Should I put rel=publisher on UGC?
-
My website has a main section that we call expert content and write for. We also have a community subdomain which is all user generated.
We are a pretty big brand and I am wondering should the rel publisher tag just be for the www expert content, or should we also use it on the community UGC even though we don't directly write that?
-
Spencer, a most excellent question IMO.
I am going to stick my neck out here and say use it on both. It took some thinking and digging for me to wrap my head around it, but I think I have it:
You should only use rel=pub on one page of the site. Given that, you use it on the one that is your brand or which has the most traffic, gets lots of plus ones, etc. But, you said this: We also have a community subdomain...
I think the subdomain should be treated as its own site and let it also have rel=pub to the G+ of your main site. The individuals who write, whether for UGC or your experts writing will be rel=author for their pieces.
By doing it this way you can aggregate the plus ones to your G+ from all which gives your site a better profile in the eyes of the Google. This opens a lot of doors for you (at G's choice obviously. Now, I am certainly open to being wrong, but if you think about it for a moment it makes sense in this way: If your firm owns multiple sites (we are a marketing firm and we own a few properties ourselves outside of the main site) but your brand is what owns them, then you can be the pub of all. Again, the individuals writing will be the rel=author.
I look forward to more comments. Most excellent question for forcing us to think. -
I would surely (and only) use the rel-publisher field on the professional writer content and tie that into the Google+ profiles to have your listings and content stand out in SERP results, but would stay away from trying to get that tied together in the UGC section. Just my 2 cents, but without regular postings by UGC and tying that into the Google+ profiles of those writers who contribute, I don't think you would get the value back.
If these writers in the UGC are frequent, invite them to contribute to the PRO section of the site as 'guest' bloggers or writers. Just some suggestions I would follow myself Hope it helps!
Cheers!
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
-
Content Strategy/Duplicate Content Issue, rel=canonical question
Hi Mozzers: We have a client who regularly pays to have high-quality content produced for their company blog. When I say 'high quality' I mean 1000 - 2000 word posts written to a technical audience by a lawyer. We recently found out that, prior to the content going on their blog, they're shipping it off to two syndication sites, both of which slap rel=canonical on them. By the time the content makes it to the blog, it has probably appeared in two other places. What are some thoughts about how 'awful' a practice this is? Of course, I'm arguing to them that the ranking of the content on their blog is bound to be suffering and that, at least, they should post to their own site first and, if at all, only post to other sites several weeks out. Does anyone have deeper thinking about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
If UGC on my site also exists elsewhere, is that bad? How should I properly handle it?
I work for a reviews site, and some of the reviews that get published on our website also get published on other reviews websites. It's exact duplicate content -- all user generated. The reviews themselves are all no-indexed; followed, and the pages where they live are only manually indexed if the reviews aren't duplicate. We leave all pages with reviews that live elsewhere on the web nofollowed. Is this how we should properly handle it? Or would it be OK to follow these pages regardless of the fact that technically, there's exact duplicate UGC elsewhere?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dunklea0 -
Using unique content from "rel=canonical"ized page
Hey everyone, I have a question about the following scenario: Page 1: Text A, Text B, Text C Page 2 (rel=canonical to Page 1): Text A, Text B, Text C, Text D Much of the content on page 2 is "rel=canonical"ized to page 1 to signalize duplicate content. However, Page 2 also contains some unique text not found in Page 1. How safe is it to use the unique content from Page 2 on a new page (Page 3) if the intention is to rank Page 3? Does that make any sense? 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Large site rel=can or no-index?
Hi, A large site with tens of thousands of pages, but lots of the pages are very similar. The site is about training courses, and the url structure is something like: training-course/date/time I only really want the search engines to index the actual training course pages, which is the better option for me and why?: a) rel=canonical b) noindex, nofollow Thanks, Gary.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cottamg0 -
Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozzers, We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint. Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up? Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Rel canonical on every page, pointing to home page
I've just started working with a client and have been surprised to find that every page of their site (using Concrete5 CMS) has a rel=canonical pointing to their home page. I'm feeling really dumb, because this seems like a fatal flaw which would keep Google from ranking any page other than the home page... but when I look at Google Analytics, Content > Site Content > Landing Pages, using Secondary Dimension = Source, it seems that Google is delivering users to numerous pages on their site. Can anyone help me out?! Thanks very much!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | measurableROI0 -
Rel=Canonical - needed if part duplication?
Hi Im looking at a site with multiple products available in multiple languages. Some of the languages are not complete, so where the product description is not available in that language the new page, with its own url in the other languages may take the English version. However, this description is perhaps 200 words long only, and after the description are a host of other products displays within that category. So say for example we were selling glasses, there is a 200 word description about glasses (this is the part that is being copied across the languages) and then 10 products underneath that are translated. So the pages are somewhat different but this 200 word description is copied thru different versions of our site. Currently, the english version is not rel=canonical, would it be better to add the english version where we lack a description and do the canonical option or in fact better to leave it blank until we have a translated description? As its only part of the onpage wording, would this 200 word subsection cause us duplication issues?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
Old pages still crawled by SE returning 404s. Better to put 301 or block with robots.txt ?
Hello guys, A client of ours has thousand of pages returning 404 visibile on googl webmaster tools. These are all old pages which don't exist anymore but Google keeps on detecting them. These pages belong to sections of the site which don't exist anymore. They are not linked externally and didn't provide much value even when they existed What do u suggest us to do: (a) do nothing (b) redirect all these URL/folders to the homepage through a 301 (c) block these pages through the robots.txt. Are we inappropriately using part of the crawling budget set by Search Engines by not doing anything ? thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | H-FARM0