Link + noindex vs canonical--which is better?
-
In this article http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359 google mentions if you syndicate content, you should include a link and, ideally noindex, the content, if possible.
I'm wondering why google doesn't mention including a canonical instead the link + noindex?
Is one better than the other?
Any ideas?
-
Can I ask a question that leads on from this - how attractive a proposition is syndicated content it to publishers if you ask them to add a noindex / cross-domain canonical as well as a link from your article? Surely they want a chance to rank, expecially if they are planning on adding their own take and UGC, to differentiate it where possible, as Rand advises here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-leveraging-syndicated-content-effectively
Personally, content syndication is not something I would ever recommend for a client due to the complications from dupe content outweighing the benefits from links that could be earned...it just makes more work when that time could be spent on high quality guest blogging (in my view).
However, a new client is really interested in doing it. But if we offer content for those terms (link + noindex / cross domain canonical) - will there be any interest to use the syndicated articles at all?!
Maybe it would be better to offer the content in return for a link and a guarantee that they will either add unique content to it or canonicalize / noindex?
-
Hay - thanks for those links. I do remember reading those Webmaster Central posts a while back, but hadn't used that technique in practice ever. I think either of the techniques requires good cooperation from your syndication partners to implement. I think in practice, it may not always be easy to have a syndication partner add meta tags specifically for a page of content they are publishing.
In terms of which one is better - I really can't say. I would guess that a nonindex plus a link would probably be more explicit, since in that case, the search engines don't really have to decide which is the real canonical version - since there's only one page of content existing.
Also, the way they describe cross domain canonical sounds kind of wishy-washy ---> "While the rel="canonical" link element is seen as a hint and not an absolute directive, we do try to follow it where possible."
-
In fact in this post http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html, they mention using a canonical when syndicating content, if the content is similar enough--not sure why they don't mention a canonical in the webmaster guidelines link I included above.
-
Hi, Cross domain canonicalization is a common practice as well (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/10/raising-awareness-of-cross-domain-url.html).
-
If your syndication partners are reliable, the noindex option would be the best choice. This will however not guarantee you that your content will rank above the content of the syndication partner.
I would be reluctant (personal preference) to place a canonical link on the syndicated site pointing back to your domain. My biggest concern would be possible reputation issues with the syndication site hurting you.
Although I can not verify it for sure yet, it does seem that when you embed authorship information in your and the syndicated content, Google seems to favour content from the original source.
I guess the question is really why you want to have your content syndicated? If it is an attempt to build out links, I think a better option would be to provide a snippet to the syndication site, linking to your full content.
-
It seems like two different issues to me. If your content is syndicated on a 3rd party site, Google is saying - ask your partners to no-index the content and provide a link back to your original source. That way your original source will rise above all of those syndicated sources (on many other places around the WWW) to be the highest ranked page
If you are optimizing your own site, they are saying be careful to avoid duplicate versions of the same page within your own site, coming about as a result of canonicalization problems. Canonicalization problems on your site make it appear you have lots of very similar versions of the same page on your own site.
I think I can see how you got confused here - since they are talking about the topic of duplicate content in general - which can be caused either by syndication (publishing one page of content across many different sites) or canonicalization issues (where the same page of content on your own site appears on several different URLs).
Hope that helps!
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
-
Should I noindex my categories?
Hello! I have created a directory website with a pretty active blog. I probably messed this up, but I pretty much have categories (for my blog) and custom taxonomy (for different categories of services) that are very similar. For example I have the blog category "anxiety therapists" and the custom taxonomy "anxiety". 1- is this a problem for google? Can it tell the difference between archive pages in these different categories even though the names are similar? 2- should I noindex my blog categories since the main purpose of my site is to help people find therapists ie my custom taxonomy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | angelamaemae0 -
NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW Mistake
One of our top organic landing page was set as "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" by "mistake". I took me about a week to realize this after I saw a drop of traffic on that page. I looked on Google to see if it was indexed and my fear were confirmed! After finding our that it was switched to "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" I switched it back to "INDEX,FOLLOW" and did an index request in our Google Search Console. Anyone else has run into a similar issue? Did you ever got the page inxed again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrankViolette2 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
Dummy links in posts
Hi, Dummy links in posts. We use 100's of sample/example lnks as below http://<domain name></domain name> http://localhost http://192.168.1.1 http:/some site name as example which is not available/sample.html many more is there any tag we can use to show its a sample and not a link and while we scan pages to find broken links they are skipped and not reported as 404 etc? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
I get warnings for overly dynamic urls, but have canonical links in place.
Hi, Seomoz gives me warnings for overly dynamic urls. This is mostly caused by a crumbtrail system. I have a canonical link in the header for all the urls I receive warnings on, should I still worry about this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mooij0 -
Should canonical links be included or excluded in a sitemap?
Our company is in the process of updating our sitemap. Should we include or exclude canonical links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Canonical tag usage.
I have added canonical tags to all my pages, yet I just don't know if I have used them correctly - do you have any ideas on this. My url is http://www.waspkilluk.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonberenyi0 -
Canonical and optimization
Hi, I was thinking: If I had 4 pages, each of them optimized for an especific keyword, but set a canonical url to another page, would this another page rank for the 5 specific keywords? Ex: Page 1- Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroVillalobos
Page 2- Snickers
Page 3- Socks
Page 4- Feet
All set the canonical url to Page 5 Page 5 will rank for all this four keywords?0