Same content on other domain owned by de company. Canonical is not working
-
Hi!
I am analyzing a website right now. It's a school, let's name it NEWSCHOOL. This school is owned by other school, let's name it, BIGSCHOOL
NEWSCHOOL is specialized in tourism degrees, and the BIGSCHOOL is a bigger and older one with a lot of different degrees.
What happens is that NEWSCHOOL has a course, let's name it TOURISM DEGREE.
BIGSCHOOL has that course too, with the same content, trying to help to promote the content, because this school is older, well known and has a consolidated brand internationally.BIGSCHOOL, has placed a canonical tag, telling Google that content comes from NEWSCHOOL.
What is happening is that the result of newschool is beeing omited by google. The first result is the BIGSCHOOL content, and then a lot of training portals, where the degree content is too to increase its visibility.
So, I would like to know, how can we do to say google that the content that it should show is the one of NEWSCHOOL and not the one in BIGSCHOOL. It's pretty clear that Google knows that those portals are closed related, because it is omitting the NEWSCHOOL results.
I know that we can send a link from the content area from one portal to the other in the content we want. But... would it solve the problem... and y we have to repeat that for each degree, woudn't it be a little dangerous?
Would like to know your points of view!
Thanks!
-
Thanks Everett, I agree that the best would be creating diferent content, but It is a little difficult, cause it is the explanation of the contents and programming of one course.
Thank you for your answer, and I will recomend publishing the content first in NEWSCHOOL and sending to the index before sending that content to other pages or portals!
-
The cross-domain rel canonical tag is a "hint" to Google, not a "directive". They can and do ignore it when other signals overwhelmingly indicate that a different page is the canonical one.
My advice would be to write new content for NEWSCHOOL.
If you can't do that, consider all of the different signals that Google can use besides the rel canonical tag:
- Initial publish date of the content
- Initial indexation date
- External links pointing to the content
- Internal links pointing to the content
- Domain authority (including domain-wide links)
- Age of the domain
- How the two pages are linking to each other
Last but not least you could noindex the BIGSCHOOL version, but not the NEWSCHOOL version and leave your cross-domain rel canonical tag up.
Again, it would be best to have unique content on both sites.
-
On my sites, if I have rel=caononical on Page A, referring to Page B (on another domain) as the source of the content, I do have a followed link from Page A to Page B. That link is in a sentence that says that the content was originally published on Page B on the other domain. I do not know if this is the way that Google would have done this, but this is what I have done and I can say that the results have been excellent. Page B does very well in the SERPs. (Page A is on a much more powerful website.)
-
Hi!
So, your point is to wait for that to happen, isn't it? What do you think about sending a link from the BIGSCHOOL course page to the NEWSCHOOL course page? I mean, canonical + link
Thank you!
-
Thanks Rebecca! I would probably go that way!
-
Thanks Umar!
What do you mean with ...
"I reckon your "New School" is not offering lots of degree courses so yes you can get the link from "Big School's" content but make sure, you are linking in a proper and natural way"
I woudn't be natural... cause both have the same owner...
-
I suggest lots of patience here. One of the goals of the rel=canonical is to have the ranking value of the BigSchool page passed to the new domain. If you simply do rel=canonical that will happen. If you use noindex, nofollow, robots, meta robots or anything else then you will take, by total chance, whatever google decides to give you.
I would be willing to sit for months on this if you are going to rel=canonical route.
-
You could noindex, follow the BIGSCHOOL tourism degree page.
-
I agree with Umar that BIGSCHOOL's overall authority is probably getting in the way. Is there any way to get a dofollow link from their course page to yours to help reinforce the linkage? Funneling a little extra juice your way certainly wouldn't hurt and it makes sense contextually.
-
It can take google a really long time to honor some rel=canonical. I have used some and it has taken many months for all of them to be honored.
-
Hey,
It seems that Google is giving respect to "Big School" because of it's overall authority. If you like to continue this approach, you might need to work on the overall authority of "New School" to get things straight.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't go with this strategy as there are lots of other ways to leverage your new site from the old one. For instance, you may place the attractive banners at the "Tourism" page that point to your new school and stuff like that.
I reckon your "New School" is not offering lots of degree courses so yes you can get the link from "Big School's" content but make sure, you are linking in a proper and natural way.
For more details about canonical tags FAQs, please refer to this brilliant resource from Dr.Pete,
https://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questionsHope this helps!
Thanks,
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
-
How does an accurate and active Google My Business profile impact a company that does all of its work nationally/internationally through remote consulting?
I'm trying to convince a client of the importance of their Google My Business profile and other listings. But because they are less concerned about local since they are a remote based B2B coaching group they don't see it as a priority. Any resources to help me unpack the importance?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanc10 -
301 Redirect Only Home Page/Root Domain via Domain Registrar Only
Hi All, I am really concerned about doing a 301 redirect. This is my situation: Both Current and New Domain is registered with a local domain registrar (similar to GoDaddy but a local version) Current Domain: Servers are pointing to Wix servers and the website is built and hosted with Wix I would like to do a 301 redirect but would like to do it in the following way with a couple of factors to keep in mind: 99% of my link are only pointed to the home page/root domain only. Not to subdirectories. New Domain: I will register this with wix with a new plan but keep the exact sitemap and composition of current website and launch with new domain. Current Domain: I want to change server pointing to wix to point to local domain registrar servers. Then do a 301 redirect for only the home page/root domain to point to the new domain listed with wix. So 301 is done via local registrar and not via Wix. Another point to mention is it will also change from Http to Https as well as a name change. Your comments on the above will be greatly appreciated and as to whether there is risk in trying to do a 301 redirect as above. Doing it as above it also cheaper if I do the 301 via the wix platform I will need to register a full new premium plan and run it concurrently to the old plan whereas if I do it as mentioned above will only have the additional domain annual fee. Look forward to your comments. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
Duplicate Content Question With New Domain
Hey Everyone, I hope your day is going well. I have a question regarding duplicate content. Let's say that we have Website A and Website B. Website A is a directory for multiple stores & brands. Website B is a new domain that will satisfy the delivery niche for these multiple stores & brands (where they can click on a "Delivery" anchor on Website A and it'll redirect them to Website B). We want Website B to rank organically when someone types in " <brand>delivery" in Google. Website B has NOT been created yet. The Issue Website B has to be a separate domain than Website A (no getting around this). Website B will also pull all of the content from Website A (menus, reviews, about, etc). Will we face any duplicate content issues on either Website A or Website B in the future? Should we rel=canonical to the main website even though we want Website B to rank organically?</brand>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny0 -
Can cross domain canonicals help with international SEO when using ccTLDs?
Hello. My question is:** Can cross domain canonicals help with international SEO when using ccTLDs and a gTLD - and the gTLD is much more authoritative to begin with? ** I appreciate this is a very nuanced subject so below is a detailed explanation of my current approach, problem, and proposed solutions I am considering testing. Thanks for the taking the time to read this far! The Current setup Multiple ccTLD such as mysite.com (US), mysite.fr (FR), mysite.de (DE). Each TLD can have multiple languages - indeed each site has content in English as well as the native language. So mysite.fr (defaults to french) and mysite.fr/en-fr is the same page but in English. Mysite.com is an older and more established domain with existing organic traffic. Each language variant of each domain has a sitemap that is individually submitted to Google Search Console and is linked from the of each page. So: mysite.fr/a-propos (about us) links to mysite.com/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in French. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc) mysite.fr/en-fr/about-us links to mysite.com/en-fr/sitemap.xml that contains URL blocks for every page of the ccTLD that exists in English. Each of these URL blocks contains hreflang info for that content on every ccTLD in every language (en-us, en-fr, de-de, en-de etc). There is more English content on the site as a whole so the English version of the sitemap is always bigger at the moment. Every page on every site has two lists of links in the footer. The first list is of links to every other ccTLD available so a user can easily switch between the French site and the German site if they should want to. Where possible this links directly to the corresponding piece of content on the alternative ccTLD, where it isn’t possible it just links to the homepage. The second list of links is essentially just links to the same piece of content in the other languages available on that domain. Mysite.com has its international targeting in Google Search console set to the US. The problems The biggest problem is that we didn’t consider properly how we would need to start from scratch with each new ccTLD so although each domain has a reasonable amount of content they only receive a tiny proportion of the traffic that mysite.com achieves. Presumably this is because of a standing start with regards to domain authority. The second problem is that, despite hreflang, mysite.com still outranks the other ccTLDs for brand name keywords. I guess this is understandable given the mismatch of DA. This is based on looking at search results via the Google AdWords Ad Preview tool and changing language, location, and domain. Solutions So the first solution is probably the most obvious and that is to move all the ccTLDs into a subfolder structure on the mysite.com site structure and 301 all the old ccTLD links. This isn’t really an ideal solution for a number of reasons, so I’m trying to explore some alternative possible routes to explore that might help the situation. The first thing that came to mind was to use cross-domain canonicals: Essentially this would be creating locale specific subfolders on mysite.com and duplicating the ccTLD sites in there, but using a cross-domain canonical to tell Google to index the ccTLD url instead of the locale-subfolder url. For example: mysite.com/fr-fr has a canonical of mysite.fr
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatello
mysite.com/fr-fr/a-propos has a canonical of mysite.fr/a-propos Then I would change the links in the mysite.com footer so that they wouldn’t point at the ccTLD URL but at the sub-folder URL so that Google would crawl the content on the stronger domain before indexing the ccTLD domain version of the URL. Is this worth exploring with a test, or am I mad for even considering it? The alternative that came to my mind was to do essentially the same thing but use a 301 to redirect from mysite.com/fr-fr to mysite.fr. My question is around whether either of these suggestions might be worth testing, or am I completely barking up the wrong tree and liable to do more harm than good?0 -
Content Help for Dealers
What type of content would anyone recommend writing for power sports dealers (ATV dealers, Motorcycle Dealers, Jet Ski Dealers, etc) or outdoor power equipment dealers (tractors, lawn mowers, etc) when they're website consists mainly of inventory pages? These dealers are trying to improve brand awareness, but creating content that answers searchers' questions/intent is tough and I want to make sure I am on the right track. I'm trying to create unique content. I am optimizing existing pages and then so far I've been writing brand pages, describing the brands, advertising that they carry this brand, creating links and call-to-actions to the inventory pages,etc. I want to first create authority and crawlable content for this brand. From there, I have been trying to create product category pages, describing the top products under that brand and working to creating product comparison content instead of simply describing it. Why Buy type of stuff, but that gets tricky to make unique. Any suggestions on unique content or better strategies versus just brand descriptions, product descriptions/comparisons, etc? I also want to make sure that creating multiple pages focused on one brand and an overall category isn't cannibalization of a topic. Obviously each page is slightly different and gradually going into more detail, but I want to make sure. Any recommendations on types of content or different strategies would be helpful! Also - I should mention that I am limited by the platform. I cannot create/utilize a blog page or anything like that. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crichardson19900 -
Canonical questions
Hi, We are working on a site that sells lots of variations of a certain type of product. (Car accessories) So lets say there are 5 products but each product will need a page for each car model so we will potentially have a lot of variations/pages. As there are a lot of car models, these pages will have pretty much the same content, apart from the heading and model details. So the structure will be something like this; Product 1 (landing page) Audi (model selection page)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidmaxwell
---Audi A1 (Model detail page)
---Audi A2 (Model detail page)
---Audi A3 (Model detail page) BMW (model selection page)
---BMW 1 Series (Model detail page)
---BMW 3 Series (Model detail page) Product 2 (landing page) Audi (model selection page)
---Audi A1 (Model detail page)
---Audi A2 (Model detail page)
---Audi A3 (Model detail page) BMW (model selection page)
etc
etc The structure is like this as we will be targeting each landing page for AdWords campaigns. As all of these pages could look very similar to search engines, will simply setting up each with a canonical be enough? Is there anything else we should do to ensure Google doesn't penalise for duplicate page content? Any thoughts or suggestions most welcome.
Thanks!0 -
Will using 301 redirects to reduce duplicate content on a massive scale within a domain hurt the site?
We have a site that is suffering a duplicate content problem. To help resolve this we intend to reduce the amount of landing pages within the site. There are a HUGE amount of pages. We have identified the potential to reduce the pages by half at first by combing the top level directories, as we believe they are semantically similar enough that they no longer warrant being seperated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream
For instance: Mobile Phones & Mobile Tablets (Its not mobile devices). We want to remove this directory path and 301 these pages to the others, then rewrite the content to include both phones and tablets on the same landing page. Question: Would a massive amount of 301's (over 100,000) cause any harm to the general health of the website? Would it affect the authority? We are also considering just severing them from the site, leaving them indexed but not crawlable from the site, to try and maintain a smooth transition. We dont want traffic to tank. Has anyone performed anything similar? Id be interested to hear all opinions. Thanks!0 -
Cross Sub Domain Canonical Links
I currently have 1 website, but am planning on dividing it into sub-domains specific to geographic locations such as xxx.co.uk, xxx.it, xxx.es, etc... We are working on creating original content for the sub-sites, however upon launch many will be duplicate pages. Is there a problem with cross sub-domain canonical links? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0