What’s a canonical tag and why law bloggers should care
As a lawyer or law firm you put a lot of time, money and effort into digital publishing, probably in the form of blogging. So it’s understandable that you’d like to extend the reach of your blog by syndicating some of your posts to other sites, networks and third party distribution services.
But in doing so you need to make sure you make it is a win/win for you and the third party site or service you are syndicating your content to.
For example, in the case of Above the Law and Law.com they need media. Media generates ad revenue for them. They add to their media by getting blog posts from respected authorities and columnists, mostly lawyers.
If you are syndicating blogs posts to these sites you receive in consideration for your media the additional exposure that such sites provide you.
But what happens when someone does a Google search for something that you covered in your blog post? Will they see your blog post on your blog site displayed in the Google search results or your blog post displayed on the third party site?
Google will not display both results. Google will in effect penalize one of the sites and treat the site as duplicate content.
Because the site you’re syndicating your content may be indexing on Google more law content than your blog, the third party site is going to be looked at by Google as more important or influential site on the law. The third party site will be credited for your content upon a Google search while your blog site is penalized. Not good.
There’s an easy work around though so you get things back to a win/win. It’s the canonical tag.
A canonical tag helps webmasters prevent duplicate content issues by specifying the “canonical”, or “preferred”, version of a web page as part of search engine optimization. The canonical tag helps webmasters make clear to the search engines which page should be credited as the original.
A canonical tag originally was “coded” into a site, but most WordPress sites and publishing systems today have a place to insert the canonical URL, the URL which the page in question should direct to as the “preferred” version of duplicate content.
When syndicating, post your blog post first on your blog and then send your post onto the syndicating site or service with the canonical URL (the URL from your post). Ask them to place the canonical URL in place with your post so you are not penalized by Google and receive credit for your post at your blog.
It’s easy to do and a win/win for both sides.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Andrea Marutti