Re-Posting Content On Multiple Domains And Canonical

[hispdcha]

In the real estate industry (my niche) there are many UG blogs out there that you can post content onto. Many real estate agents (clients of mine) will write a blog on their website and post it to these places.

My question: Is this going to be a problem as their content is on multiple websites even if they link back to the original? Can you just use the rel=canonical from those blogs back to their sites? Or is that a bad idea?

This is rampant in the real estate industry and many people do it. I wanted to get some insight from those here who may have similar exeperience with this type of thing. Thanks for the help!

[tedster]

Google does support a cross-domain canonical link, so as far as Google is concerned, this approach should work. However, no other search engine supports cross-domain canonical links as far as I know, so that presents a bit of an obstacle.

I would also like to hear from anyone who has hands-on experience with this kind of thing. Often what "should" happen isn't exactly what does happen - especially when it comes to recognizing the original source of duplicated or syndicated content.

[MikeNoLastName]

I tried entering the exact code from the Goog video from 2009 updated 7/2011(goog answer 139394 or search "link rel canonical href"):
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com"/> (with the domain changed of course). The video was very adamant about not forgetting the last "/".
However, the w3 validator spit it out with a warning:
NET-enabling start-tag requires SHORTTAG YES (indicating the final "/")
and an error:
character data is not allowed here (indicating the final ">")

The doc is rated HTML 4.01 Transitional, utf-8

What's the problem with validator or the code?

[tedster]

I think the href attribute needs to be href="http://www.example.com/" - with the final slash BEFORE the closing quotation mark.

[MikeNoLastName]

Oops, the G-man made a boo-boo then. I double, tripple checked his slides and text on the page. Yours sounds much more logical. Though we default to www.example.com (without /) so I just left it off and it passed W3. Don't know if it will work for G-index yet.

[hispdcha]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies! What about the fact that you have your websites content posted on multiple websites? I know there is a lot of talk about scrapers taking content and people getting hit because of a duplicate issue, would there be an issue with this?

Forget the canonical issue for a second. Is it okay to post your blogs content on multiple sites with link back to the original still? Is that a good SEO technique? I've always been in the group of protect your content at all costs and make sure you have original content on your website not on any other site.

But in the real estate world, there are many agents who post their blogs on places like Trulia or Zillow blogs that they put on their own blogs. Thanks for any response/experience you may have!

[Planet13]

I really don't think there is going to be all that much SEO value (if any at all).

It would probably be better to have REALLY GOOD content on your OWN site, and then guest blog with second-tier content on other people's sites. But not duplicated on a bunch of other blogs.

You should also try to get some good, unique, value-add content on your site. Get people who write about appraisals, termites, home inspections, mortgages, landscaping, remodeling, real estate law, and other things of interest to new home owners.

so much of what appears on real estate web sites is duplicate content, having original content would *PROBABLY* help out quite a bit.

Spend some time in the link development forum and you will get PLENTY of ideas on where to try and get links from.

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