Is it appropriate to use canonical for a yearly post with similar content?
-
I've begun writing an annual review of local business directories.
Post from 2012 is here: http://web.servicecrowd.com.au/blog/top-10-australian-business-directories-in-2012/
New 2014 post is here: http://web.servicecrowd.com.au/blog/top-10-australian-business-directories-2014/
Is this appropriate use?
Next year the post will be similar, but different metrics reported and slightly different review.
Side note: For some reason the post hasn't been indexed by Google yet. Usually new posts are indexed as soon as they are shared on social media.
-
My suggestion would be to go beyond creating 'yearly' top lists for the site (these are old and tired). Look to create an 'Evergreen' content page that you can use and leverage year over year, build on and create a community and discussion around. Discuss the changes each year by revamping the list, ask people their input (UGC) and discuss why some of the one's that fell, did, while also pointing out new one's didn't fall and why
By creating a page like this - you leverage the long term effect of a page that never gets old, or outdated (as one does with regards to a specified URL like 2012 or 2014) in your examples. This will also help you create a very strong profile from a backlink perspective as your links will accumulate into 1 evergreen/lasting URL - that never gets outdated with yearly updates you will make. Might want to use the META information for data posted and date expired to ensure that the crawlers know to come back and recrawl when a page is live. Ensure it's mapped and setup properly in the Sitemap XML file too
I think the advantages of moving towards this will help your link profile, leverage a great piece of content year over year, making it move 'sharable' from a social media perspective and leverage long-term value.
Just my 2 cents to help you out
Cheers, Rob
-
Probably not, you have only a handful of post and this is not a problem as far as duplicate content goes.
if you want them all to rank, then don't canonical them a only one will rank, try adding a paragraph of unique text to each. -
Canonical is great for posts that are the same, as these posts are not and they represent different statistics I would say not.
If a user wants to find a review of directories in 2012 then the canonical would stop this and thus the user wouldn't be able to get that.
in short- No
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
-
Pros and Cons of using rel=next on blog posts
Hi there, at the bottom of my website's blog posts the rel=prev and rel=next tags are used on links that point to the previous article that was posted and the next article that was posted. Often these articles are not 'linked' in terms of their content or message. Is this the correct use of rel=next/prev and if not what are the possible negative effects. Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | Bee1590 -
Moving content
I have www.SiteA.com which contains a number of sections of content, a section of which (i.e. www.SiteA.com/sectionA), we would like to move to a new domain www.SiteB.com Definitely we will ensure that a redirect strategy is in place and that we submit a sitemap for SiteB Three Questions 1. Anything else I am missing from the migration plan? 2. Since we are only moving part of SiteA to SiteB, is there another way of telling Google that we changed address for that section or are the 301s enough? 3. Currently, Section A (under SiteA) contains a subsection where we were posting an article a day. In the new site (SiteB), we decided to drop this subsection and write content (but not "exactly" the same content) under a new section. During migration, how should we handle the subsection that we have decided to stop writing? Should we: A. Import the content into SiteB and call it archives and then redirect all the urls from subsection under SiteA to the archives under SiteB? OR B. Do not move the content but redirect all the pages (365 in total) to where we think the user would be more interested in going to on SiteB? Note: A colleague of mine is worried that since the subsection has good content he thinks its necessary to actually move the content to SiteB. But again, looking at the views for the archives it caters for 1% of the the total views of this section. In other words, people only view the article on the day it is written. I hope I was clear 🙂 Your help is appreciated Thank you
Technical SEO | | seo12120 -
Canonical URL
I previously set the canonical Url in google web masters to the non www version, when I check my on page opt, it tells me that I have a critical issue with this. Should I change it in google web masters back to the www version? if so is there the possibility of negative results? Or is there a better way to deal with this? Note, I have inbound links pointing to both types.
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Should Canonical be used if your site does not have any duplicate
Should canonical be used site wide even if my site is solid no duplicate content is generated. please explain your answer
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
Magento Canonical Tags
Magento pages have been giving me a lot of trouble with the canonical tags. In some cases duplicate pages are showing up, so I need to add the canonical tag. In other cases I'm getting an error that there are multiple canonical tags per page. How can I get my pages canonized without duplicate tags? It seems like it's either too much or not enough, no matter what I do. Note: this only applies to category and product pages.
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hi Everyone, I ran into a problem I didn't know I had (Thanks to the seomoz tool) regarding duplicate content. my site is oxford ms homes.net and when I built the site, the web developer used php to build it. After he was done I saw that the URL's looking like this "/blake_listings.php?page=0" and I wanted them like this "/blakes-listings" He changed them with no problem and he did the same with all 300 pages or so that I have on the site. I just found using the crawl diagnostics tool that I have like 3,000 duplicate content issues. Is there an easy fix to this at all or does he have to go in and 301 Redirect EVERY SINGLE URL? Thanks for any help you can give.
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
How similar do pages need to be in order to utilize the canonical tag
Here is my specific situation. My company released new versions of a few documents in the fall. I was hoping that over time the old version would decline and the new version would rise but after 6 months the old version continues to rank #1 and the new version #3. The old version needs to stay on our site but users should really be getting to the most recent version. I think utilizing the canonical tag would solve the issue but i am concerned because the content on the actual pages is not duplicate but it is updated. Below are the two URLs to see the differences in the content. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/06tr008.cfm http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/10tr033.cfm Is this an appropriate situation to use the canonical tag? If not, is there a better solution.
Technical SEO | | SEI0