Alternative to rel canonical?
-
Hello there, we have a problem.
Let's say we have a website www.mainwebsite.com
Then you have 40 websites like this:
www.retailer6.mainwebsite.com … an so on
In order to avoid the duplicate content penalty from Google we've added a rel="canonical" in each 40 sub-websites mapping each page of them to www.mainwebsite.com
Our issue is that now, all our retailers (each owner of www.retailer-X.mainwebsite.com) are complaining about the fact that they are disappeared from Google.
How can we avoid to use rel="canonical" in the sub-website and not being penalised by Google for duplicate content in www.mainwebsite.com?
Many thanks, all your advices are much appreciated.
YESdesign team
-
Does anyone have more suggestion/alternative strategies? Many thanks in advance.
-
Thank you Tom and Richard555.
-
Tom is very right - you cant have the best of both worlds with your current set up.
Your partners need to attract visitors on their site through content they write and publish - not yours.
All the best.
Richard
-
Your options are pretty limited, I'm afraid.
If you don't want to implement canonicals, then you're only alternative is to not have duplicate content. In which case, you and your retailers will need to rewrite and be unique.
To be honest, I would be pushing all your retailers to do this anyway. Not only will having their unique content help each subdomain rank easier, it should be remembered that the canonical tag is a suggestion to Google, not a directive/order. A very strong suggestion, it's worth noting, but not a 100% proof solution.
Unique content, on the other hand, is.
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
-
Link rel=next and prev validator?
Can I validate link next and prev markup for paginated content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Evan340 -
Canonical URL Multidomain Geolocation Based
Hey there Mozzers, I have a question on the implementation of the canonical tag. I have 3 TLDs that redirect depending the GeoLocation of the person entering the site. www.example.com www.example.co.uk www.example.com.au The content is the same to all of those. Should I choose 1 of them that all the canonicals should point or should all them point to themselves with the canonical tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AngelosS0 -
Canonicals Passing Link Juice?
After having read this thread, the answer seems to be a tentative "Yes", but I am curious if I am doing this wrong, or causing myself problems, for a specific situation. We have a thread on the forums that has over 50,000 views for that thread alone. No doubt many people have linked to it across the web, and it ranks very well with Google. But we are dealing with a major problem in that the main portion of our site (home page and core content) which are the most important, aren't ranking in Google at all. A big part of this is because that part of the site hasn't been updated in years, whereas the forum is updated daily. By users. We've begun putting out quality content in our News Center lately, and hoping to start boosting its presence in Google. We have an article on the exact same topic that the forum thread covers. I was thinking of putting a canonical on that thread, pointing to the article, and hopefully pointing some very powerful link juice, popularity, and traffic into our news center articles. People can comment there as well if they like. Are there any potential downsides to doing this? My hope is that the forum thread loses rankings and the article takes on its rankings. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HLTalk1 -
Duplicating content from manufacturer for client site and using canonical reference.
We manage content for many clients in the same industry, and many of them wish to keep their customers on their individualized websites (understandably). In order to do this, we have duplicated content in part from the manufacturers' pages for several "models" on the client's sites. We have put in a Canonical reference at the start of the content directing back to the manufacturer's page where we duplicated some of the content. We have only done a handful of pages while we figure out the canonical reference potential issue. So, my questions are: Is this necessary? Does this hurt, help or not do anything SEO-wise for our ranking of the site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz1admin1 -
Canonical URL Tag
I have 3 websites with same content, I want to add Canonical tag to my main website. Is this also important to mentioned other duplicate URL in canonical tag in main website? or just need to just add
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman0 -
Where to point Rel = Canonical?
I have a client who is using the rel=canonical tag across their e-commerce site. Here is an example of how it is set up. URLs 1. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.do?nType=22. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.doThe canonical tag points to the second URL. Both pages are indexed by Google.The first page has a higher page authority (most of the internal site links go to the first URL) than the second one. Should the page with the highest authority be the one that the canonical tag points to? Is there a better way to handle these situations? Does any authority get passed through the tag?Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Canonical tags and GA tracking on premium sub-domain?
Hello! I'm launching a premium service on my site that will deliver two fairly distinct user experiences, but with nearly identical page content across the two. I'm thinking of placing the "upgraded" version on a subdomain, e.g. www.mysite.com, premium.mysite.com. Simple enough. I've run into two obstacles, however: -I don't want the premium site crawled separately, so I'd like to use canonical tags to pull all premium.* back to their www.* parents. --How different can page content be before canonical tags backfire? --Is there any other danger in using canonicals across subdomains like this? -Less importantly: with Google Analytics, if I track against the subdomain my visits will split naturally, and it should generate a second cookie for a new registrant who crosses subdomains. I could also use a visitor-level custom var. Good idea? Bad idea? Thanks! -m
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grumbles0