CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlseocanonical-link
John
John

Reputation: 3392

What is the proper use of canonical tags

We run a large news site and a number of much smaller news sites. The smaller sites will frequently carry content that comes from the large site on their own pages. For example

Big News Site http://www.bigsite.com/news/2011/07/27/rin_tin_tin_saves_boy/

and on our smaller site http://www.middleofnowhere.com/pets/2011/07/27/dog_saves_local_boy

The actual stories are the same, but the rest of the pages are different, including header, widgets, layout, etc.

Our boss is really into SEO and heard about canonical tags. So he wants us to make this shared content point to the main site in order to bump its ranking. 

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.bigsite.com/news/2011/07/27/rin_tin_tin_saves_boy/" />

Is this a good idea? Why or why not? Google says that canonical pages "should be similar", but not necessarily the same. Is this example

1) A canonical page
2) Not
3) Subject to debate?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1908

Answers (2)

Stephen Ostermiller
Stephen Ostermiller

Reputation: 25494

When you host the same content on two sites it is correct to use canonical between the two to show which has the original article. It is the text and content of the page that need to be the same. In this case, the article. The site theme around it is irrelevant.

Google can tell when content is duplicated on the web. Even when you don't say where the content comes from (by say using the canonical tag) they figure it out by implementing a shingling algorithm They do penalize sites that do not write original content of their own, but rather take all their content from other places. However, Google has said that they allow some amount of content syndication, especially when a website acknowledges its sources. Using rel=canonical should help you avoid penalties for "scraping" content by showing Google that you are using syndicated content in a legitimate way.

Upvotes: 2

Jhourlad Estrella
Jhourlad Estrella

Reputation: 3670

The canonical tag is highly honored by Google Search. It is valid. However, recent update on Google's SEO algorithm (code named "Panda") takes into consideration how much contents on a site is original. It is assumed that even if you have majority of your contents marked "canonical" and you don't have much original content on your site then it MIGHT not have a positive effect on your ranking. It MAY still be considered as duplicate.

Why not create a condensed version of the original article, target similar but not the same keywords and post a link leading to the original content. If you target the same keywords, it will mean that you are even competing for ranking on the same niche over the same keywords between your main and your lesser site.

Upvotes: 0

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