Canonicle Help
-
Hey everyone,
Hoping someone can shed some light on canonicle links for me. Have read as many articles and tutorials as possible but am still unsure about how to use them in my situation.
I'm about to sign a content syndication agreement with a large newspaper for 3-4 of my articles per week. It's great because this national newspaper has a PR of 8, to my recently reduced PR of 3.
The newspaper are providing attribution links back to my website, both to the homepage and original article on every article. Nice, but worried their size will make their copies of the article list above mine.
Can anyone tell me, IF the newspaper agreed to making canonicle part of attribution, where exactly would it go? On my article? On their article? In their document ? Or in the link that directs back to me?
Thanks.
-
Yea, those inbound links will have helpful long term effects in general.
To keep in mind though:
- large numbers of incoming links from the same website generally start to make each individual link less valuable as ranking signals
- watch out for unnatural anchor link distribution - e.g. don't use a lot of exact-match keyworded anchor text. Be sure to mix in lots of branded/site address anchor text. Otherwise the pattern will look unnatural to search engines and they'll devalue the links even more.
- review your overall site performance after 3 and 6 months to decide whether the additional links and referral traffic are more valuable than just keeping the articles for your own site and working to rank them there.
Paul
-
Hi Paul,
The newspaper has 3 links back to my website on each syndicated article.
1 link to original article and 2 links to my homepage.
It's safe to assume that links from 5 sites in their network (PR8) will have a good long term effect on my PR?
Cheers,
l.
-
Should have also mentioned - you want to try to get some sort of link back from their page that publishes the article to your own site. Even if it's just something like a link in a bio box at the end of the article.
Second-best situation is to have your site's page with the article ranking just under theirs, but that's pretty tough with Google coming down so hard on duplicate content.
So the only other benefit to being syndicated (unless you can get the rel=author link) is to have a link in the article that could actually drive some new eyeballs to your site.
Good luck & let us know what happens.
Paul
-
You were dead right, Paul. The day my article is syndicated it's instantly wiped off the face of Google and their post is #1.
Will need to investigate the rel=author option with them.
Thanks!!
-
The reality is that the newspaper's website is almost certainly going to outrank you for your own articles, Luke. It's not "supposed" to work this way, but in actual fact, that's usually what happens.
If they'll actually give you the rel=canonical for each of your submissions, great, but I'd be very surprised if they'll actually do this.
Another tactic might be to see if they have implemented rel=author, since this is actually designed for the situation you're talking about. You would set up your own Authorship profile on your own Google Plus profile, then add the newspaper as one of the sites to which you contribute. In addition, if the newspaper had rel=author properly implemented on their article pages, you would begin to build author influence from the articles.
Paul
-
Hey,
Newspaper would add canonical tag to their head section of their article with the href pointing to your article on your domain.
If you can, publish your article before they publish theirs as google will know which version it indexed first. Ensure you ping the URL to google too, don't assume google will crawl it instantly.
Safest bet is to wait until your URL is indexed before newspaper publishes theirs.
Ask the newspaper to include the rel author tag in the article to tell google that you're the original owner of that article, see here for more on rel=author - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2539557
Hope that helps,
Goodluck
Woody
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
-
Help with Alt Image
Hi. Moz is alerting me that my blog has no alt image. I actually don't have an image inside the blog but it's in the header, as part of my wordpress theme. Now when I check this image in the header, the alt image keyword is there. I'm not sure how to fix it. Please help.
Content Development | | VAPartners0 -
Is it black hat to include your city name in a blog title to hopefully help local search resultts
I frequently blog and want to increase my ranking in local search in my area-Boston-blogging about Plastic Surgery. If I write a post about tummy tuck will I be penalized by Google search if I use a title like
Content Development | | wianno168
Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss Boston or Boston Tummy Tuck After Weight Loss0 -
Will a comment section on my site help with seo
I have never been a fan of comment pages such as the sun http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/4783642/bruce-willis-appears-on-the-one-show-in-awkward-interview.html but i was told the other day that not only is it good for the reader but it is also good for seo and increase the number of times that google would visit the page and i would like to know if that is true. if you have added a comment section to your articles i would like to know if you have noticed any change.
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Help on blog topics for my niche
I'm looking for a couple of blogging ideas to get the ball rolling (mainly in my head) for one of the company websites I am working on. The site is https://perco.co.uk The company is based around offering trenchless technology across the UK. The first couple of posts are more like 'Latest news' items and I have only really come up with an idea of 'microtunnelling vs directional drilling'. I didn't seem to get much out of ubersuggest, soovle and google instant. Has anyone got any ideas? Thanks
Content Development | | Hughescov
Shaun0 -
Need help deciding how to display directory listings in way Google will like best
My blog site currently has maybe 100 posts and I do about 7-8 new a week. I am creating a directory for an this site, which will end up eventually being a few hundred or more entries eventually. In the directory browse/search listing, each directory listing will have a title and a short description (one or two lines) and will show about 10-20 per page. And then the user can click an entry to see more details for the particular directory listing. This is where I have a choice, and I want to know what is the best for my site, in Google's eyes of course. Options: 1. The listing detail is displayed on a separate page. 2. The listing detail is displayed below the entry that was clicked, on the same page, by use of jquery to slide down the other content blow it to make room for it. (It actually looks slick, I've tried it). If I were writing full, unique pages for each listing detail, I'd choose option #1. But the vendors are submitting the content. It's possible they might just copy and paste their site's About page into it, or they might not even add any more detail other than their address. I can't control it. So, if going with option #1, let's say a third of the vendors add nice unique content, a third paste in some dup content, and a third just leave it blank (there would still be an address, couple line short description, and a title on the page). Would this situation be good, not good or neutral for my site? I'm not sure if adding additional pages, maybe half to two-thirds of which could be somewhat duped or of minimal word length would be bad or neutral for my site overall. As for my existing and ongoing blog pages--they are all unique, long and Google seems to love them.
Content Development | | bizzer0 -
Does this on huffington post help your seo aims
Hi, i am a huge fan of Huffington post, it is an amazing site, not just saying this because they have mentioned our site over 50 times, but i really like the site. But one question i have which i have noticed over and over again is does the following help with seo, as i am a bit puzzled with it here is one of their pages http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/16/one-direction-set-to-be-worth-64m-in-a-year-after-worldwide-success_n_1602135.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-celebrity and the section i am puzzled about is Follow: Louis Walsh, One Direction, Simon Cowell, Sony Music, The Sun, UK Entertainment, X Factor, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Uk News, UK Entertainment News Can anyone let me know why the site does this and what benefits it brings
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Does a directory running on a subdomain help or hurt SEO on the main site?
I have a blog, with a directory on the subdomain: directory.fbforbusinessmarketing.com. Is that smart for SEO, as it gives the overall domain more traffic? Or bad for SEO because of the different topics and all those outbound links? I'd appreciate opinions. Thanks.
Content Development | | PegCorwin0 -
Archive older, low ranked content to help new content in Panda 2.2?
After watching the white board friday re: Panda 2.2, it got me to thinking about old content. One of the sites that I work with generates 3-10 new articles/day (movie reviews, interviews, guides, event previews, etc) and has been doing so since 2005. Now, they have almost 10k articles, 7k of which are indexed. The quality of the content varies, and much of it is dated (movies, events) much of the amount of older content gets 0-5 pageviews/month, made in the days BEFORE the site was using Google News + social tools to spread the word (and backlinks). Note that those older articles also of course tend to have 100% bounce, and small/zero TOS. Is this hurting the site? With 75-100 articles/month being published, I want to make sure they get maximum exposure. I'm also concerned that crawlers get sucked into the site chasing down old BS content, and that is hurting it as well. What to do with this content? Should I unpublish unpopular, dated content and get it off the internet? Or, do I leave it on, but NOINDEX it so Google won't crawl it?
Content Development | | EricPacifico0