Canonical when using others sites
-
Hi all,
I was wondering if this is a good way to safely have content on our website.
We have a job search website, and we pull content from other sites. We literally copy the full content text from it's original source, and paste it on our own site on an individual job page. On every individual job page we put a canonical link to the original source (which is not my own website).
On each job page, when someone wants to apply, they are redirected to the original job source.
As far as I know this should be safe. But since it's not our website we are canonical linking to, will this be a problem?
To compare it was indeed.com does, they take 1 or 2 senteces from the original source and put it as an excerpt on their job category page (ie "accountant in new york" category page). When you click the excerpt/title you are redirected to the original source.
As you might know, indeed.com has very good rankings, with almost no original content whatsoever. The only thing that is unique is the URL of the indeed.com category where it's on (indeed.com/accountant-new-york), and sometimes the job title. Excerpt is always duplicate from other sites. Why does this work so well? Will this be a better strategy for us to rank well?
-
Hi Nevil
Google does support cross domain canonical tags as they announced here: here http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.htm
However I am not sure this is the best strategy for you. When you use a canonical tag you are basically telling Google not to index that page but the one in the canonical tag instead. If Google listens to this it means your job pages will not be indexed in Google.
The better strategy for this would be similar to Indeed's where you take a snippet of the job, add your own unique content to the page and then have the call to action button link to the original job itself. This should give that page the best chance to rank.
Indeed is a tough example to use. They are pretty much number 1 for every job related term with a site that is extremely thin. I believe Google has listed this site similar to Wikipedia where it is a credible source for jobs and they give it additional weight. How fair Google is being here has been a long debate of mine
I hope this helps
-
This seems to be a tough one - similar in many ways to an e-commerce site. As far as Im aware the canonical link will only work on the same domain, I stand to be corrected. In terms of duplicating the content you will end up being penalized by Panda at some stage.
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
-
Does Google considers the direct traffic on the pages with rel canonical tags?
Hi community, Let's say there is a duplicate page (A) pointing to original page (B) using rel canonical tag. Pagerank will be passed from Page A to B as the content is very similar and Google honours it hopefully. I wonder how Google treats the direct traffic on the duplicate Page A. We know that direct traffic is also an important ranking factor (correct me if I'm wrong). If the direct traffic is high on the duplicate page A, then how Google considers it? Will there be any score given to original page B? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Canonical redirect?
Can a canonical URL redirect? I'm doing country specific urls with the www. redirecting to the country (i.e. if you go to www.domain.com you'll redirect to fr.domain.com in france). If the canonical is www. then all the spiders will go to the correct place but I don't know if search engines recommend against a canonical that redirects.
Algorithm Updates | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Condensing content for web site redesign
We're working on a redesign and are wondering if we should condense some of the content (as recommended by an agency), and if so, how that will affect our organic efforts. Currently a few topics have individual pages for each section, such as (1) Overview (2) Symptoms and (3) Treatment. For reference, the site has a similar structure to http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/guide/heart-disease-overview-fact. Our agency has sent us over mock-ups which show these topics being condensed into one and using a script/AJAX to display only the content that is clicked on. Knowing this, if we were to choose this option, that would result in us having to implement redirects because only one page would exist, instead of all three. Can anyone provide insight into whether we should keep the topic structure as is, or if we should take the agency's advice and merge all the topic content? *Note: The reason the agency is pushing for the merging option is because they say it helps with page load time. Thank you in advance for any insight! Tcd5Wo1.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | ATShock1 -
Canonical tag on search.asp resultpage or what to do?
Hi, Im starting out doing SEO on my websites. My issue now is, that I have this searchpage called search.asp where it's possible to search for profiles on my website. When you go to search.asp the page displays all profiles as default, and it's then possible to change things like age, hairlenght and lots of small variables. When you submit the queries, the url would be some linke this:
Algorithm Updates | | KasperGJ
wwww.site.com/search.asp?agefrom=10&ageto=40&haircolor=1&area=Denmark and so... There is thousands of different "urls" it could change to, which is kinda bad in SEO i guess. ATM the title tag is always "Searching for profiles", but i plan to change that, so the searchquery would be part of the title. The problem is, that right now, this page generates tons of dublicate content. So, my issue is, what to do? 1. Should I create a or would that "harm" my site? 2. Other ideas? /Kasper0 -
Our company is mentioned on some high-traffic, authoritative sites and some of our products are linked as well. If we link to those pages, does it affect our SEO? How can we take advantage of those mentions?
I heard that if you link to another site, when Google indexes your site, they crawl that page that is referenced. By whatever metrics they use, if that site has your name or a link to your site, Google would rank it higher. I am not sure how true that is, but what value does another site mentioned our site have on our SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | JonathonOhayon1 -
Why is this site ranking 1st?
I'm a relative SEO newbie, so please go easy on me. I've been an SEOMOZ pro user for a few months and have used it to dramatically improve my organic rankings. However, for the life of me, I cannot determine why the site that currently ranks number one, does so. For the factors I can determine, they shouldn't be ranking where they are, but reality is different. Could someone please offer me some ideas? My target keyword is "photography classes edmonton" My site is www.bsop.ca and I'm targetting the Google Canada engine. Any and all assistance is appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | pburwell0 -
Google's reaction to site updates
Hi, Is it safe to assume as soon as Google indexes updates I've made to my site that any ranking changes the updates effected will happen at that same time, or is there ever a lag time before these changes ( if any ) take effect?
Algorithm Updates | | minutiae0 -
Any ideas on how Google +1 handles URLs and canonicals?
If your URL string shows up in a search and they +1 the URL with the coding in it will the +1 transfer to the canonical page? Example: site.com/locations/arizona/?utm_source=go gets a Google +1 from a user. The page itself has a canonical for site.com/locations/arizona/ Does google credit the canonical with the +1 or do they then have dup pages with separate +1 scores?
Algorithm Updates | | Thos0030