One more question about rel=canonical
-
I'm still trying to wrap my head around rel=canonical and its importance. Thanks to the community, I've been able to understand most of it. Still, I have a couple of very specific questions:
- I share certain blog posts on the Huffington Post. Here's an example: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/cedric-lizotte/munich-travel-guide_b_13438956.html - Of course I post these on my blog as well. Here: http://www.continentscondiments.com/things-munich-classics/ - Obviously the HuffPo has a huge DA, and I'll never match it. However the original post is mine, on my blog, and not on the HuffPo. They wont - obviously - add a rel=canonical just for me and for the sake of it, they have a million other things to do.
QUESTION: Should I add a rel=canonical to my own site pointing to the post on the HuffPost? What would be the advantage? Should I just leave this alone?
- I share blog posts on Go4TravelBlog too. Example: http://www.go4travelblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-munich/ - but, once again, the original post is on one of my blogs. In this case, it's on another blog of mine: http://www.thefinediningblog.com/dallmayr-restaurant-in-munich/
QUESTION: Well it's pretty much the same! Should I beg Go4TravelBlog to add a rel=canonical pointing to mine? If they refuse, what do I do? Would it be better to add a rel=canonical from my site to theirs, or do I fight it out and have a rel=canonical pointing to my own post? Why?
Thanks a million for your help!
-
Unfortunately I don't do very mainstream stuff, which means that my content isn't very shareable. On top of that, I don't write provocative pieces, which means that they aren't commented on a lot. I know how to do those things and I did them for past employers, but I've chosen personally not to do so because I find them toxic. This also means that my readership, at least on my blog, is very low. Of course I could go back to my old ways - I did here with a lot of success: http://www.thefinediningblog.com/food-bloggers-post-negative-reviews-comped-meals-thoughts-strange-industry/ - but I don't like the vicious arguments that ensue on social media.
Can I take a look at your blog? Maybe I could pick up a few ideas!
And, once again, I haven't made any money from having a blog. I got, what, $15 from Google once? That's about it!
-
It is important not to get carried away with "publishing articles on other sites for links' especially if those links are in highly optimized anchor text. A couple posts on HP with a link or two is OK, but if you are doing this alot and Google is still doing the old style Penguin penalties, it can kill the value of your domain permanently.
In the topic area of my business, I don't publish anything on other websites. I want to spend all of my writing time building the value of my brand. I feel that if I am a worthy author, my readers will share my work for me and my need to promote it will be zero to minimal. This has always worked well with the audiences that I write form.
-
Yes, and yes. And also consider Egol's comments.
-
EGOL, thanks for your thoughts.
I'm a freelance writer. I've never made a penny with my blog and probably never will. It's a business card more than anything.
Try to get them to give you rel=canonical. If they will do that then publishing on their site is building value for your business. If they will not do that then it tells you something important about them. They are 100% for themselves and are all about having other people carry them around in a sedan chair.
Yes, I agree with you fully that they want free content to carry their brand. That's the whole premise of their business and that's why they have so many problems with disgruntled employees. That being said, if you take a look at the link I shared, you can see that every paragraph or so links directly to one of my blog posts. What I shared on their website is more or less a recap of all of my own blog posts for this specific city.
On top of that, well, there's no better business card, as a writer, than a series of posts of the Huff Post linking towards my stuff!
Thanks again for your thoughts, I'll keep everything in mind, of course.
-
Hm. So that probably means that I don't have any sort of possibility towards modifying the rel=canonical on the HuffPost. Right? Can you think of any other way? I only have access to the body.
This means that I should simply ignore and keep going. Right?
And if I can get go4TravelBlog (or any other place where my content is published) to add a rel=canonical pointing towards my version of it, I'd be golden. Right?
Thanks again!
-
I totally agree with Adriaan's comments.
I'll add a few thoughts about publishing philosophy....
Keep in mind the amount of time that you spent on creating content that you give away AND the value that the content can bring if it is unique to your website and not available anywhere else on the web.
If your goal is to "get your message out" then by all means get it published in as many places as you can. If your goal is to "build value for your business" then you have to think about things carefully.
If you can write an article in a short amount of time and give it to HP and in return get a link and a brand mention then it might be worth letting them use it. If I was going to do this, I would publish it first on my own site and make sure that it is indexed and then give it to HP for publication there.
Pay attention to where you copy of the article ranks in the search engines. If HP is always outranking you for your own content that makes them a much less attractive place to publish your content. If that is happening and they will not give you rel=canonical, then I would probably stop giving them my content. Giving them my content under those conditions is not "building value for my business".
Try to get them to give you rel=canonical. If they will do that then publishing on their site is building value for your business. If they will not do that then it tells you something important about them. They are 100% for themselves and are all about having other people carry them around in a sedan chair.
All of the above was written about content that you can generate easily and with minimal cost. In situations where you have a real masterpiece, then there is a stronger case for keeping it only on your own site and spending your efforts on "promoting" it in other locations but not giving the content away.
So, before you give away content, think about the many options that you have and choose the one that "gets your word out" or "builds your business" to a maximum degree. There is no "one size fits all".
-
I'm afraid not, Google is very clear on this matter: _When we encounter a rel=canonical designation in the , it’s disregarded. _https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html
-
Thanks for this answer.
Of course I can't go play around in HuffPost's headers. What I can do, though, is change the body, which includes the code and the href's. Would a rel=canonical in the body still work? How would I go about implementing it?
-
Placing a rel=canonical on your own blogposts to HuffPost is essentially telling Google that you're not unique enough to be indexed and that you want all ranking juice to flow to HP. Which isn't the case I guess. I would leave it alone. Nevertheless it will be very hard to outrank HP in this case.
This is what Yoast tells us about cross domain canonicals: _"You might have the same piece of content on several domains. For instance, SearchEngineJournal regularly republishes articles from Yoast.com (with explicit permission). Look at every one of those articles, and you’ll see a rel=canonical link point right back at our original article. This means all the links pointing at their version of the article count towards the ranking of our canonical version. They get to use our content to please their audience; we get a clear benefit from it too. Everybody wins." _(https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/#cross-domain-canonical)
So IF you can get HP to put a canonical to your own blog, this would be highly favorable for your own ranking. You could use the 'everybody wins' argument to try to get this working.
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
-
Question about multiple versions of home page
Hi guys, I'm having a question, answer to which i'm unable to find anywhere. I browesed the whole internet lol. So the question is about multipple versions of the home page. In particular, i want to know how should i deal with home page URLs with this extention: /index.html All the rest possible versions of home page i know how to deal with but this one "/index.html" i don't. I did add a cononical tag to it but i'm wondering whether or not i should add 301 redirect to chosen version og the home page (let's say it is www.mydomain.com). Please advise the best practices on how to deal with this. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | odmsoft0 -
H1 question
is it recommended to have the page title labeled as H1? or better to have page title and separate H1 ? thank you
On-Page Optimization | | gergi0 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
Silly question about noindex and canonical
Hi, This is probably going to sound a bit stupid, but I nevertheless want to check. We have a site that's going to have identical pages (really not my choice) for a sales reason. The two examples would be example.com/profile-name and example.com/location/profile-name Users using the onsite navigation will always end up in the latter example naturally as they have to select a location before viewing content (plus having the location in the url is nice as there are multiple profiles across different locations that have the same name). However, it's easier to sell our services when we can offer just example.com/profile-name to users for their own marketing reasons. I'd like to make the example.com/profile-name noindex follow, and have just the example.com/location/profile-name indexed, but not sure if it would be better to implement canonical tags instead? Can anyone see any potential pitfalls of using either method or does it not really make a difference (which is what I suspect, but I'd rather look stupid than get this wrong)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Summarize your question.Images being seen as duplicate content/pages
My images suddenly are appearing in my crawl reports as duplicate content, without meta tags, this happened over night and cant figure out why.
On-Page Optimization | | RBYoung0 -
Does anyone know an "updated" all in one cheat cheat for on page SEO
howdy guys, after panda, and penguin, i wanted to know if anyone has any good references for a cheat sheet that has ALL the on page SEO factors like title tag, image tags, H1-H6, etc, the basics, but since the zoo got loose I dont know if things have changed for on page SEO. For example what is the optimal KW density we should be using etc. i found this list : http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm but it seems to be a bit outdated, if someone can share something similar to this list but something more recent, like a few weeks old, i think that would help the community out a great bunch! thanks guys
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Canonical
http://www.providenceelectricnc.com/monroe-electrician-nc Shows great in on Page Report Card for Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical No More Than One Canonical URL Tag Then POW Canonical URL Tag Usage .... it says there is none ....?? HUH ? Searched forum but it is not discussed . Thanks !
On-Page Optimization | | SEOJunkie670 -
Optimise duplicate products or canonical link
We exist in a niche market with a good % of products that sell well at specific times of the year. Lets say for example a red cup can be sold as a christmas red cup and a valentine red cup or just a red cup. Would we be best to optimize each specific product specifically for those seasons/events on different pages or keep google pointed to just one page using a canonical link.
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0