I allow authority sites to republish my blog articles, which then outrank me
-
Hey everyone. This is my first question here, I apologize if it has been covered before.
I have a health and nutrition blog [authority nutrition] that has been up since December 1st, 2012.
I've managed to write quite a few viral articles which have given me a bunch of natural links and a domain authority of 49, which I think is pretty great for such a new site.
Haven't done any link building and everything is 100% white hat. Getting good rankings and good traffic already, so I can't complain.
My only (1st world) problem is that sometimes major authority sites (DA of 70-95) republish my content. I always say yes if they ask me first, but some of them just republish without even asking. My articles are always indexed on my blog before they get republished, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.
These sites always clearly link to the original URL, but they often tend to outrank me for the keywords I was targeting in the articles. They tend to rank in the top 5, but my original article is nowhere to be found.
I plan on continuing to allow these sites to republish as I get powerful links and good traffic from them, but it's a bit frustrating that I don't seem to get the credit as the original source. I've already set up Google Authorship, but it doesn't seem to help.
Is there anything I can do to make sure Google recognizes my article as the original and chooses to rank my site instead of the authority site that simply republished my article?
-
In reality this isn't a huge issue IF you either get them to provide a snippet of the content (first paragraph) with a link to your article to be able to read more OR you ask them to set your site's content page as canonical. This will show Google that your content is the original version.
The chances of getting another site to set up canonical tags just for you are quite frankly slim. Their sites are probably automated and not manually edited.
Personally I prefer to write something completely unique on the high profile site.
-
Have you found many willing to use a cross domain canonical tag?
-
Allowing them to republish your content is fine! If you see Moz’s blogs gets republished on several different sites... and same is the case with Mashable!
I believe what you really should do is to request them to use cross domain canonical and this will be a clear hint to Google that which is the original version of content and Google will rank the original version instead of the duplication one!
Hope this helps!
-
Great question. I, too, thought that setting up Google authorship was supposed to prevent this from happening. I have the same problem with both legitimate republishing and with scrapers who sometimes get ranked higher even when posting just part of my articles. Also, my Google plus blurbs and links to my articles get ranked in the #1 spot and my original article will end up on page 10. Google is whacky ...
-
Don't give another site permission to republish content that you've already published. In these instances, Google is going to pick one to serve it's users because it's duplicate content.
Instead, establish yourself as a guest blogger on the sites that are interested in your content and create something that's unique for them.
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
-
Blog post generating irrelevant traffic. What should I do with it?
I have a blog post that has been generating more than 75% of my website's traffic month over month.-averaging about 1000 views a month. Awesome that so many people are finding and benefiting from this post, however it is really skewing my traffic. I have an 87% bounce rate, and I'm only ranking in terms related to this post as opposed to industry related terms. I'm not sure what to do with this blog post. I want to be able to better evaluate my website's performance and be sure I'm targeting the right audience in order to gain more leads. Would a 'noindex' or 'nofollow' be appropriate here? Thanks!
Content Development | | Ali_DeLeg0 -
Internal blog with history and some SEO value versus new external blogs with specialized content?
We operate a blog inside a folder on our site and considering the launch of 4 highly focused blogs with specialized content which are now categories on the internal blog. Wondering if there is more value in using the external new blogs or just keep growing the internal blog content. Does fact that the internal blog is buried amongst millions of pages have any impact if we want the content indexed and value given to the links from the blog content to our main site pages.
Content Development | | CondoRich0 -
Blog or article length and SEO value
Why do different blog lengths affect SEO differently? Is it directly affected by Rankbrain or the Google Algorithm, or is it more because of user engagement?
Content Development | | CyrusDariusXerxes0 -
My keywords have low search volume - is it still worth starting a blog?
I'm thinking of starting a new blog, but when I did my keyword research I found that my keywords all have low search volume (under 100 searches per month, with the occasional keyword having 480 searches a month). Is this a deal breaker? Any recommendations would be great - thanks everyone!
Content Development | | Trevorneo1 -
B2b services site, deep long tail services or flat and broad
Hi all, i have a small internet agency with services in several area's.
Content Development | | mdkay
Currently i structud my services in 2 different area's.
General services and specialized products with services underneath. like so:
domain.com/services
domain.com/services/service1
domain.com/services/service2
and so on. domain.com/product
domain.com/product/service1
domain.com/product/service2 domain.com/product2
domain.com/product2/service1
domain.com/product2/service2 But now im thinking of create loads of different services i provide,
there are some overlapping content of course, but all services are still individual.
But i can write a lot of unique content about all the services. But is it smarter to make just a few big pages with the services more bundled.
Or really long tail. Now i have around 15 services pages.
when i make it a lot deeper im talking about 40 pages. Currently my complete website is around 35 pages.0 -
How Does Traffic Reach My Blog?
I've posted a few articles on my website blog page, but one particular blog receives a lot more traffic than the others. How, where and why do people find that particulat article over the others? http://www.salesandinternetmarketing.com/saim/blog
Content Development | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Forum Site: Content Value Post Panda
I run a forum website built on Wordpress. We're about two years old. The theme of the site is a directory of attorneys, with each directory listing having its own blog account on our site. Through this platform, we receive 75-80 blog posts now every month of varying quality from our users. QUESTION: A good number of the blogs published on our site are also published on the attorney's law firm site as well (they're syndicating on our site). Will this hurt our site in light of Panda? A lot of the syndicated content is very well written and insightful. By contrast, Will non-syndicated but average to below average posts hurt our site? The authors almost always link back to their firm site. Would love some feedback on whether we should be happy about the syndicated content or whether we should potentially ban it?
Content Development | | JSOC0 -
Transfer existing blog to wordpress.org or start a new blog
My blog sits on the wordpress domain http://gardenbeet.wordpress.com/ - it has good page rank and has around 300-400 visits per day - should i move it to my website or Should I start a new blog? i have a page set up for it on my website but it now has good rank http://www.gardenbeet.com/content/design-blog.html - and now want to keep this URL am a bit confused - what is the best strategy in terms of SEO?
Content Development | | GardenBeet1