Cross domain canonical, pros, cons, and link popularity?
-
We have a client who has two well trusted web properties, their insurance site where they sell insurance offerings, and a state specific blog they own where they promote healthy living.
They want to improve their traffic/rankings/etc to the main site but they want to keep their blog where its at for PR (it already has a great following).
So my quesiton is, if we do set up a secondary blog on the main site and use canonical tags on the more trusted external blog to link to the main site. Will that pass on the link popularity their external blog gets along with all the benefits of the fresh content, etc?
I've never actually seen anyone do this yet, keen to try it but not with a client.
-
Yeah, I've general heard positive things where it's a clear issue of content syndication and you control the content. If they're honored that way, they should pass link equity. The major newspapers use it.
I'd only warn that Google can process cross-domain canonicals at their discretion, so it's not guaranteed. Worst case, they just ignore them, and you may have to reconsider, but I think it's safe to attempt it.
-
Canonicals do work cross-domain. We do it with a number of our own sites, and it works exactly like you would expect it to.
http://searchengineland.com/google-supports-cross-domain-canonical-tag-32044
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
-
Canonicals & 301 Redirects to new Domain
We will be changing our domain name soon and I want to make sure I'm not painting myself into a corner. Of course, I want to transfer as much link equity as possible. Question #1: Do I need to define a canonical from the old domain to the new domain? Question #2: Do I also need to put 301s in place on the pages with link equity, or is there a way to apply 301s across the entire site on all pages? Any input would be appreciated greatly! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Best practice for multiple domain links
A site i'm working on has about 12 language domains - .es, it, .de etc. On each page of every domain the header has links to every homepage. At the moment these are all set to no-follow as an initial step to stop potential link profile issues spreading around. Moving forward i'm not totally sure how to handle these links. On one side I see and agree that no-follow is not necessary, but do-follow is just filtering out and weakening link juice. What is the best way to handle this scenario?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
My seo company has a footer link that links to my site by keyword will this effect my rankings
My old SEo company has a footer link by keyword to my site so it acts like a site wide link will this effect my rankings. My site was in the top 5 for many keywords now page 2 and 3 so I am trying to see what has effected it as we havent changed what we do
Technical SEO | | Casefun0 -
301 for old domain to new domain - Joomla plugin or cpanel?
A client changed domains and both are being indexed. There are thousands of content pages. I can install a 301 redirect Joomla plugin and configure it so that each page redirects to the new domain. I have a feeling I will need to manual set every page. OR I can create a domain level redirect setting in cpanel using wildcards. I think this will automatically pass every old URL to the new URL. Which is the better approach? The cpanel option sounds like less work.
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Canonical Issues with Wordpress
Hi all, I have just started using Wordpress SEO by Yoast and still having a hard time correcting my Canonical issues for all posts with a .html at the end. The pluggin allows you to add a '/' to the end for canonical issues, but just for pages, not posts. How best in Wordpress to make my post change from .html/ to .html. I really don't want to go to the hassle to make each URL a new 301 redirect in my .htaccess. I hate the .html, but if they are going to stay, how can I make sure I get the .html/ link juice back to them. Many thanks!
Technical SEO | | RunningInTheRain0 -
Webmaster tools lists a large number (hundreds)of different domains linking to my website, but only a few are reported on SEOMoz. Please explain what's going on?
Google's webmaster tools lists hundreds of links to my site, but SEOMoz only reports a few of them. I don't understand why that would be. Can anybody explain it to me? Is there someplace to I can go to alert SEOMoz to this issue?
Technical SEO | | dnfealkoff0 -
Domain with more Languages
Hey folks! I was wondering what you would do. I do have a Website. The website is provided in 8 other languages. Right now every language has it's own Domain name. The domain name is always the country in the language. I'm thinking about combine everything to one domain and hope to get some great linkjuice from the other 7 domains. So it would be www.example.com/en/ www.example.com/fr/ and so on. How do you handle that. Would this have a big positive impact on that one domain I'm forwarding to?
Technical SEO | | leitpix
I really think so!0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0