Same article published to 3 different client owned sites
-
My client is publishing their own articles simultaneously on three sites, sites which they own. What can and should they be doing to ensure the get maximum exposure without penalty?
-
Truth be told, I'm not sure. Google says they reserve the right to not follow a rel=canonical, but that being said, I don't know why they wouldn't in this case. I think the attribution is probably much less important just because it could come in so many different forms (link at the top of the post, link at the bottom, worded one way or another, etc), which becomes different to track and account for on the search engine side.
-
Hi Eric.
Just to be clear, is the attribution a must have or will the canonical tag suffice? If it's necessary, is there specific wording to be used?
Donna
-
Hi Donna,
What your client is doing will cause duplicate content issue. Hopefully nothing happened to the ranking yet. I would suggest you use cross-domain canonical tag to tell Google which version of the article you want to show up on the search results.
Instead of sharing the same article on three sites, your client can increase the exposure by sharing it on Social Media platforms or send the article to subscribers on that topic (if it applies).
There are many ways to increase exposure but sharing the same article on multiple site will only cause harm.
-
I assume all of these sites are thematically related (eg. tractorparts.com, tractorstories.com, and tractorwarehouse.com), right? If not, get them to stop. It's hard to imagine a reason to post many tractor articles on a massage website. If they are related, you might have them give attribution to one of the sites and then cross-domain rel="canonical" it to the place it was first posted. That at the very least will let search engines know that it first came from another site and that it hasn't simply been stolen.
You see things like this all the time. For example, Mitch Joel write for HuffPo, Vancouver Sun, etc and reposts the articles to his blog with a link to the original and a statement about it first appearing on that other site.
-
If all three sites have the same article, one or two of the sites could be filtered from the Google SERPs because of duplicate content. This is much more likely to happen if these sites link to one another.
If there are only a couple of these articles there should not be much of a problem beyond filtering.
However, if they have many articles published this way then they could be hit with a Panda problem. To avoid that they could use a cross domain canonical to attribute the articles to a single site. To learn about that read these...
http://searchengineland.com/google-supports-cross-domain-canonical-tag-32044
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1716747
You can attribute all of the articles to a single site to give that site maximum value or distribute the attributions to give each site a little value.
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
-
What is the best tactic to fix thousands of product descriptions on an eCommerce site?
I've asked this to dozens of people already, but I still haven't found a satisfactory answer... perhaps someone here can help me: I keep hearing how important it is to update product descriptions to avoid duplicate content, decrease thin content and improve conversion rates - but for any new eCommerce sites like ours, with thousands of listings going up at once, this is nearly impossible to control. Outsourcing is clearly a bad idea from an SEO standpoint as well as a UX standpoint... But are there any other options? Should I let go of my other responsibilities and focuses as an in-house SEO manager and virtually stop, drop and roll out unique product descriptions? That would be a project that would take me at least a year to complete. Do I just give up? Do two descriptions a day and hope for the best? What do you guys think? What have you recommended for others? I can't imagine our company is alone in this dilemma. Thanks in advance! Hanna
Content Development | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Video content sites
In addition to you tube are there any other video sites worth uploading content to? Such as Vimeo? Are these any good or is you tube the only place worth publishing
Content Development | | Hardley1110 -
Which is better for seo purposes? site/blog or site/community?
Hi Guys I was wondering if you could help on this one. We are in the process of setting up a wordpress blog for our website to aid our content marketing efforts, and was wondering what main url for this blog is going to be the best for seo purposes? So of the following 2 which one is going to be the better one? site.com/blog or site.com/community If anyone could get back to me on this I would appreciate it. Thanks David
Content Development | | DavidZA10 -
We are contemplating whether to put a blog on our site.
The reasons we want to put one up is obviously for SEO reasons but since we are a small business with limited resources the higher ups are worried that we will start strong but slack off. Some feel that it's worse to start and not keep up the blog as it gives an unprofessional vibe to google and other users. I maintain that I will try to keep it up to the best of my abilities and that it's better to have something than nothing. What do you feel and do you have any experiences in this?
Content Development | | EcomLkwd0 -
Adding a new wp client to subdirectory - SEO?
Im working with couple of clients in the travel business. Im building up a network of blogs that add content, internal contextual links and so forth to clients websites. What I want to do is to install a fresh wp client to a subdirectory e.g. www.mydomain.com/blog for every and each client. This way I can get my outsourcing workers to log-in there and write content, add internal contextual backlinks etc. This also solves the problems of letting them learn on various different local CMS systems that are often just in the local language - that nobody understands:) So either I install it as an additional wp client if the clients has a wp client for the root domain. Im wondering what effects this will have on SEO and what is important to do?. E.g. do I install a new sitemap for this new wp client in subdirectory - or do I merge it with the one for the root domain. How? In regard to GA tracking - do I add the same tracking code to the new wp install or somehow merge it into the root domain? Are there some issues I need to worry about especially when using this approach?
Content Development | | rrrobertsson0 -
Google Site Search
Hi, I was just wondering if anyone had used Google Site Search before and what they thought of it? http://www.google.com/sitesearch/ It seems quite expensive for just returning your own pages but would be interested to find out more. Thanks
Content Development | | ASOS0 -
My WebSite has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similiar but unique content ) to be listed?
My Web Site has two sections with overlapping, or redundant articles on the same topics. Google is only listing one or the other article in Search Results. What should I do to have both pages (similar but unique content ) to be listed? Example: http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_week_12.htm http://www.womenshealthcaretopics.com/pregnancy_12_weeks.html
Content Development | | docjamesmd0 -
Duplicating Articles/Blogs
Two years ago, some articles and blogs were written and submitted to certain tech and news sites relevant to our field. Will it be fine to submit those to other sites now. It is our content only and not some one else, but would it be penalty to submit the copy to other article sites whereever those articles/content are relevant today also?
Content Development | | sayeed0