Duplicating an article I wrote on an external blog
-
Hi, I wrote a blog article on another site. I would like to add the article to my site as well and would like to know the best way to do it.
If I duplicate the article that I wrote would I then risk getting a penalty for duplicate content?
If so, then what is the best way for me to include the article on my site for the benefit of my readers, but not lead to the duplicate content problem?
Would it be better to use a canonical tag? Or to noindex the page?
If I use the canonical tag, am I helping to make the article on the external blog stronger? Where is I use the noindex tag I am not helping my site nor that article I think, is that right?
Last question, if I offer the copy of the article on my site and use the canonical or noindex tag then my site does not receive any direct benefit from the article for SEO. In other words the article wont appear in the search index with a link to my site. What about the comments that people write on the article on my site? That is unique content which may have great questions or points. I want to ensure those can be indexed properly. If I noindex the page I lose out. If I canonicalize (is that a word?) the page then I don't know if will send search results based on those comments to the external blog where that information (the comments from my site) does not exist.
Thank you for any help to better understand this part of seo.
-
I like the rel author option in this case. It doesnt really take care of the indexing issues, but I lean toward not worrying about it. In some cases, i let Google figure out which one they want to index given the two. They will probably choose the original posting, but if you get comments and discussion, I can see that bubbling to the top. Its more like news sites or aggregators at that point.
-
Ah, yes, if you use rel canonical on your blog then the whole page will be nonindexed. I'm wondering if perhaps rel author is what you need here? But I haven't quite figured out enough about that yet!
-
Thank you all for the replies.
@Dunamis, my concern is that if I use the canonical tag for the article then how would a search engine understand the canonical represents the article and not the comments. There can be great discussion within the comments. If the search engine canonalizes the who page and sends users to the target URL then they will send traffic to that site for comments which do not exist on that site. Or if they discount my page all together then the page wont get indexed even though there are some good comments and discussion which otherwise should be indexed.
@Ryan, thank you for reminding me about having a link in the article. That is something I otherwise forgot about but will do in the future.
@Theo, if I had an article on my site which is canonicalized to a URL on another site, and then someone links to the page on my site, do I get credit for the link? I would think the link credit goes through to the canonicalized URL would it not?
-
This sounds like exactly the situation that the canonical tag was created for. Make the tag point to the article that you want indexed.
Or, another option, if you want both to be indexed is to create a second version of the article with different wording.
-
If its just for your users, and its helpful, go ahead and just post the article. Its technically duplicate content, but google has already determined that the article site had the original content up first, and yours may or may not get indexed ever. But you should care.
If you are looking at the SEO implications, thats a whole different reason. I hope you have a link in that article to your site, since you published it. If so, you would actually benefit more from the link value from the other site. If you boost the value of that blog article on the other site, and it has a link to you, that would hold more SEO value down the road then trying to figure out how to get around the dupliate content issue here.
-
"If I duplicate the article that I wrote would I then risk getting a penalty for duplicate content?"
Not likely a penalty, but no benefits either (unless people start linking to the version on your site of course)
"If so, then what is the best way for me to include the article on my site for the benefit of my readers, but not lead to the duplicate content problem?
Would it be better to use a canonical tag? Or to noindex the page?"
Both would work I think, though canonical would be the neater option (assuming it isn't harming you to help the other website).
"If I use the canonical tag, am I helping to make the article on the external blog stronger? Where is I use the noindex tag I am not helping my site nor that article I think, is that right?"
Right and right
"What about the comments that people write on the article on my site?"
I think (this is the toughest one) you're getting the visitors that search for phrases in your comments (Google can't send those visitors to the other site as it doesn't contain the particular phrases) with the cross-domain canonical solution, as with the noindex solution nobody gets these visitors.
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 Question With New Domain
Hey Everyone, I hope your day is going well. I have a question regarding duplicate content. Let's say that we have Website A and Website B. Website A is a directory for multiple stores & brands. Website B is a new domain that will satisfy the delivery niche for these multiple stores & brands (where they can click on a "Delivery" anchor on Website A and it'll redirect them to Website B). We want Website B to rank organically when someone types in " <brand>delivery" in Google. Website B has NOT been created yet. The Issue Website B has to be a separate domain than Website A (no getting around this). Website B will also pull all of the content from Website A (menus, reviews, about, etc). Will we face any duplicate content issues on either Website A or Website B in the future? Should we rel=canonical to the main website even though we want Website B to rank organically?</brand>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny0 -
How to avoid duplicate content
Hi there, Our client has an ecommerce website, their products are also showing on an aggregator website (aka on a comparison website where multiple vendors are showing their products). On the aggregator website the same photos, titles and product descriptions are showing. Now with building their new website, how can we avoid such duplicate content? Or does Google even care in this case? I have read that we could show more product information on their ecommerce website and less details on the aggregator's website. But is there another or better solution? Many thanks in advance for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
Two blogs on a single domain?
Hi guys, Does anyone have any experience of having (trying to rank) two separate blogs existing on one domain, for instance: www.companysite.com/service1/blogwww.companysite.com/service2/blogThese 2 pages (service 1 and service 2) offer completely different services (rank for different keywords).(for example, a company that provides 2 separate services: SEO service and IT service)Do you think it is a good/bad/confusing search engine practice trying to have separate blogs for each service or do you think there should be only one blog that contains content for both services?Bearing in mind that there is an already existing subdomain for a non-profit part of business that ranks for different keywords: non-profit.companysite.comand it will potentially have another blog so the URL would look like: non-profit.companysite.com/blogAny ideas would be appreciated!Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kellys.marketing0 -
Duplicate Content Pages - A Few Queries..
I am working through the latest Moz Crawl Report and focusing on the 'high priority' issues of Duplicate Page Content. There are some strange instances being flagged and so wondered whether anyone has any knowledge as to why this may be happening... Here is an example; This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bruges/ ...is apparently duplicated with these pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/excursions http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/cruises-from-the-uk http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/norwegian-star-europe-cruise-deals Not sure why...? Also, pages that are on our 'Cruise Reviews' section such as this page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-reviews/p&o-cruises/adonia/cruising/931 ...are being flagged as duplicated content with a page like this; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bilbao/ Is this a 'thin content' issue i.e. 2 pages have 'thin content' and are therefore duplicated? If so, the 'destinations' page can (and will be) rewritten with more content (and images) but the 'cruise reviews' are written by customers and so we are unable to do anything there... Hope that all makes sense?! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Is legacy duplicate content an issue?
I am looking for some proof, or at least evidence to whether or not sites are being hurt by duplicate content. The situation is, that there were 4 content rich newspaper/magazine style sites that were basically just reskins of each other. [ a tactic used under a previous regime 😉 ] The least busy of the sites has since been discontinued & 301d to one of the others, but the traffic was so low on the discontinued site as to be lost in noise, so it is unclear if that was any benefit. Now for the last ~2 years all the sites have had unique content going up, but there are still the archives of articles that are on all 3 remaining sites, now I would like to know whether to redirect, remove or rewrite the content, but it is a big decision - the number of duplicate articles? 263,114 ! Is there a chance this is hurting one or more of the sites? Is there anyway to prove it, short of actually doing the work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fammy0 -
Is this duplicate content something to be concerned about?
On the 20th February a site I work on took a nose-dive for the main terms I target. Unfortunately I can't provide the url for this site. All links have been developed organically so I have ruled this out as something which could've had an impact. During the past 4 months I've cleaned up all WMT errors and applied appropriate redirects wherever applicable. During this process I noticed that mydomainname.net contained identical content to the main mydomainname.com site. Upon discovering this problem I 301 redirected all .net content to the main .com site. Nothing has changed in terms of rankings since doing this about 3 months ago. I also found paragraphs of duplicate content on other sites (competitors in different countries). Although entire pages haven't been copied there is still enough content to highlight similarities. As this content was written from scratch and Google would've seen this within it's crawl and index process I wanted to get peoples thoughts as to whether this is something I should be concerned about? Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bfrl0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
I'm getting a lot of duplicate content errors on my ecommerce site www.outdoormegastore.co.uk mainly centered around product pages. The products are completely different in terms of the title, meta data, product descriptions and images (with alt tags)but SEOmoz is still identifying them as duplicates and we've noticed a significant drop in google ranking lately. Admittedly the product descriptions are a little bit thin but I don't understand why the pages would be viewed as duplicates and therefore can be ranked lower? The content is definitely unique too. As an example these three pages have been identified as being duplicates of each other. http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/regatta-landtrek-25l-rucksack.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/canyon-bryce-adult-cycling-helmet-9045.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/outwell-minnesota-6-carpet-for-green-07-08-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0