Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
-
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS.
My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain?
Thanks,
-
Well - he's done more than a few so it's easy for one to go MIA. Like a Cutts video.
-
Dave:
Thanks again. I just watched Rand's whiteboard Friday on this, and it gave me some additional ideas on some old sites that we have, to utilize the value of those pages by canonicalizing those pages to our main website.
I usually watch a lot of Rand's whiteboards, but must have missed this one.
Thanks!
-
Craig:
Thanks for your input. We are trying to determine how best to maintain the traffic and value on our outside engine site, but still give our boaters on the main page the info they are looking for without clicking away to another (manufacturer) page. Having duplicate pages makes sense to us, but making sure that Google gives the manufacturer page the value. So a canonical seems logical for what we are trying to accomplish. We have hundred's of thousands of pages on our main site, so we are not concerned of losing value there. However, we do want to keep and build the value of our manufacturer pages. That is where we want our traffic to go when they are looking for that manufacturer-specific product.
Thanks again for your input!
-
Thank you for your reply. I'll check Rand's video. I'm assuming it is one of his white board Friday discussions? In the meantime I did find Google's take on it. It was on their Webmaster Central Blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
Thanks again for responding!
-
While you can use a cross-domain canonical from your main site to the engine's site, are you sure that you should?
When you canonical the page, you're telling Google "Hey, the page you're on is functionally the same as this other page here. That other page should be the one that gets the credit for this content."
If your primary goal is to have your main page ranking, then you don't want to be telling Google to take away it's credit for your more narrowly focused engine site.
What I would rather do is work to make each of those pages unique - perhaps the main boating site would contain the broader information on the engines as well as reviews/ratings from current customers but then link to the engine-specific site within that page to get to thinks like additional manufacturer specs, repair guides, etc.
That way you are focusing each page better for the target customer and sharing some link equity between the two pages, rather than directing it all at the more narrow domain.
-
In 2011 Google extended the canonical tag to support cross-domain. Rand made a video of it ...
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
-
Ranking more than one page.
Our travel website has a number of different places listed. The layout of each place is the same as the next. On place ranks on page 1 for its keywords where as others do not. Is there a tool of some description that may identify why this is.
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
My site on desktop browser: page 2 /mobile browser: page 0
Using my two most pertinent keywords in Chome my site shows up page two. Using the same keywords on my iPhone does not show my site at all (I clicked on to page 15). I have a mobile ranking of 84 on Google PageSpeed Insights. Could be a bit higher but not enough to totally ignore my site. What am I missing?
On-Page Optimization | | artsp0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0 -
Page Title
Hi All, I am wondering if you could help me please. I am getting the following result after I run my On-Page Analysis Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements _Easy fix _ <dl style="font-style: normal;"> <dt>Page titles</dt> <dd>"Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin -" and "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin"</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Web pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Remove all but a single page title element.</dd> </dl> Does this mean that i have 2 pages that are nearly identical or i should only name a page with one word? The reason i ask is because i have 1 page called "Aquashowers-Shower Repairs Dublin" and another called "Aquashowers-Dublin Shower Repair" I don't have a page called "Aquashowers - Shower Repairs Dublin" (with the space inbetween the words and the hyphen) Any help would be great. Thanks again Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0 -
Would I be safe canonicalizing comments pages on the first page?
We are building comment pages for an article site that live on a separate URL from the article (I know this is not ideal, but it is necessary). Each comments page will have a summary of the article at the top. Would I be safe using the first page of comments as the canonical URL for all subsequent comment pages? Or could I get away with using the actual article page as the canonical URL for all comment pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Blog page outranks static page for KW -- why?
Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A". Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page. Any ideas on how to approach this one?
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0 -
Too many on-page links
I manualy counted the links on my website http://www.commensus.com which came to around 50, but SEO moz says I have over 100 and google isn't seeing them all.
On-Page Optimization | | jawl44630