If I put a piece of content on an external site can I syndicate to my site later using a rel=canonical link?
-
Could someone help me with a 'what if ' scenario please?
What happens if I publish a piece of content on an external website, but then later decide to also put this content on my website. I want my website to rank first for this content, even though the original location for the content was the external website.
Would it be okay for me to put a rel=canonical tag on the external website's content pointing to the copy on my website? Or would this be seen as manipulative?
-
Thanks for your thoughts on this, Dirk.
I really appreciate them.
E
-
Thanks for answering my question Dirk! I found the deeper follow up conversation interesting as well.
-
Hi Egol,
Interesting question, but difficult to answer. Could be a topic to ask on one of the Webmaster hangouts.
It all depends on how Google handles canonicals internally.
One possibility would be that Google considers the page from A that is syndicated on B not really as a page from B but a page from A. In that case, the links from that page would count as an internal link (A->A rather than as an external link B->A).
Another possibility would be that Google considers the fact that B is republishing the content from A as a kind of endorsement for A (in a non SEO world a site would only republish content from another site if the quality was really good). In that case, the links on the syndicated page would have value.
In both cases I would personally keep the links on the page. If you added them, it implies you think these links have some value for the visitor so taking them off wouldn't make much sense (unless your main goal was to add these links in order to optimise your internal link structure)
If you want to be on the safe side - if the links go to "commercial" pages, you could make them nofollow, if it's to other editorial content if would keep them as follow. I wouldn't omit the links - even when "nofollow" they could still generate traffic for your site.
Didn't found any "hard evidence" to support this, but we seem to have come in the stage where Google scared us so much about "bad links" that we start to question all type of incoming links.
Sometimes you just have to trust your gut feeling - if the link looks "normal" in the context (and adds some value for the visitor) I would stick to a follow link.Dirk
-
Thank you, Dirk.
Here is a question, one step deeper.
Let's say that I have an article on Site A that I want to republish on Site B with the rel=canonical on Site B pointing to Site A. The article on Site A has internal links to other pages on Site A. What should I do with those links when the article is republished on Site B.
1) Omit them
2) Nofollow them
3) Republish them allowing the links to be followed
I think that #3 is a bad idea. I believe that those links could be considered spammy.
I like #2 best because the links will send traffic to additional relevant content.
I think that #1 is the safest.
Do you have any opinion on these options?
Thank you.
-
No - it won't be seen as manipulative, in fact it is the recommended way to syndicate content. Check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066:
"Addressing syndicated content. If you syndicate your content for publication on other domains, you want to consolidate page ranking to your preferred URL.
To address these issues, we recommend you define a canonical URL for content (or equivalent content) available through multiple URLs"
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
-
Can I change a URL on a site that has only a few back links?
I have a site that wants to change their URL, It's a very basic site with hardly any backlinks. http://www.cproofingandexteriors.com/ The only change they want to make is taking out the 'and'.. so it would be cproofingexteriors.com they already own the domain. What should I do?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MissThumann0 -
Site been plagiarised - duplicate content
Hi, I look after two websites, one sells commercial mortgages the other sells residential mortgages. We recently redesigned both sites, and one was moved to a new domain name as we rebranded it from being a trading style of the other brand to being a brand in its own right. I have recently discovered that one of my most important pages on the residential mortgages site is not in Google's index. I did a bit of poking around with Copyscape and found another broker has copied our page almost word-for-word. I then used copyscape to find all the other instances of plagiarism on the other broker's site and there are a few! It now looks like they have copied pages from our commercial mortgages site as well. I think the reason our page has been removed from the index is that we relaunced both these sites with new navigation and consequently new urls. Can anyone back me up on this theory? I am 100% sure that our page is the original version because we write everything in-house and I check it with copyscape before it gets published, Also the fact that this other broker has copied from several different sites corroborates this view. Our legal team has written two letters (not sent yet) - one to the broker and the other to the broker's web designer. These letters ask the recipient to remove the copied content within 14 days. If they do remove our content from our site, how do I get Google to reindex our pages, given that Google thinks OUR pages are the copied ones and not the other way around? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or, will it just happen automatically? I have no experience of this scenario! In the past, where I've found duplicate content like this, I've just rewritten the page, and chalked it up to experience but I don't really want to in this case because, frankly, the copy on these pages is really good! And, I don't think it's fair that someone else could potentially be getting customers that were persuaded by OUR copy. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netrepid0 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
How can I remove duplicate content & titles from my site?
Without knowing I created multiple URLs to the same page destinations on my website. My ranking is poor and I need to fix this problem quickly. My web host doesn't understand the problem!!! How can I use canonical tags? Can somebody help, please.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZoeAlexander0 -
Blog content - what to do, and what to avoid in terms of links, when you're paying for blog content
Hi, I've just been looking at a restaurant site which is paying food writers to put food news and blogs on their website. I checked the backlink profile of the site and the various bloggers in question usually link from their blogs / company websites to the said restaurant to help promote any new blogs that appear on the restaurant site. That got me wondering about whether this might cause problems with Google. I guess they've been putting about one blog live per month for 2 years, from 12/13 bloggers who have been linking to their website. What would you advise?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Asking Sites to Remove Links.. What should I say?
After getting some guidance from you guys here on this forum i have decided to go through my WMT backlinks and contact all the sites that I think are spammy and are linking back to me....and I will ask them to remove my links from their sites... Can you guys please provide some guidance as to what I should say in the letter (also, anything i should definitely not say).... Thanks for the help...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
Is there a reason to put a canonical to yourself? Interesting case...
Hi, I was looking at BlueNile (biggest diamonds online dealer in the world) since I was wondering how they dealt with similar products and with sold products. Each diamond that is sold is unique. Once it is sold it is unavailable for sale. Also, all diamonds are VERY similar so they should also find a way to handle duplication in content. Look at the following 2 pages: http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02360835 http://www.bluenile.com/round-diamond-1-carat-or-less-ideal-cut-g-color-vs1-clarity_LD02366155 The pages are practically identical and in the "view source" I noticed that they add a canonical tag to themselves... Any thoughts on that? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0