Can a domain rank for a competitive term with no links?

[AdeLewis]

Hi,

I know that this topic has received a lot of attention recently (Not all of it good) and I am not normally one to re-open a can of worms but the whole 'Camper Mens Shoes' fiasco has got me thinking.

If you're not familiar with the story then you can get the highlights of it here - http://martinmacdonald.net/the-curios-case-of-camper-shoes/

My question is this - Say that you had a domain (Domain A) that was ranking well for a competitve keyword and that it had a good backlink profile. If you used rel="canonical" on every page of Domain A to point to a duplicate site on a different domain (Domain B) , would Domain B then rank well in place of Domain A?

I know that this probably doesn't have much practical use but I am trying to get a better understanding of the effect of using rel="canonical"

Would the result of doing the above mean that Domain B would rank well without having any links pointing directly to it?

[activitysuper]

Yep I have actually done this (kinda! as a test).

EMD after 3 months of ranking 3rd, redirected it to a non-EMD. They swapped places for about 2 weeks... then it dropped 10+ pages deep.

I cant help but think, if I had increased link building effort over the 2 weeks it might have stayed up.

[Dr-Pete]

I agree with @activitysuper - it would work like a 301-redirect and Domain B would inherit the ranking power. Actually, I've seen that in action - some people even use a cross-domain canonical in place of 301s (it can be faster, but that's a tricky choice).

Even if Domain B had no relevance to Domain A, you might see some short-term rankings. In that case, though, the rankings would probably fall off quickly once Google re-evaluated Domain B.

[AdeLewis]

Thanks again for the info. I am already using the link tag so hopefully I aqm on the right path.

Appreciate your comments on Teapot Creative

Have just had a look at Dribbble and it is on the list of things to do!

[activitysuper]

I did have to think twice about the tag linking to a external page on a different domain - but had a rummage and found this - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html

That link might be a closer fit to the answer your looking for.

p.s like your work on teapot creative, nice and clean.

You on dribbble?

[AdeLewis]

Hi activitysuper,

Your expination and link is pretty much my understanding but I wondered if I was missing something.

Thanks for your reply.

[activitysuper]

He is a reference to what Google says it's supposed to be used for as well.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

I personally would say it would have the same effect as if you did a redirect on Domain B pages.

Domain B would rank but Domain A would drop off.

I've never tried it but I'm taking an educated guess.

If Domain A was sitting on say a exact match domain and Domain B was not, then I don't think rankings would be mirrored. So it's not a straight forward flip.