Is Rel=Canonical the answer???
-
Hey Mozzers,
Can you help me with something please. I have some important content going live next week for a client. We work on there blog optimisation and this piece of content is going live on both the blog and parent site. The parent site has huge DA in comparions to the blog.
I want to get the traffic directed to the blog and get the blog ranking - bare in mind the content is exactly the same so it is dupe.
If I want to get the blog ranking above the parent site and to direct the traffic here is a cross domain Rel=Canonical the answer?
Has anyone else had this issue?
Thanks
Bush
-
That's great - many thanks for all of your help.
I'll update this post of any outcome as it may help others in the future.
Thanks Dr Pete
GB
-
You'll pass the PA - the impact on DA is a bit hard to estimate. It depends a lot on the strength of the individual pages, and, of course, if Google honors the tags. Once the canonical kicks in, the links won't be processed, most likely. It's a dicey proposition, though, and you'll probably need to adjust as you go. Most likely negative scenario is that the impact just isn't what you'd hoped for.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thanks as always. I just re-read my response and the spelling mistakes are shocking so apologies for that
Can I ask if I implement a tag page by page and choose say 10 pages to rel= canonical from the parent site to the blog will this boost the the DA of the blog? We have links from the parent site to the blog in the footer. Will a Rel=Canonical tag pass more juice over to get it ranking? We want the blog to rank for brand name only which is an exact match of the parent URL. Parent URL ranks number 1, we want blog 2, 3 or 4.
I can't go into specifics so sorry to be vague.
Thanks as always
Gareth
-
It should work, but as I mentioned, I'd stick to doing it page-by-page. If there's a blog "home" on the parent site, you could cross-domain it to the new site. Just make sure you don't cross-domain some critical, high-authority page on the main site, or you could cause yourself more harm than good. Ultimately, you're giving authority from your main site to the new site, and that's not a free transaction - everything you gain on one side costs you something on the other.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thanks for your answer on this. In this case the rationale behind the implementation was purely to drive traffic over to the blog (not the parent site which is well known) to get more exposure of the blog content. The piece that was released was pretty 'hot' at the time and could gain more returning visitors and exposure to the blog which in comparison is little known.
In the end is wasn't possible and the news which got lots of traction went on the parent site so tage was implemented.
I can that splitting the blog away from the parent site is messy and we always advise against this, however in this case there is internal justification for this which I can't go into here.
Thanks for everything as always
Gareth
-
Generally, I have to say that I think splitting out your blog site can do more harm than good, and splitting up AND double-posting is especially messy. I'm not sure on the business justifications, but from an SEO standpoint it's almost always trouble, long-term.
That said, cross-domain canonical should be effective here. It's a bit hard to predict, since the parent site is stronger, but done correctly, it should be low risk. I'm concerned with your implementation (in the comments), though, because it sounds like you're pointing the entire parent site to the blog site. That could be disastrous. Ideally, you'd canonical each individual blog post at the level of their unique URLs. Otherwise, you could really disrupt the ranking ability of your main site. Unfortunately, without seeing the exact site structure, I can't really tell you what the tag should look like.
-
Hi Streamline,
We have to add the tag - the snippet idea although a great idea doesn't work for them.
Can I ask you as a follow up - is the below tag correct . I would add this to the parent site and the below tag tells Google that the parent site is hosting content and the blog is the canonical versions:
The below tag to the parent site, I'll add it to the section of the parent site not the blog:
-
Hi Streamline - thanks for such a helpful response.
I'll see what I can do and post here the outcome if i use Rel=canonical as it may help others.
Cheers for everything
bush
-
Would it be possible to only post the content on the blog and then add a few paragraphs on the main site which then links to the blog for the full article? I think that would be ideal.
Otherwise, you could try using the cross domain canonical tag in order to get the blog ranking for the content. The issue is that Google considers the canonical tag to be a hint rather than an absolute directive, so it might not necessarily work. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
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
-
Hi i have a few pages with duplicate content but we've added canonical urls to them, but i need help understanding what going on
hi google is seeing many of our pages and dupliates but they have canonical url on there https://www.hijabgem.com/index.php/maxi-shirt-dress.html has tags https://www.hijabgem.com/maxi-shirt-dress.html
On-Page Optimization | | hijabgem
has tagshttps://www.hijabgem.com/index.php/quickview/index/view/id/4693
has tags
my question is which page takes authority?and are they setup correct, can you have more than one link rel="canonical" on one page?0 -
Is there a limit to the number of duplicate pages pointing to a rel='canonical ' primary?
We have a situation on twiends where a number of our 'dead' user pages have generated links for us over the years. Our options are to 404 them, 301 them to the home page, or just serve back the home page with a canonical tag. We've been 404'ing them for years, but i understand that we lose all the link juice from doing this. Correct me if I'm wrong? Our next plan would be to 301 them to the home page. Probably the best solution but our concern is if a user page is only temporarily down (under review, etc) it could be permanently removed from the index, or at least cached for a very long time. A final plan is to just serve back the home page on the old URL, with a canonical tag pointing to the home page URL. This is quick, retains most of the link juice, and allows the URL to become active again in future. The problem is that there could be 100,000's of these. Q1) Is it a problem to have 100,000 URLs pointing to a primary with a rel=canonical tag? (Problem for Google?) Q2) How long does it take a canonical duplicate page to become unique in the index again if the tag is removed? Will google recrawl it and add it back into the index? Do we need to use WMT to speed this process up? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dsumter0 -
Events in Wordpress Creating Duplicate Content Canonical Issues
Hi, I have a site which uses Event Manager Pro within Wordpress to create Events (as custom post types on my blog. I use it to advertise cookery classes. In a given month I might run one type of class 4 times. The event page I have made for each class is the same and I duplicate it 4 times and just change the dates to promote it. The problem is with over 10 different classes, which are then duplicated up to 4 times each per month. I get loads of duplicate content errors. How can I fix this without redirecting people away from the correct page for the date they are interested in? Is it best just to use a no follow for ALL events and rely on the other parts of my site for SEO? Thanks, T23
On-Page Optimization | | tekton230 -
Rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on?
Very simple, Why would a website (and I have seen tons doing this) link the rel canonical tag back to the same page the tag is on? Example: somepage.htm has a canonical tag linking to somepage.htm I thought the idea of this tag was to tell google if 2 pages are similar, this page is the original, and it's this page which should be indexed and the page with the tag on should pass all PR to the original. Maybe im wrong and someone can help me out to understand this.
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
Cross-domain canonical
HI, We've got a German e-commerce site on an .at domain and would like to have a copy on a .de domain as we expect higher conversions for German users there. The idea now would be to make use of the cross-domain canonical tag, create a "duplicate" on the .de domain and add a canonical tag on all sites and refer to the original content on the .at domain. That would mean the .de won't rank, but German users could see the .de domain, Austrian users the .at domain in the address bar and everybody could feel "at home" ... that's the theory. What do you guys think? Valid strategy?
On-Page Optimization | | gmellak0 -
Does it matter if a rel = "canonical" element is added to the beginning or the end of a URL?
I am curious to know if adding a rel = "canonical" tag to the end of a link element will affect its purpose?
On-Page Optimization | | Sharecare0 -
Do we need to use the canonical tag on non-indexed pages?
Hi there I have been working in / learning SEO for just over a year, coming from a non dev background, so there are still plenty of the finer points on-page points I am working on. Slowly building up confidence and knowledge with the great SEOMoz as a reference! We are working on this site http://www.preciseuk.co.uk (we are still tweaking the tags and content by the way- not finished yet!) Because a lot of the information is within accordians, a page is generated for each tab of the accordian expanded, for example: http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php is the main page but then you also have: http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=0 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=1 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=2 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=3 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=4 http://www.preciseuk.co.uk/facilities-management.php?tab=5 All of which are in the same file. According to the crawl test, these pages are not indexed. Because it is all in one file, should we add the canonical tag to it, so that this is replicated in all the tab pages that are generated? eg. Thanks in advance for your help! Liz OneResult
On-Page Optimization | | oneresult
liz@oneresult.co.uk2 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0