Sometimes I write a post for another site and then post the first 1/3rd on my site to help promote it. Is this a bad idea?
-
Sometimes I write a post for another site and then post the first 1/3rd on my site to help promote it. Is this a bad idea? When I do that should I be adding a canonical link to the original post? Should I have /make sure the 3rd party site does something? Is there anything else I should do?
Thanks in advance.
-
Leaving it as is is fine, although you can also properly rel=canonical it to the full post on the other domain if you or the publishing site want you to. I would probably do that.
Technically, it is considered duplicate content but google doesn't actually penalize for "duplicate" content per se. In cases such as yours, google just doesn't assign any ranking strength to the duplicate version--that is not the same as a penalty. So, if it is indexed first on the other site and/or that other site is a stronger site, or there is no intent to make money through monetizing copied content, google will just assign the value for that content to that other site.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2013/04/5-common-mistakes-with-relcanonical.html : We recommend the following best practices for using rel=canonical:
One test is to imagine you don’t understand the language of the content—if you placed the duplicate side-by-side with the canonical, does a very large percentage of the words of the duplicate page appear on the canonical page? If you need to speak the language to understand that the pages are similar; for example, if they’re only topically similar but not extremely close in exact words, the canonical designation might be disregarded by search engines.
- A large portion of the duplicate page’s content should be present on the canonical version.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don't follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.
“Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin…..” Google Webmaster Guidelines
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
-
Country sites - TLD's or sub directories?
Dear All, We have several brands which operate a several languages and currently have a set up like this: www.[BRAND].com/ = English global www.[BRAND].com/de = German www.[BRAND].com/fr = French … Each subdirectory is a completely different site so I was wondering would it be better to use TLD’s for each country site in order to hold more equity in the search engine if we used: www.[BRAND].com/ = English global www.[BRAND].de = German www.[BRAND].fr = French Are country top level domains the way to go? If we wanted to change language within a country site should we use the following? www.[BRAND].be = Belgium English www.[BRAND].be/nl-NL/ = Belgium Dutch If you could let me know what to do I would be most grateful. Thanks guy's Ian Leggett UI Developer
Branding | | SThreeMarketing0 -
Rebranding/Url Structure Change
Hi Everyone, First off thanks for taking the time to looking at my question. I was wondering about rebranding and URL structure changes. Right now my company is planning on changing their domain and doing a massive change to their site which includes a url structure change. The idea is in September they will be changing the site to be a combination of wordpress and ruby on rails (currently the site is ruby on rails). The homepage and design on the site will be completely different and parts of the site will be in php and other parts will be in ruby. The URL structure will also be changing completely at the same time. Each page will be completely different in structure, including the homepage (currently now it redirects you to a subfolder page that is your local page [i.e. nyc if you are in new york]). Then, the following month, they will be changing their domain name to a different domain. I have asked them to do this in stages. First the domain, second the rebrand, and third the URL restructuring or we could lose SEO traffic but they asked a freelancer his opinion and the freelancer said that you could do the rebrand change with the URL restructure and then domain later and while you're SEO may disappear, it'll definitely return in 3 to 4 months. Could you tell me who is right and what the correct method is to make this change?
Branding | | MattJD0 -
Ecommerce // indexation and duplicate
Hello moz community, We have 3 website that are e-commerce based that go as follow : 1.0 www.product.com ( french ) 2.0 www.anotherproduct.ca ( for the canada english ) 3.0 www.anotherproduct.com ( for the usa market in english again ) Those 3 website are configured inside WPML ( wordpress ) and are build with woocommerce. Most of the pages beetween anotherproduct.ca and anotherproduct.com are identical or close to be. We want to have a good indexation and to absolutely avoid duplicate content. Any help would be appreciated ! CHeers,
Branding | | ydesjardins2000 -
Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>. They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page. The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards. It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions. If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
Branding | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Can we use SEOMOZ to get insights/data on the members of a twitter list?
It would be so useful if we could get insights into the members of a twitter list in the same way we can get statistics on the people we search through the "search twitter bio" options (following/followers/RTs/Social Authority/etc). This is possible through the twitter api but it limits to 20 list member which is useless. Anyone know of a solution? Thanks!
Branding | | VGRRI0 -
Can anything be done for a single brand page on a corporate site?
I was asked by a friend if there was anyway I could help promote the watch brand that they are responsible for. The brand has only one page on the corporate site. http://gevrilgroup.com/fortis-watches/ My first reaction is that this is impossible to do without creating a stand alone web site and then doing some super cool marketing to get your brand noticed out of the sea of watch manufacturers. My second gut reaction is to stand clear of this request and not get myself tangled in something that will require a lot of resources for someone on a low budget. Any suggestions?
Branding | | irvingw0 -
Facebook, Google Plus - What to share/like?
Hi everybody! We are planning to offer an incentive to all our customers who interact with us on social media websites. What's the most important thing to ask from a customer? Facebook to like our Facebook business page or to like our own website through Facebook? to just follow us on Facebook or to actually comment / interact on our wall? Google + to +1, share, add to circle our Google+ business webpage or to +1 or share our own website? So basically what do we need to promote most? Our Facebook / Google+ business pages or our own website through social media marketing? While we understand it's important to actually interact with the customers and offer value on social media websites, we are looking to boost our SEO efforts. Thank you!
Branding | | echo10