External Content Duplication – Done Right

Andy Kinsey — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:26:25 +0000

Over the past few month’s I’ve come across many a site with this issue, and the website owner always always says the same thing … (and its right to an extent) … we are the brand leader, bringing something new to the market and want to be seen for x, y and z … and to emphasise this we want it over 3 or 4 websites or sub-domains … but we want the content to be pretty much the same… but content duplication isn’t allowed by the search engines.

Well ok it is true the you can be penalised for content duplication over one or more websites seen to be related, mainly via an IP address or similar domain or as a sub domain (which Google is known to treat as a different domain) … So I here you ask how can I be saying you can do it right … how can you legitimately duplicate content over websites and domains … well it is fairly easy

The answer is “cross domain canonical tagging”

By now we should all be using the meta tag canonical – aka telling the browsers and search engines the content originates at this websites and location … it is all your content and not taken from else where. (if not take a quick look on Google for it).

Now to use content from one site on another you need to show that you accept the origins of the content as not being on your site and being from another URL. This can be done on any element using the tag rel=”canonical” – so links, images, block quotes, data tables anything with any attribute (including a full DIV) can use this tag and search engines will pick it up.

Still have questions? Please do ask them below or twitter me @andykinsey

Make your Website YOURS!

Andy Kinsey — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:00:50 +0000

Ever had an issue with problem with someone who has copied your website? All of it or maybe just some of it! It doesn’t matter they took it, without your permission. So today I look at the big advance taken by Google, MSN & Yahoo, and some other friends in early Feb (2009) to help us all out a little.

Canonical Tagging

It’s a pretty simple tag really, and it belongs with the META tags in your head script

Generally the advice is to use this only on dynamic websites, see Matt Cutts initial blog post.

So for example, before url re-writing the links for posts was of the format .com/?p=somenumber in the canonical tagging system this would become .com/ all children would be “owned” by this website.

Warning – becareful use of Canonical tagging especially on large-scale websites, use it incorrectly then your search engine rank can be severely damaged!!! – Not sure? Contact Me for individual advice

Other Options ???

Well yes there are other options, infact in Matts presentation (see his blog linked above) you will see he advises that if you can first exhaust other options in preventing duplicate content, both within your own website and from other websites.

However, since we can’t help you with removing duplicates from your own site other than the above tagging system I suggest that you use the following steps.

Check if someone has copied your site, in part or full using CopyScape.
Contact Site Owners / Editors (use whois to find the owner if you can’t contact through the site itself).
Contact the websites host (again use whois for this).
Contact a the Search Engines (through webmaster portals), tell them what you have found and mention you are of course the real owner. The effect of doing this maybe limited but at least you are alerting them.
Actually this should be – 1, re-write / re-script your content. This should be done on a regular basis anyhow.

Search Engine Optimisation » canonical

External Content Duplication – Done Right

Make your Website YOURS!

Canonical Tagging

Other Options ???