Should I use Rel-Canonicals links for a News site with similar articles each year
-
Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years.
For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game. We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk".
We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors). We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down.
Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page? If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page?
Thanks for the help.
-
Thanks for the feedback, and I'm leaning towards the archiving mentioned.
I have a follow-up on that though...in this high school football example, usually several times a year, we'll get a flood of traffic from a former student that did something "big" in college or pros. Since we have articles that rank well for his name, due to coverage of him/her back in highschool, we'll often double/triple our normal monthly pageviews in a situation where the student receives national attention.
If I archive the articles (many 4-5 years old), then I'm assuming we'll lose the rankings for that former student's name, and therefore lose these burst of traffic we've seen in the past.
Thoughts?
-
I'd move the older articles into a /archive/ subfolder (keeping a site search function available) and then exclude the archive from indexing. The pages stay up and can be found on site by interested parties while newer material gets all the glory.
-
I would make a permanent page for these. The current year information would be displayed at the top of the page. The archive would be readable below.
No redirects, no rel=canonical, fatter content, links accumulate over time, faster development in subsequent years. Visitors will like it.
-
Typically the canonical tag should be used when content is duplicate--like when you have the same article appearing on one or more websites. I don't see any reason why you should be using the canonical tag, as those articles are unique.
Since the Google Panda algorithm might come into play here, though, the older articles may eventually hurt your site's search engine rankings if there are too many of them on the site. You might consider creating an archive of your content, perhaps on archive.yourdomain.com and then stopping the search engines from crawling that archive (but still making the article available to readers).
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
-
Local Site Linking to Corporate Site In Main Menu - Bad for SEO?
Hi, We have 'local' websites for different countries (UK, DE, FR, AP, US etc.) and a corporate website, the local websites are going to be linking back to the corporate website in the main menu (think about us, terms and conditions kind of pages). Any local products will have their own pages on the local website but global products will be linked back to the corporate website. We will be placing an indication the user will be going to another website next to those menu links that go to the corporate website. Is there any drawback to this for SEO? Should we use nofollow in the menu structure of regional websites for these links? Thanks for your help.
Local Website Optimization | | UNIT40 -
Is there an SEO benefit to using tags in WordPress for my blog posts?
We have locations across the US and are trying to develop content so that we rank well for specific keywords on a local level. For instance, "long tail keyword search in state" or "long tail keyword search near 76244", etc. The goal is to develop those content pages via blogs to rank for those keywords. We are using Yoast and will be optimizing each post using that tool. My questions are: 1. Are there any benefits to adding a long list of tags to each post?
Local Website Optimization | | Smart_Start
2. If yes, do I need to limit the number of tags?
3. Do we need to block the indexing of yoast to those tags and categories for duplicate content issues? Any insight on the best way to optimize these blog posts with the use of tags or other avenues would be greatly appreciated.0 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
Company sells home appliances and commercial appliances. What is the best way to differentiate the two on our site for the best user experience/SEO?
Should we structure it starting at the homepage with the user selecting for home or for business, that way they have to make a selection before moving further OR should we somehow differentiate in the navigation using the top menu tabs, dropdowns, etc?
Local Website Optimization | | dkeipper1 -
Optimizing dog walking site for search phrase "dog walkers nyc"
Background: We have a dog walking company that serves NYC. According to our AdWords campaign, most leads come from the search phrase: "dog walkers nyc." Question: If the goal is to get as much organic traffic as possible for the search phrase "dog walkers nyc," should we just optimize our http://barkbud.com/ domain for the search phrase "dog walkers nyc," OR should we also have a page like http://barkbud.com/dog-walkers-nyc/ optimized for the same phrase? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | BarkBud0 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Top Pages analysis showing wordpress site pages when it was in a subdirectlry
My word press site used to be at morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding I moved my site from /Wedding to the root domain three years ago where it is currently at www.morganlindsayphotography.com. Top pages in the open site analysis are still finding ONLY my old pages, titles and posts that were in the /Wedding - which are not even on my site anymore. http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/11/04/a-new-product-addition-to-weddings/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2012/06/22/brittany-reis-jason-mcclaflin-tiffin-ohio-wedding/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/2013/10/06/andy-mallory-cleveland-ohio-engagement/ http://www.morganlindsayphotography.com/Wedding/category/weddings/ Does anyone know why this could be happening?
Local Website Optimization | | morganlindsaycole0 -
Site does not rank on Google's country specific search engines.
My site shows up on the first page of 'google.com' but not on the other search engines like google.co.uk / google.co.in / google.com.au. It shows up on the 3rd or 4th page for the most part. My competitors' sites rank consistently across all geographical versions of Google. Is there something i am missing out on? My website is a web applicaton and not a business listing.
Local Website Optimization | | dlsound0