Letting Others Use Our Content: Risk-Free Attribution Methods
-
Hello Moz!
A massive site that you've all heard of is looking to syndicate some of our original editorial content. This content is our bread and butter, and is one of the primary reasons why people use our site.
Note that this site is not a competitor of ours - we're in different verticals.
If this massive site were to use the content straight up, I'm fairly confident that they'd begin to outrank us for related terms pretty quickly due to their monstrous domain authority.
This is complex because they'd like to use bits and pieces of the content interspersed with their own content, so they can't just implement a cross-domain canonical. It'd also be difficult to load the content in an iframe with noindex,nofollow header tags since their own content (which they want indexed) will be mixed up with ours.
They're also not open to including a link back to the product pages where the corresponding reviews live on our site.
Are there other courses of action that could be proposed that would protect our valuable content?
Is there any evidence that using schema.org (Review and Organization schemas) pointing back to our review page URLs would provide attribution and prevent them from outranking us for associated terms?
-
Logan, I found your replies very helpful. We have allowed a site to replicate some of our pages / content on their site and have the rel canonical tag in place pointing back to us. However, Google has indexed the pages on the partner's site as well. Is this common or has something gone wrong? the partner temporarily had an original source tag pointing to their page as well as the canonical pointing to us. We caught this issue a few weeks ago and had the original source tag removed. GSC sees the rel canonical tag for our site. But I am concerned our site could be getting hurt for dupe content issues and the partner site may out rank us as their site is much stronger. Any insight would be greatly appreciated
-
"Why did this offer come my way?"
When someone asks to use your content, that is what you should be asking yourself.
When someone asks to use my content, my answer is always a fast. NO! Even if the Pope is asking, the answer will be NO.
-
This is exactly my concern. Our site is massive in it's own industry, but this other site is a top player across many industries - surely we'd be impacted by such an implementation without some steps taken to confirm attribution.
Thank you for confirming my suspicions.
-
Google claims that they are good at identifying the originator of the content. I know for a fact that they are overrating their ability on this.
Publish an article first on a weak site, allow it to be crawled and remain for six months. Then, put that same article on a powerful site. The powerful site will generally outrank the other site for the primary keywords of the article or the weak site will go into the supplemental results. Others have given me articles with the request that I publish them. After I published them they regretted that they were on my site.
Take pieces of an article from a strong site and republish them verbatim on a large number of weak sites. The traffic to the article on the strong site will often drop because the weak sites outrank it for long-tail keywords. I have multiple articles that were ranking well for valuable keywords. Then hundreds of mashup sites grabbed pieces of the article and published them verbatim. My article tanked in the SERPs. A couple years later the mashups fell from the SERPs and my article moved back up to the first page.
-
But, I would not agree with their site being the one to take the damage. YOU will lose a lot of long-tail keyword traffic because now your words are on their site and their site is powerful.
Typically, the first one that's crawled will be considered the originator of the content--then if a site uses that content it will be the one who is damaged (if that's the case). I was under the impression that your content was indexed first--and the other site will be using your content. At least that's the way I understood it.
So, if your content hasn't already been indexed then you may lose in this.
-
This is complex because they'd like to use bits and pieces of the content interspersed with their own content, so they can't just implement a cross-domain canonical. It'd also be difficult to load the content in an iframe with noindex,nofollow header tags since their own content (which they want indexed) will be mixed up with ours.
Be careful. This is walking past the alligator ambush. I agree with Eric about the rel=canonical. But, I would not agree with their site being the one to take the damage. YOU will lose a lot of long-tail keyword traffic because now your words are on their site and their site is powerful.
They're also not open to linking back to our content.
It these guys walked into my office with their proposal they might not make it to the exit alive.
My only offer would be for them to buy me out completely. That deal would require massive severances for my employees and a great price for me.
-
You're in the driver's seat here. _You _have the content _they _want. If you lay down your requirements and they don't want to play, then don't give them permission to use your content. It's really that simple. You're gaining nothing here with their rules, and they gain a lot. You should both be winning in this situation.
-
Thank you for chiming in Eric!
There pages already rank extraordinarily well. #1 for almost every related term that they have products for, across the board.
They're also not open to linking back to our content.
-
In an ideal situation, the canonical tag is preferred. Since you mentioned that it's not the full content, and you can't implement it, then there may be limited options. We haven't seen any evidence that pointing back to your review page URLs would prevent them from outranking you--but it's not likely. If there are links there, then you'd get some link juice passed on.
Most likely, though, if that content is already indexed on your site then it's going to be seen as duplicate content on their site--and would only really hurt their site, in that those pages may not rank.
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
-
Change of content
Hello, When you do a major change of content on a page I know it takes time to start seeing some results in terms of ranking. Let's say I make a change today expecting to see the first results of that change 2 months from now. Let's say in a month I decide to add some content and make again some minor changes. Do I have to wait another 2 months starting on the date I made my 2 nd changes to see some results or will I see the results of the 1 change as originally planned 2 months after my major content change ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Please help - Duplicate Content
Hi, I am really struggling to understand why my site has a lot of duplicate content issues. It's flagging up as ridiculously high and I have no idea how to fix this, can anyone help me, please? Website is www.firstcapitol.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alix_SEO1 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Re-using Content From a Previous Website - Risky?
Over the years, I've gathered thousands of user reviews on a website I am shutting down although I would like to keep them for another website. I removed the reviews from the old website, set the reviews pages to "noindex" and removed the pages from Google's index using the Webmaster Tools. At this point the reviews are not showing up in Google's search results anymore. Would there be any concerns about posting these reviews on a new website? Can it get penalized for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Using author on every page of website?
I'm currently get to grips with schema and one thing im using is author on my blog posts and seeing my photo etc on organic searches which are related. I see one of my competitors is using author on every page on their website, not just blog posts etc. Are there any recommendation when it should be used? Should it be site wide or is it really intended for blog posts etc? Would it be wrong for me to use on every page of my website as one of my businesses is myself as a lone person? This is what you get when searching for driving lessons in just about any town! https://www.google.co.uk/#gs_rn=15&gs_ri=psy-ab&tok=LS_DOrAHswmHC9_8AJZEJA&suggest=p&pq=driving instructor brighton&cp=20&gs_id=1k2&xhr=t&q=driving+lessons+crawley&es_nrs=true&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=driving+lessons+craw&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47244034,d.d2k&fp=45c2f917e11bca99&biw=1680&bih=843 Any comments welcome! Antony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ant710 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
The use of subdomains to improve SEO?
A clients website which provide a number of trade services which have a page for each service they provide for example: carpentry or electrician or plumbing etc. currently these pages are found at domain.co.uk/bathrooms/ bathrooms.html I am trying to optmise each page better as they are competing with other sites who for example sell bathrooms rather than bathroom installers or plumbers. As part of the on page optimisation I plan to change the page names and directory structure. I had an idea to split the website down into subdomains for various sections i.e for all their services Create a sub domain such as http://plumber.domain.co.uk 2.) upload the relevant content (in this example the plumbing page) to the sub domain location 3.) correct all the links to absolute URLs for each sub domain / Will this help target better use of keywords in the URL in terms of SEO efforts ? hope it makes sense thanks Darren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0