Is this an ideal rel=canonical situation?
-
Hey Moz community,
Thanks for taking time to answer my question.
I'm working directly with a hospital that has several locations across the country. They've copied the same content over to each of their websites. Could I point the search engines back to a singular location (URL) using the rel=canonical tag?
In addition, does the rel=canonical tag affect the search engine rankings of the URLs (about 13 of them) that use the rel=canonical tag?
If I'm on track, is there an ideal URL (location) to decide has the original content?
This is actually the first time I've ever needed to use rel=canonical (if applicable).
Thanks so much.
Cole
-
Hi Cole,
Unfortunately there is a solution for this for international duplication but not national. If we were talking about international locations, the solution is the hreflang tag. I'll link to it here just in case it's of use in the future: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Nationally, canonicalisation will remove the non-canonical versions from the index and of course from rankings, as Chris has said.
I've looked at medical queries in the past, and Google is very adept at taking IP into account when returning results, the fact that it thinks my IP is located an hour's drive south of here notwithstanding
I would say that re-written content is your best bet if you can't use one page listing multiple locations (highly unlikely) and truly need separate sites for all 13. There can be a little cross-over / duplication without causing too much worry, but I would be concerned that Google is not good enough at a national level to differentiate between duplicates in the same way it can do this for internationalisation.
-
Hey Chris,
Thanks for the response.
I do not see any solutions here to be honest other than write the content over again.
Considering Google takes your IP Address location into consideration when you search a term such as "hospitals," I want each location to be able to rank for our list of target keywords. Thus, the rel=canonical may not be an option at this point.
Can anyone else comment on the ranking of pages (with duplicate content)?
Thanks again.
Cole
-
Hiya Cole,
Thanks for taking the time to write to us!
Well you can point them all to one site _but_the side affect of this would be the other sites might not rank, this could be problematic if e.g someone wanted to look for the content locally like "hospitals in London" (I'm not sure whats duplicated so use your imagination bit!). If you do implement the redirect across sites it's also a good idea to put a link on the page pointing towards the original content.
There is some great info on the tag here :
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
Other options that might help you is to rewrite the content, block the page in robots (bit harsh though). remove the content and just point the link to one but giving it a bit of a boost. 301 the users and bots to original content. I'm sure there are lots of other options and the choice is yours.
I hope some of that info will get you started, to be honest it may just be easier to use the tag along with just reiterating it with a link. This is helpful if you're not fussed by any index issues for the hospitals.
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
-
Showing duplicate content when I have canonical url set, why?
Just inspecting my sites report and I see that I have a lot of duplicate content issues, not sure why these two pages here http://www.thecheapplace.com/wholesale-products/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch http://www.thecheapplace.com/wholesale-products/small-wholesale-patches-1/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch are showing as duplicate content when both pages have a clearly defined canonical url of http://www.thecheapplace.com/Are-you-into-casual-sex-patch Any answer would be appreciated, thank you
Technical SEO | | erhansimavi0 -
Rel="no follow" for All Links on a Site that Charges for Advertising
If I run a site that charges other companies for listing their products, running banner advertisements, white paper downloads, etc. does it make sense to "no follow" all of their links on my site? For example: they receive a profile page, product pages and are allowed to post press releases. Should all of their links on these pages be "no follow"? It seems like a gray area to me because the explicit advertisements will definitely be "no followed" and they are not buying links, but buying exposure. However, I still don't know the common practice for links from other parts of their "package". Thanks
Technical SEO | | zazo0 -
Diagnosing Canonical Errors Is Screaming frog reliable?
Morning from suny & warm wetherby UK 🙂 On this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ screaming frog is citing a canonical error but I'm confused as this piece of code is in place: http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage" /> So my question is please - "Does this page http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/how-we-care-for-you/right-to-manage/ have a caninical error or is screaming frog useless? Other examples where screaming frog is picking up canonical errors include:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/what-our-customers-say/right-to-manage/
http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/buying-a-home/right-to-manage/ Oh forgot to say the preffered version is http://www.goldsboroughestates.co.uk/About/right-to-manage/ Any insights welcvome 🙂0 -
Wordpress Canonical Problem
I'm using wordpress for my website but m unable to implement Canonical tag property for pages under the same category, Like for matt's blog: The Tag is same .. for all pages under that category: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/ & http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/page/2/ is it some hack or some plugin ? please suggest! thanks
Technical SEO | | AnkitRawat0 -
Canonical usage and duplicate content
Hi We have a lot of pages about areas like ie. "Mallorca" (domain.com/Spain/Mallorca), with tabbed pages like "excursion" (domain.com/spain/Mallorca/excursions) and "car rental" (domain.com/Spain/Mallorca/car-rental) etc. The text on ie the "car rental"-page is very similar on Mallorca and Rhodos, and seomoz marks these as duplicate content. This happens on "car rental", "map", "weather" etc. which not have a lot of text but images and google maps inserted. Could i use rel=nex/prev/canonical to gather the information from the tabbed pages? That could show google that the Rhodos-map page is related to Rhodos and not Mallorca. Is that all wrong or/and is there a better way to do this? Thanks, Alsvik
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Hreflang on non-canonical pages
Hi! I've been trying to figure out what is the best way to solve this dilemma with duplicate content and multiple languages across domains. 1 product info page 2 same product but GREEN
Technical SEO | | LarsEriksson
3 same product but RED
4 same product but YELLOW **Question: ** Since pages 2,3,4 just varies slightly I use the canonical tag to indicate they are duplicates of page 1. Now I also want to indicate there are other language versions with the_ rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _element. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on the canonical page only pointing to the canonical page with "x" language. Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages pointing to the canonical page with the "x" language? Should I place the _rel="alternate" hreflang="x" _on all pages and then point it to the translated page (even if it is not a canonical page) ? /Lars0 -
Will rel=canonical cause a page to be indexed?
Say I have 2 pages with duplicate content: One of them is: http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage This page is the one I want to be indexed on google (domain rank already built, etc.) http://www.originalpage.com is more of an ease of use domain, primarily for printed material. If both of these sites are identical, will rel=canonical pointing to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage" cause it to be indexed? I do not plan on having any links on my site going to "http://www.originalsite.com/originalpage", they would instead go to "http://www.originalpage.com".
Technical SEO | | jgower0 -
Rel Canonical - Wordpress
How do you fix the rel canonical issue on a wordpress site? Is there a quick fix? I have a few notices on my site and am a little confused. Thanks, Jared
Technical SEO | | SaborStyle0