks again,
Bob
-
Hey Bob
There is a much easier way to do this and simply have your PDFs that you don't want indexed in a folder that you block access to in robots.txt. This way you can just drop PDFs into articles and link to them knowing full well these pages will not be indexed.
Assuming you had a PDF called article.pdf in a folder called pdfs/ then the following would prevent indexation.
User-agent: * Disallow: /pdfs/
Or to just block the file itself:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /pdfs/yourfile.pdf Additionally, There is no reason not to add the canonical link as well and if you find people are linking directly to the PDF then having this would ensure that the equity associated with those links was correctly attributed to the parent page (always a good thing).Header add Link '<http: www.url.co.uk="" pdfs="" article.html="">; </http:> rel="canonical"'
Generally, there are better ways to block indexation than with robots.txt but in the case of PDFs, we really don't want these files indexed as they make for such poor landing pages (no navigation) and we certainly want to remove any competition or duplication between the page and the PDF so in this case, it makes for a quick, painless and suitable solution.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Thanks ThompsonPaul,
Say the pdf is located at
domain.com/pdfs/white-papers.pdf
and the article that I want to rank is at
domain.com/articles/article.html
do I simply add this to my htaccess file?:
Header add Link "<http: www.domain.com="" articles="" article.html="">; rel="canonical""</http:>
-
You can insert the canonical header link using your site's .htaccess file, Bob. I'm sure Hostgator provides access to the htaccess file through ftp (sometimes you have to turn on "show hidden files") or through the file manager built into your cPanel.
Check tip #2 in this recent SEOMoz blog article for specifics:
seomoz.org/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seosJust remember too - you will want to do the same kind of on-page optimization for the PDF as you do for regular pages.
- Give it a good, descriptive, keyword-appropriate, dash-separated file name. (essential for usability as well, since it will become the title of the icon when saved to someone's desktop)
- Fill out the metadata for the PDF, especially the Title and Description. In Acrobat it's under File -> Properties -> Description tab (to get the meta-description itself, you'll need to click on the Additional Metadata button)
I'd be tempted to build the links to the html page as much as possible as those will directly help ranking, unlike the PDF's inbound links which will have to pass their link juice through the canonical, assuming you're using it. Plus, the visitor will get a preview of the PDF's content and context from the rest of your site which which may increase trust and engender further engagement..
Your comment about links in the PDF got kind of muddled, but you'll definitely want to make certain there are good links and calls to action back to your website within the PDF - preferably on each page. Otherwise there's no clear "next step" for users reading the PDF back to a purchase on your site. Make sure to put Analytics tracking tags on these links so you can assess the value of traffic generated back from the PDF - otherwise the traffic will just appear as Direct in your Analytics.
Hope that all helps;
Paul
-
Can I just use htaccess?
See here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers
We only have one pdf like this right now and we plan to have no more than five.
Say the pdf is located at
domain.com/pdfs/white-papers.pdf
and the article that I want to rank is at
domain.com/articles/article.pdf
do I simply add this to my htaccess file?:
Header add Link "<http: www.domain.com="" articles="" article.pdf="">; rel="canonical""</http:>
-
How do I know if I can do an HTTP header request? I'm using shared hosting through hostgator.
-
PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages. They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results. I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though. If you are doing a rel="canonical" it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.
-
PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages. They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results. I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though. If you are doing a rel="canonical" it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.
-
Thank you DoRM,
I assume that the PDF is what I want to be the main version since that is what I'll be marketing, but I could be wrong? What if I get backlinks to both pages, will both sets of backlinks count?
-
Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the
Link rel="canonical"
HTTP header. Addingrel="canonical"
to thehead
section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with theLink rel="canonical"
HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):Link: <http: www.example.com="" downloads="" white-paper.pdf="">; rel="canonical"</http:>
Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.
You can read more her http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Concerns of Duplicative Content on Purchased Site
Recently I purchased a site of 50+ DA (oldsite.com) that had been offline/404 for 9-12 months from the previous owner. The purchase included the domain and the content previously hosted on the domain. The backlink profile is 100% contextual and pristine. Upon purchasing the domain, I did the following: Rehosted the old site and content that had been down for 9-12 months on oldsite.com Allowed a week or two for indexation on oldsite.com Hosted the old content on my newsite.com and then performed 100+ contextual 301 redirects from the oldsite.com to newsite.com using direct and wild card htaccess rules Issued a Press Release declaring the acquisition of oldsite.com for newsite.com Performed a site "Change of Name" in Google from oldsite.com to newsite.com Performed a site "Site Move" in Bing/Yahoo from oldsite.com to newsite.com It's been close to a month and while organic traffic is growing gradually, it's not what I would expect from a domain with 700+ referring contextual domains. My current concern is around original attribution of content on oldsite.com shifting to scraper sites during the year or so that it was offline. For Example: Oldsite.com has full attribution prior to going offline Scraper sites scan site and repost content elsewhere (effort unsuccessful at time because google know original attribution) Oldsite.com goes offline Scraper sites continue hosting content Google loses consumer facing cache from oldsite.com (and potentially loses original attribution of content) Google reassigns original attribution to a scraper site Oldsite.com is hosted again and Google no longer remembers it's original attribution and thinks content is stolen Google then silently punished Oldsite.com and Newsite.com (which it is redirected to) QUESTIONS Does this sequence have any merit? Does Google keep track of original attribution after the content ceases to exist in Google's search cache? Are there any tools or ways to tell if you're being punished for content being posted else on the web even if you originally had attribution? Unrelated: Are there any other steps that are recommend for a Change of site as described above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PetSite0 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Duplicate Content Error because of passed through variables
Hi everyone... When getting our weekly crawl of our site from SEOMoz, we are getting errors for duplicate content. We generate pages dynamically based on variables we carry through the URL's, like: http://www.example123.com/fun/life/1084.php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTSupp
http://www.example123.com/fun/life/1084.php?top=true ie, ?top=true is the variable being passed through. We are a large site (approx 7000 pages) so obviously we are getting many of these duplicate content errors in the SEOMoz report. Question: Are the search engines also penalizing for duplicate content based on variables being passed through? Thanks!0 -
Duplicate Content
http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/JAABA/jsp/HomeAdvice/answers.jsp?TopicId=Buy&SubtopicId=Affordability&Subtopicname=What%20You%20Can%20Afford http://www.pensacolarealestate.com/content/answers.html?Topic=Buy&Subtopic=Affordability I have no idea how the first address exists at all... I ran the SEOMOZ tool and I got 600'ish DUPLICATE CONTENT errors! I have errors on content/titles etc... How do I get rid of all the content being generated from this JAABA/JSP "jibberish"? Please ask questions that will help you help me. I have always been 1st on google local and I have a business that is starting to hurt very seriously from being number three 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
HTTPS Duplicate Content?
I just recieved a error notification because our website is both http and https. http://www.quicklearn.com & https://www.quicklearn.com. My tech tells me that this isn't actually a problem? Is that true? If not, how can I address the duplicate content issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text. We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for. I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links. Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization. Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robertrRSwalters0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0 -
I need to add duplicate content, how to do this without penalty
On a site I am working on we provide a landing page summary (say top 10 information snippets) and provide a link 'see more' to take viewers to a page with all the snippets. Now those first 10 snippets will be repeated in the full list. Is this going to be a duplicate content problem? If so, any suggestions.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oznappies0