Am I Syndicating Content Correctly?
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My question is about how to syndicate content correctly. Our site has professionally written content aimed toward our readers, not search engines. As a result, we have other related websites who are looking to syndicate our content. I have read the Google duplicate content guidelines (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en), canonical recommendations (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en&ref_topic=2371375), and no index recommendation (https://developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_meta_tag) offered by Google, but am still a little confused about how to proceed. The pros in our opinion are as follows:#1 We can gain exposure to a new audience as well as help grow our brand #2 We figure its also a good way to help build up credible links and help our rankings in GoogleOur initial reaction is to have them use a "canonical link" to assign the content back to us, but also implement a "no index, follow" tag to help avoid duplicate content issues. Are we doing this correctly, or are we potentially in threat of violating some sort of Google Quality Guideline?Thanks!
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No, you will not receive any increase in your pagerank as a result.
Having said that, if the other website did NOT include the canonical link then there is a chance the link juice for the page would either be split equally between your site and their site or worse case it will all be given to their site (if Google thinks that they are the originator)! So indirectly, ensuring that they add the canonical tag will result in your page having a better ranking.
Hope that makes sense!
Steve
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Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I do have a follow up though... With the "canonical" and "no index, follow" tags in place, will any link juice be transferred?
For example:
Original article is published on www.mysite.com/original-article
Content is syndicated on www.theresite.com/syndicated-content with the following tags in place:
What I am getting confused about is since the syndicated content is not getting index, then does any sort of link attributes get passed through to my original article? In other words, does the canonical link pass any link juice even though the noindex tag is in place?
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However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article.
Yes, but you gotta be really careful. If you fill syndicated content with anchor text links you will have a Penguin problem.
** Wondering if this was written before Penguin. ** If I was the boss at Google we would have a bar of soap used to wash the mouth of Googlers who talk about link building.
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**Our initial reaction is to have them use a "canonical link" to assign the content back to us, but also implement a "no index, follow" tag to help avoid duplicate content issues. **
This is the way to go. But, you must require them to use the canonical and the no index. You gotta say, "These are our conditions for your use of our content." If they are good guys then they should have no problem with it. Stick to your guns about this.
My bet is that some will simply rewrite your content.
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Hi,
I would stipulate that anyone wishing to re-using your content does so on the condition that they include a canonical link back to your original article... Even if a few people do this then Google will soon realise that you are the author of the original article and credit you with the associated pagerank.
You should never look to create content solely for search engines (so you're doing the right thing). Website content should always be about your users but if you do this correctly then you will also benefit from the traffic the search engines generate!
Hope this helps.
Steve
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Hi Brad,
Google's official version below:
- Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.
You can refer to it on this link
Cheers,
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