Is Rel=Canonical the answer???
-
Hey Mozzers,
Can you help me with something please. I have some important content going live next week for a client. We work on there blog optimisation and this piece of content is going live on both the blog and parent site. The parent site has huge DA in comparions to the blog.
I want to get the traffic directed to the blog and get the blog ranking - bare in mind the content is exactly the same so it is dupe.
If I want to get the blog ranking above the parent site and to direct the traffic here is a cross domain Rel=Canonical the answer?
Has anyone else had this issue?
Thanks
Bush
-
That's great - many thanks for all of your help.
I'll update this post of any outcome as it may help others in the future.
Thanks Dr Pete
GB
-
You'll pass the PA - the impact on DA is a bit hard to estimate. It depends a lot on the strength of the individual pages, and, of course, if Google honors the tags. Once the canonical kicks in, the links won't be processed, most likely. It's a dicey proposition, though, and you'll probably need to adjust as you go. Most likely negative scenario is that the impact just isn't what you'd hoped for.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thanks as always. I just re-read my response and the spelling mistakes are shocking so apologies for that
Can I ask if I implement a tag page by page and choose say 10 pages to rel= canonical from the parent site to the blog will this boost the the DA of the blog? We have links from the parent site to the blog in the footer. Will a Rel=Canonical tag pass more juice over to get it ranking? We want the blog to rank for brand name only which is an exact match of the parent URL. Parent URL ranks number 1, we want blog 2, 3 or 4.
I can't go into specifics so sorry to be vague.
Thanks as always
Gareth
-
It should work, but as I mentioned, I'd stick to doing it page-by-page. If there's a blog "home" on the parent site, you could cross-domain it to the new site. Just make sure you don't cross-domain some critical, high-authority page on the main site, or you could cause yourself more harm than good. Ultimately, you're giving authority from your main site to the new site, and that's not a free transaction - everything you gain on one side costs you something on the other.
-
Hi Dr Pete,
Thanks for your answer on this. In this case the rationale behind the implementation was purely to drive traffic over to the blog (not the parent site which is well known) to get more exposure of the blog content. The piece that was released was pretty 'hot' at the time and could gain more returning visitors and exposure to the blog which in comparison is little known.
In the end is wasn't possible and the news which got lots of traction went on the parent site so tage was implemented.
I can that splitting the blog away from the parent site is messy and we always advise against this, however in this case there is internal justification for this which I can't go into here.
Thanks for everything as always
Gareth
-
Generally, I have to say that I think splitting out your blog site can do more harm than good, and splitting up AND double-posting is especially messy. I'm not sure on the business justifications, but from an SEO standpoint it's almost always trouble, long-term.
That said, cross-domain canonical should be effective here. It's a bit hard to predict, since the parent site is stronger, but done correctly, it should be low risk. I'm concerned with your implementation (in the comments), though, because it sounds like you're pointing the entire parent site to the blog site. That could be disastrous. Ideally, you'd canonical each individual blog post at the level of their unique URLs. Otherwise, you could really disrupt the ranking ability of your main site. Unfortunately, without seeing the exact site structure, I can't really tell you what the tag should look like.
-
Hi Streamline,
We have to add the tag - the snippet idea although a great idea doesn't work for them.
Can I ask you as a follow up - is the below tag correct . I would add this to the parent site and the below tag tells Google that the parent site is hosting content and the blog is the canonical versions:
The below tag to the parent site, I'll add it to the section of the parent site not the blog:
-
Hi Streamline - thanks for such a helpful response.
I'll see what I can do and post here the outcome if i use Rel=canonical as it may help others.
Cheers for everything
bush
-
Would it be possible to only post the content on the blog and then add a few paragraphs on the main site which then links to the blog for the full article? I think that would be ideal.
Otherwise, you could try using the cross domain canonical tag in order to get the blog ranking for the content. The issue is that Google considers the canonical tag to be a hint rather than an absolute directive, so it might not necessarily work. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
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
-
Should I leave away the http when using the canonical tag
My site redirects http://www.anydomainblabla.com to www.anydomainblabla.com So I guess I have to do it like this Is that correct? Big thanks for your time.
On-Page Optimization | | MichaelJanik0 -
Rel=canonical vs noindex/follow - tabs with individual URLs
Hi everyone I've got a situation that I haven't seen in quite this way before. I would like some advice on whether I should be rel=canonicalzing of noindexing/following a range of pages on a clients website. I've just started working on a website that creates individual URLs for tabs within each page which has resulted in several URLs being created for each listing: Example URLs: hotel-downtown-calgary hotel-downtown-calgary/gallery?tab hotel-downtown-calgary?tab hotel-downtown-calgary/map?tab hotel-downtown-calgary/facilities?tab hotel-downtown-calgary/reviews?tab hotel-downtown-calgary/in-the-area?tab Google has indexed over 1500 pages with the "?tab" parameter (there are 4380 page indexed for the site in total), and also seems to be indexing some of these pages without the "?tab" parameter i.e. ("hotel-downtown-calgary/reviews" instead of "hotel-downtown-calgary/reviews?tab") so the amount of potential duplication could be more. These tabbed pages are getting minimal traffic from organic search, so I've got no issues with taking them out of the index - the question is how. There are the issues I see: Each tab has the same title as the other tabs for each location, so lots of title duplication. Each individual tab doesn't have much content (although the content each tab has is unique). I would usually expect the tabs to be distinguished by the parameters only, not have unique URLs - if that was the case we wouldn't have a duplication issue. So the question is: rel=canonical or noindex/follow? I can see benefits of both. Looking forward to your thoughts!
On-Page Optimization | | Digitator0 -
Canonical tags in the body?
Hi there, Does anyone know if placing canonical tags in the body instead of the header of a page will still "take"? The system we are on means that making an editable header is no easy business and I was just wondering how big of a difference it makes to have it in a different area. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Whittie0 -
How do I remove a Canonical URL Tag?
Some of my report cards say I have too many canonical URL tags. However, there is no information no how to delete one. Can someone give me a link or explain? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Canonical tag?
I have an e-commerce website and the query strings of the URL's are causing duplicate content/titles. I'm thinking of adding a site-wide canonical tag which should fix them all. Any other ideas of making it neater or better?
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Canonical URLs and SEO
After publishing my new wordpress website my on page analysis shows two canonical urls on my homepage. In checking the source code the Yoast SEO plugin states my canoncial url is www.homepage.ca/ This is the only one showing. Having said this I do not add the trailing slash to anything on my url structure. Could this be why the on page analysis tool says there are 2? If so is there any way to resolve this?
On-Page Optimization | | casper4340 -
Rel canonical tag question
Im trying to to fix my duplicate content problem with my catagory pages in my shopping cart. I have read about adding a rel canonical tag to the page so it links back to the main catagory page. So if I add a rel canonical tag to the main catagory page it will show up on every other page for that catagory like page 1 page 2 and so on and it will have the tag linking back to the main cat. That should fix it it right? Now that being said I cant seem to add the tag invetween the head tags. I can add it to the body where I can add content. Will the rel canonical tag work outside the head tags? Any other ideas on this fix? I contacted my people that host the cart to see if they have any features to help this will see what they say.
On-Page Optimization | | Dataken0 -
Canonical URL Tag
Hi, I have two pages that are identical on my site: http://www.absolutepower.nl/creatine-monohydraat and http://www.absolutepower.nl/CREATINE/creatine-monohydraat Should I use the canonical URL tag in this case? Thanks, Jasper
On-Page Optimization | | Japking0