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
-
Penalty for duplicate content on the same website?
Is it possible to get a penalty for duplicate content on the same website? I have a old custom-built site with a large number of filters that are pre-generated for speed. Basically the only difference is the meta title and H1 tag, with a few text differences here and there. Obviously I could no-follow all the filter links but it would take an enormous amount of work. The site is performing well in the search. I'm trying to decide whether if there is a risk of a penalty, if not I'm loath to do anything in case it causes other issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Website Redesign - Duplicate Content?
I hired a company to redesign our website.there are many pages like the example below that we are downsizing content by 80%.(believe me, not my decision)Current page: https://servicechampions.com/air-conditioning/New page (on test server):https://servicechampions.mymwpdesign.com/air-conditioning/My question to you is, that 80% of content that i am losing in the redesign, can i republish it as a blog?I know that google has it indexed. The old page has been live for 5 years, but now 80% of it will no longer be live. so can it be a blog and gain new (keep) seo value?What should i do with the 80% of content i am losing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CamiloSC0 -
Putting my content under domain.com/content, or under related categories: domain.com/bikes/content ?
Hello This questions plays on what Joe Hall talked about during this years' MozCon: Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing. My Case:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
So.. we're working out guidelines and templates for a costumer (sporting goods store) on how to publish content (articles, videos, guides) on their category pages, product pages, and other pages. At this moment I have 2 choices:
1. Use a url-structure/information architecture where all the content is placed in one subfolder, for example domain.com/content. Although it's placed here, there's gonna be extensive internal linking from /content to the related category pages, so the content about bikes (even if it's placed under domain.com/bikes) will be just as visible on the pages related to bikes. 2. Place the content about bikes on a subdirectory under the bike category, **for example domain.com/bikes/content. ** The UX/interface for these two scenarios will be identical, but the directories/folder-hierarchy/url structure will be different. According to Joe Hall, the latter scenario will build up more topical authority and relevance towards the category/topic, and should be the overall most ideal setup. Any thoughts on which of the two solutions is the most ideal? PS: There is one critical caveat her: my costumer uses many url-slugs subdirectories for their categories, for example domain.com/activity/summer/bikes/, which means the content in the first scenario will be 4 steps away from the home page. Is this gonna be a problem? Looking forward to your thoughts 🙂 Sigurd, INEVO0 -
Do I use H1 tag for logo or page content?
Should the h1 tag be used for the main page content or the logo? I understand the original method was too H1 the logo with the main search term, does this still hold true or should it be content focused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?
A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product: company.com/product/name.html The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed: subdomain.company.com/product/name.html The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same! My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution? Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same: other.com/product/name.html Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD? Does rel cannonical work across domains? Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank? Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Drupal Alinks is this good to use?
Hi, https://drupal.org/project/alinks We have 1,000's of Soft links created like this in 1,000's of pages Each page 1 to 2 links that are soft links would this be fine? SEO would this be good or should we remove it Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1 -
Duplicate content for swatches
My site is showing a lot of duplicate content on SEOmoz. I have discovered it is because the site has a lot of swatches (colors for laminate) within iframes. Those iframes have all the same content except for the actual swatch image and the title of the swatch. For example, these are two of the links that are showing up with duplicate content: http://www.formica.com/en/home/dna.aspx?color=3691&std=1&prl=PRL_LAMINATE&mc=0&sp=0&ots=&fns=&grs= http://www.formica.com/en/home/dna.aspx?color=204&std=1&prl=PRL_LAMINATE&mc=0&sp=0&ots=&fns=&grs= I do want each individual swatch to show up in search results and they currently are if you search for the exact swatch name. Is the fact that they all have duplicate content affecting my individual rankings and my domain authority? What can I do about it? I can't really afford to put unique content on each swatch page so is there another way to get around it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0