Rel="canonical" for PFDs?
-
Hello there,
We have a lot of PDFs that seem to end up on other websites. I was wondering if there was a way to make sure that our website gets the credit/authority as the original creator. Besides linking directly from the PDF copy to our pages, is anyone aware of strategy for letting Google know that we are the original publishers?
I know search engines can index HTML versions of PDFs, so is there anyway to get them to index a rel="canonical" tag as well?
Thoughts/Ideas?
-
I stand corrected on that point.
Thank you Jassy for sharing the link. I was not aware Google made that change.
-
I'm not sure that statement about rel canonical only working within your own domain - if you have some test data/similar that shows this to be the case, I'd love to hear about it.
Matt Cutts specifically says that cross-domain rel canonical is supported, see: the webmaster video on: iwww.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6L2N4A0hA
-
Canonical tags are only effective within your domain. They have no value if someone else was to take your work and share it elsewhere.
A few things you can do to establish yourself as the original content creator:
-
publish it first on your site. Wait until you see your content in Google before actively distributing the pdf to others. This would be one indicator that can be used to demonstrate you are the original author.
-
as you shared, ensure there are links back to your site within the PDF. This would be another good indicator to Google that you are the content creator.
-
lock the PDF so changes cannot be made to the content.
-
Earlier today Google announced the new schema.org microdata offers an author tag so you can determine the original author. That system has been tested and is available to use now.
-
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
-
GSC: Change of Domain Not Processed, Despite Saying "Approved"?
Hi folks, I've just completed a straightforward olddomain -> newdomain migration. All the redirects were done on 7th Feb. I submitted the change of domain request on 7th Feb. All seemed fine - as can be seen in the attached. It's now 19th March and our pals at GSC are still saying that the domain migration is ongoing. I've never had this take so long before; 2-3 days tops. Their results are tanking as I can't geo target and more features in GSC are out of action as it's 'locked' due to this migration (I just get a screen as per the attached). Thoughts? Shall I risk withdrawing the request and starting anew? The old "turn it off and on again"? Thanks! hJXKC
Technical SEO | | tonyatfat0 -
SEO Troubleshooting? Not ranking in Top 50 for "easy" keyword
Hi there, First of all, thank you in advance to whoever steps in to help me with this issue! So, I have a new site (launched December 2016) in the investing space and have been able to get page 1 rankings on some of my pages. One of my best ranking pages is for the phrase "what is xiv". The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 21 difficulty. My page for this keyword is https://www.projectoption.com/what-is-xiv/. The post reached the first page almost immediately after being published, though I know I shouldn't expect this for other keywords of similar difficulty. Here is my problem: I just wrote a comprehensive guide (8,000+ words) on a different keyword phrase: "vertical spreads." The Keyword Explorer has this phrase at a 25 difficulty. My page for this topic: https://www.projectoption.com/vertical-spreads-explained/. However, the page is nowhere to be found in organic Google rankings (not in top 50), and the page has been live for a few weeks now. I've done my best at optimizing the post, but something leads me to believe there are some issues that are beyond my SEO knowledge. For example, maybe the post is too long, and Google can't figure out what the page is about. Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your time! -Chris
Technical SEO | | cbutler222930 -
Does using data-href="" work more effectively than href="" rel="nofollow"?
I've been looking at some bigger enterprise sites and noticed some of them used HTML like this: <a <="" span="">data-href="http://www.otherodmain.com/" class="nofollow" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a <="" span="">Instead of a regular href="" Does using data-href and some javascript help with shaping internal links, rather than just using a strict nofollow?</a>
Technical SEO | | JDatSB0 -
Is the " meta content tag" important?
I am currently trying to optimize my companies website and I noticed that meta content is exactly the same for all of the pages on our website. Isn't this problematic? The actual content on the webpage is not the same and a lot of the pages don't have these keywords in the content.
Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty0 -
Rel=canonical overkill on duplicate content?
Our site has many different health centers - many of which contain duplicate content since there is topic crossover between health centers. I am using rel canonical to deal with this. My question is this: Is there a tipping point for duplicate content where Google might begin to penalize a site even if it has the rel canonical tags in place on cloned content? As an extreme example, a site could have 10 pieces of original content, but could then clone and organize this content in 5 different directories across the site each with a new url. This would ultimately result in the site having more "cloned" content than original content. Is this at all problematic even if the rel canonical is in place on all cloned content? Thanks in advance for any replies. Eric
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Canonical and 301
Hi We have recently restructured our site and 301 redirected some pages. Unfortunately the new page which we 301 to, still had the canonical tags pointing to the old pages. Would this cause google not to index the new pages....?????
Technical SEO | | jj34340 -
Rel=Canonical
Any downsides to adding the rel=canonical tag to the canonical page itself? It will make it easier for us to implement based on the way our site's templates work. For example, we would add to the page http://www.mysite.com/original-page.aspx The canonical tag would also appear on other dupe pages like: http://www.mysite.com/original-page.aspx?ref=93929299 http://www.mysite.com/original-page.aspx?ref=view29199292 etc
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer80 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0
