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
-
Our site dropped by April 2018 Google update about content relevance: How to recover?
Hi all, After Google's confirmed core update in April 2018, we dropped globally and couldn't able to recover later. We found the update is about the content relevance as officially stated by Google later. We wonder how we are not related in-terms of content being ranking for same keywords over years. And we are expecting to find a solution to this. Are there any standard ways to measure the content relevancy? Please suggest! Thank you
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Less relevant/not optimized competitor sites ranking higher in SERPs?
Has anyone else noticed their rank positions falling to competitor sites that aren't optimized and are less relevant? I've noticed that we've lost some rankings or have dropped over the past few weeks and the competitor pages that have replaced us haven't been optimized, aren't as relevant, and it doesn't look like there has been any updates (looking through archived versions). For example, their main "shoes" gallery is ranking for more specific shoe types, like "sandals", and "sandals" isn't even mentioned in their metadata and they have no on-page copy. Their DA is slightly higher, but our sites have a denser link profile (although, yes, I do need to go through and see what kind of links, exactly, we've gained). Has anyone else seen this happen recently, or have any ideas of why or what we could do to get our rank positions back? My main initiatives have been to create and implement fresh on-page copy, metadata, and manage 404s/301 redirects, but I'm thinking this issue is beyond a quick copywriting tweak.
Algorithm Updates | | WWWSEO0 -
Do we take a SEO hit for having multiple URLs on an infinite scroll page vs a site with many pages/URLs. If we do take a hit, quantify the hit we would suffer.
We are redesigning a preschool website which has over 100 pages. We are looking at 2 options and want to make sure we meet the best user experience and SEO. Option 1 is to condense the site into perhaps 10 pages and window shade the content. For instance, on the curriculum page there would be an overview and each age group program would open via window shade. Option 2 is to have an overview and then each age program links to its own page. Do we lose out on SEO if there are not unique URLS? Or is there a way using metatags or other programming to have the same effect?
Algorithm Updates | | jgodwin0 -
How can a site with two questionable inbound links outperform sites with 500-1000 links good PR?
Our site for years was performing at #1 for but in the last 6 months been pushed down to about the #5 spot. Some of the domains above us have a handful of links and they aren't from good sources. We don't have a Google penalty. We try to only have links from quality domains but have been pushed down the SERP's? Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | northerncs0 -
How on earth is a site with ONE LINK ranking so well for a competitive keyword?
Ok, so I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm asking about in my question. The query is 'diy kitchens' in Google UK and the website is kitchens4diy[dot]com - which is ranking in third from my viewing. The thing is, the site has just ONE BACKLINK and has done for a good while. Yet, it's ranking really well. What gives?
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Why do weaker competitors on open site explorer outrank me on SERP
Hi I am new to the whole SEO + marketing and was just wondering why the competition is doing better in SERP they are all in the top 1-5 positions; however i am 5th on page 2 ?? after doing a site explorer analysis i found that I am beating them in all aspects, my site is sparrowmakeup.com.au keyword is "makeup artist sydney' any suggestions on how to increase my SERP would be helpfull.
Algorithm Updates | | EdsonGroupMedia1 -
Why is site dropping in rank after we update it?
One of our sites - supereyes.com - appears to drop in rank after we update it. The client notified us of this today and I've verified that it did indeed drop in Google -- four spots since last week. He says this happens every time we make changes to the site, but then a week later it will go back up and is usually higher than where it was before. I have not verified this, but I'm very worried it may not rise again In the past week, we've posted a new blog entry to their site and we've changed some of the content -- specifically, added their locations to the header, added a contact page and put two testimonials in their sidebar. We've also had someone submitting their site to directories and local business sites like Angie's List and so forth. There are about 16 new backlinks established in the past 2-3 weeks. Also, I should note, traffic is higher than it's ever been, but the client doesn't look at traffic. They only look at their Google results. Can anyone offer any insight into what's going on here and if I need to be worried the site won't rise again in the rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | aloley0 -
Google decreased use of Meta Descripiton Tag
Over the past month or so I have noticed that Google is not using the meta description for my pages but is instead pulling text from the actual page to show on the SERP. Is Google placing less emphasis on meta descriptions?
Algorithm Updates | | PerriCline0
