Cross domain canonical, pros, cons, and link popularity?
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We have a client who has two well trusted web properties, their insurance site where they sell insurance offerings, and a state specific blog they own where they promote healthy living.
They want to improve their traffic/rankings/etc to the main site but they want to keep their blog where its at for PR (it already has a great following).
So my quesiton is, if we do set up a secondary blog on the main site and use canonical tags on the more trusted external blog to link to the main site. Will that pass on the link popularity their external blog gets along with all the benefits of the fresh content, etc?
I've never actually seen anyone do this yet, keen to try it but not with a client.
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Yeah, I've general heard positive things where it's a clear issue of content syndication and you control the content. If they're honored that way, they should pass link equity. The major newspapers use it.
I'd only warn that Google can process cross-domain canonicals at their discretion, so it's not guaranteed. Worst case, they just ignore them, and you may have to reconsider, but I think it's safe to attempt it.
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Canonicals do work cross-domain. We do it with a number of our own sites, and it works exactly like you would expect it to.
http://searchengineland.com/google-supports-cross-domain-canonical-tag-32044
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