PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
-
Hello,
We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product.
We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful.
My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content?
Thanks.
-
Hey Bob
I think you should forget about any kind of perceived conventions and have whatever you think works best for your users and goals.
Again, look at unbounce, that is a custom landing page with a homepage link (to share the love) but not the general site navigation.
They also have a footer to do a bit more link love but really, do what works for you.
Forget conventions - do what works!
Hope that helps
Marcus -
I see, thanks! I think it's important not to have the ecommerce navigation on the page promoting the pdf. What would you say is ideal as far as the graphical and navigation components of the page with the PDF on it - what kind of navigation and graphical header should I have on it?
-
Yep, check the HTTP headers with webbug or there are a bunch of browser plugins that will let you see the headers for the document.
That said, I would push to drive the links to the page though rather than the document itself and just create a nice page that houses the document and make that the link target.
You could even make the PDF link only available by email once they have singed up or some such as canonical is only a directive and you would still be better getting those links flooding into a real page on the site.
You could even offer up some HTML to make this easier for folks to link to that linked to your main page. If you take a look at any savvy infographics etc folks will try to draw a link into a page rather than the image itself for the very same reasons.
If you look at something like the Noobs Guide to Online Marketing from Unbounce then you will see something like this as the suggested linking code:
[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
[](<strong>http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/</strong>)
Unbounce – The DIY Landing Page Platform
So, the image is there but the link they are pimping is a standard page:
http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/
They also cheekily add an extra homepage link in as well with some keywords and the brand so if folks don't remove that they still get that benefit.
Ultimately, it means that when links flood into the site they benefit the whole site rather than just promote one PDF.
Just my tuppence!
Marcus -
Thanks for the code Marcus.
Actually, the pdf is what people will be linking to. It's a guide for websites. I think the PDF will be much easier to promote than the article.I assume so anyway.
Is there a way to make sure my canonical code in htaccess is working after I insert the code?
Thanks again,
Bob
-
Hey Bob
There is a much easier way to do this and simply have your PDFs that you don't want indexed in a folder that you block access to in robots.txt. This way you can just drop PDFs into articles and link to them knowing full well these pages will not be indexed.
Assuming you had a PDF called article.pdf in a folder called pdfs/ then the following would prevent indexation.
User-agent: * Disallow: /pdfs/
Or to just block the file itself:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /pdfs/yourfile.pdf Additionally, There is no reason not to add the canonical link as well and if you find people are linking directly to the PDF then having this would ensure that the equity associated with those links was correctly attributed to the parent page (always a good thing).Header add Link '<http: www.url.co.uk="" pdfs="" article.html="">; </http:> rel="canonical"'
Generally, there are better ways to block indexation than with robots.txt but in the case of PDFs, we really don't want these files indexed as they make for such poor landing pages (no navigation) and we certainly want to remove any competition or duplication between the page and the PDF so in this case, it makes for a quick, painless and suitable solution.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Thanks ThompsonPaul,
Say the pdf is located at
domain.com/pdfs/white-papers.pdf
and the article that I want to rank is at
domain.com/articles/article.html
do I simply add this to my htaccess file?:
Header add Link "<http: www.domain.com="" articles="" article.html="">; rel="canonical""</http:>
-
You can insert the canonical header link using your site's .htaccess file, Bob. I'm sure Hostgator provides access to the htaccess file through ftp (sometimes you have to turn on "show hidden files") or through the file manager built into your cPanel.
Check tip #2 in this recent SEOMoz blog article for specifics:
seomoz.org/blog/htaccess-file-snippets-for-seosJust remember too - you will want to do the same kind of on-page optimization for the PDF as you do for regular pages.
- Give it a good, descriptive, keyword-appropriate, dash-separated file name. (essential for usability as well, since it will become the title of the icon when saved to someone's desktop)
- Fill out the metadata for the PDF, especially the Title and Description. In Acrobat it's under File -> Properties -> Description tab (to get the meta-description itself, you'll need to click on the Additional Metadata button)
I'd be tempted to build the links to the html page as much as possible as those will directly help ranking, unlike the PDF's inbound links which will have to pass their link juice through the canonical, assuming you're using it. Plus, the visitor will get a preview of the PDF's content and context from the rest of your site which which may increase trust and engender further engagement..
Your comment about links in the PDF got kind of muddled, but you'll definitely want to make certain there are good links and calls to action back to your website within the PDF - preferably on each page. Otherwise there's no clear "next step" for users reading the PDF back to a purchase on your site. Make sure to put Analytics tracking tags on these links so you can assess the value of traffic generated back from the PDF - otherwise the traffic will just appear as Direct in your Analytics.
Hope that all helps;
Paul
-
Can I just use htaccess?
See here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-advanced-relcanonical-http-headers
We only have one pdf like this right now and we plan to have no more than five.
Say the pdf is located at
domain.com/pdfs/white-papers.pdf
and the article that I want to rank is at
domain.com/articles/article.pdf
do I simply add this to my htaccess file?:
Header add Link "<http: www.domain.com="" articles="" article.pdf="">; rel="canonical""</http:>
-
How do I know if I can do an HTTP header request? I'm using shared hosting through hostgator.
-
PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages. They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results. I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though. If you are doing a rel="canonical" it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.
-
PDF seem to not rank as well as other normal webpages. They still rank do not get me wrong, we have over 100 pdf pages that get traffic for us. The main version is really up to you, what do you want to show in the search results. I think it would be easier to rank for a normal webpage though. If you are doing a rel="canonical" it will pass most of the link juice, not all but most.
-
Thank you DoRM,
I assume that the PDF is what I want to be the main version since that is what I'll be marketing, but I could be wrong? What if I get backlinks to both pages, will both sets of backlinks count?
-
Indicate the canonical version of a URL by responding with the
Link rel="canonical"
HTTP header. Addingrel="canonical"
to thehead
section of a page is useful for HTML content, but it can't be used for PDFs and other file types indexed by Google Web Search. In these cases you can indicate a canonical URL by responding with theLink rel="canonical"
HTTP header, like this (note that to use this option, you'll need to be able to configure your server):Link: <http: www.example.com="" downloads="" white-paper.pdf="">; rel="canonical"</http:>
Google currently supports these link header elements for Web Search only.
You can read more her http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
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
-
Duplicate content in external domains
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
I have been asking about this case before, but now my question is different.
We have a new school that offers courses and programs . Its website is quite new (just a five months old) It is very common between these schools to publish the courses and programs in training portals to promote those courses and to increase the visibility of them. As the website is really new, I found when I was doing the technical audit, that when I googled a text snipped from the site, the new school website was being omitted, and instead, the course portals are being shown. Of course, I know that the best recommendation would be to create a different content for that purpose, but I would like to explore if there is more options. Most of those portals doesn't allow to place a link to the website in the content and not to mention canonical. Of course most of them are older than the new website and their authority is higher. so,... with this situation, I think the only solution is to create a different content for the website and for the portals.
I was thinking that maybe, If we create the content first in the new website, send it to the index, and wait for google to index it, and then send the content to the portals, maybe we would have more opportunites to not be ommited by Google in search results. What do you think? Thank you!0 -
Duplicate content issue - online retail site.
Hello Mozzers, just looked at a website and just about every product page (there are hundreds - yikes!) is duplicated like this at end of each url (see below). Surely this is a serious case of duplicate content? Any idea why a web developer would do this? Thanks in advance! Luke prod=company-081
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
prod=company-081&cat=20 -
How would you use this broken link building opportunity?
I've found a good opportunity to build some links and I'd love your opinions on my options here. There's a big event that happens once a year in my city. Let's say the event used to have a website called www.CityEvent.com. The event decided not to use this website anymore, but instead to put all of their event information on their facebook page. It looks like they let their domain name expire and someone else snapped it up. It's now sitting as an empty wordpress blog with one line of text. This empty website has 1300 links pointing to it. I can see two opportunities here: 1. Write a very thorough article on my website (that I am trying to build links to) describing the event and giving people all of the information that they need to know about it. (The amount of information on the Facebook page is minimal.) or 2. Create a new website called www.EventCity.com and put up a static page with all of the information that people need to know. There would be a link on this page pointing to the site that I am trying to rank. In both cases there would be much more information than is available on the Facebook page including a collection of youtube videos about the event and many helpful links for people who are interested in this type of event. Then the plan is to contact the sites who are linking to the dead page and invite them to link to my new page (either on my site or the new site that I could create). I see a few pros and cons to each method. For option #2 I think people would be more likely to link to a more official looking page rather than an article on a separate website. (My website has information about the city in question but is not closely related to the event at all.) However, I would only be getting one link back to my site. One negative to this is that the actual organizers of the event may not be pleased that someone has created an official looking page. But then again, perhaps they would be happy to have a free website. For option #1 I would possibly get more links from sites that are authoritative in my city that point directly to the site I am trying to rank. However, people would be less likely to link to us because we are not an official site for the event, but simply a very good article about the event. There are no other good articles for this event that are ranking on Google. Hopefully that makes sense. What would you do? EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
Canonical Not Fixing Duplicate Content
I added a canonical tag to the home page last month, but I am still showing duplicate content for the home page. Here is the tag I added: What am I missing? Duplicate-Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InnoInsulation0 -
Duplicate Content On A Subdomain
Hi, We have a client who is currently close to completing a site specifically aimed at the UK market (they're doing this in-house so we've had no say in how it will work). The site will almost be a duplicate (in terms of content, targeted keywords etc.) of a section of the main site (that sits on the root domain) - the main site is targeted toward the US. The only difference will be certain spellings and currency type. If this new UK site were to sit on a sub domain of the main site, which is a .com, will this cause duplicate content issues? I know that there wouldn't be an issue if the new site were to be on a separate .co.uk domain (according to Matt Cutts), but it looks like the client wants it to be on a sub domain. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasarrow0 -
How are they avoiding duplicate content?
One of the largest stores in USA for soccer runs a number of whitelabel sites for major partners such as Fox and ESPN. However, the effect of this is that they are creating duplicate content for their products (and even the overall site structure is very similar). Take a look at: http://www.worldsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.foxsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.soccernetstore.com/23147.html You can see that practically everything is the same including: product URL product title product description My question is, why is Google not classing this as duplicate content? Have they coded for it in a certain way or is there something I'm missing which is helping them achieve rankings for all sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
Duplicate page content
Hi. I am getting error of having duplicate content on my website and pages its showing there are: www.mysitename.com www.mysitename.com/index.html As my best knowledge it only one page, I know this can be solved with some conical tag used in header, but do not know how. Can anyone please tell me about that code or any other way to get this solved. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinetraffic0 -
Duplicate page Content
There has been over 300 pages on our clients site with duplicate page content. Before we embark on a programming solution to this with canonical tags, our developers are requesting the list of originating sites/links/sources for these odd URLs. How can we find a list of the originating URLs? If you we can provide a list of originating sources, that would be helpful. For example, our the following pages are showing (as a sample) as duplicate content: www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=11 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=12 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=15 www.crittenton.com/Video/View.aspx?id=87&VideoID=2 "How did you get all those duplicate urls? I have tried to google the "contact us", "news", "video" pages. I didn't get all those duplicate pages. The page id=87 on the most of the duplicate pages are not supposed to be there. I was wondering how the visitors got to all those duplicate pages. Please advise." Note, the CMS does not create this type of hybrid URLs. We are as curious as you as to where/why/how these are being created. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dlemieux0