How does a page with a canonical for another domain impact SEO?

[KendallHershey]

Hi,

We have a requirement to host files that contains .html, .css, .js, and .pdf files externally on AWS S3 bucket. We have a landing page on our site that contains a link to those external links (i.e. pdf). On our site's (hosted on Drupal), landing page we already have a canonical link for the current landing page. On the .html file which is hosted externally, we were thinking to add the same canonical link that exists for the landing page so that search engines will go to the externally available .html file and interpret that the externally hosted file is related to our landing page. I was wondering if this is an acceptable solution without any SEO penalty. If there is a penalty, what would be the alternative solution to this so we can host files externally and drive most of the traffic to our landing page?

Example

Landing page: absolute url = https://www.site-domain.com/page-url

......

Externally available .html file (static)

......

[RuthBurrReedy]

If you want to say to Google, "this HTML file is the same as this landing page," the canonical tag would be appropriate. If you're just trying to make sure that Google can crawl from the HTML file to the landing page, linking to it on the page should suffice. Either way, I don't think you'd incur any penalty.

[KendallHershey]

Hi Ruth,

When you say linking to it on the page should suffice, you are referring to the landing page having a link that points to the HTML file correct?

[RuthBurrReedy]

I meant the other way around - since the goal is to drive Google from the HTML file to the landing page, correct?

[KendallHershey]

i see, that makes sense. We will proceed with adding the canonical as mentioned. Thanks again