Alternative to rel canonical?
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Hello there, we have a problem.
Let's say we have a website www.mainwebsite.com
Then you have 40 websites like this:
www.retailer6.mainwebsite.com … an so on
In order to avoid the duplicate content penalty from Google we've added a rel="canonical" in each 40 sub-websites mapping each page of them to www.mainwebsite.com
Our issue is that now, all our retailers (each owner of www.retailer-X.mainwebsite.com) are complaining about the fact that they are disappeared from Google.
How can we avoid to use rel="canonical" in the sub-website and not being penalised by Google for duplicate content in www.mainwebsite.com?
Many thanks, all your advices are much appreciated.
YESdesign team
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Your options are pretty limited, I'm afraid.
If you don't want to implement canonicals, then you're only alternative is to not have duplicate content. In which case, you and your retailers will need to rewrite and be unique.
To be honest, I would be pushing all your retailers to do this anyway. Not only will having their unique content help each subdomain rank easier, it should be remembered that the canonical tag is a suggestion to Google, not a directive/order. A very strong suggestion, it's worth noting, but not a 100% proof solution.
Unique content, on the other hand, is.
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Tom is very right - you cant have the best of both worlds with your current set up.
Your partners need to attract visitors on their site through content they write and publish - not yours.
All the best.
Richard
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Thank you Tom and Richard555.
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Does anyone have more suggestion/alternative strategies? Many thanks in advance.
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