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When you say both sites show up in results, but for different queries, are you referring to the actual duplicate content pages/articles, or the homepage and other target pages. These pages/sites may be ranking for these different terms due to strength of the site/page and backlink profiles.

In terms of canonical tags, if one site is going to be doing a cross domain canonical to the other site, I don't see how this could help the site that is doing the cross domain canonical. The site receiving the canonical tag and being credited as the source of the original content, I could see this helping them and helping the page of content to rank higher, but I don't see why this would help the site linking out with the cross domain canonical.

My suggestion - the site producing the content should get the credit, cross domain canonicals should be used to associate the credit for the content with the site producing the content, and you should also include a piece of text in the content piece that says this originally appeared on xyz website, or something along those lines. I'd provide as many signals to the engines as possible as to where to attribute this content.

your comment about visualizing internal linking in charts reminded me of this post and the posts that are linked within - maybe this will help a bit

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/one-more-great-way-to-use-fusion-tables-for-seo

It pulls title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords if they're on the page, H1, H2, etc - very useful and it seems like it'll do a lot of what you're looking for - definitely worth the 99 pounds fro the year!

You can use screaming frog to crawl the site, and it will show you the internal links and anchor text to each page across the site as well. Though this post from Branko is a bit old,it's still a great resource on using Screaming Frog to check for internal linking issues - http://www.seo-scientist.com/seo-spider-review-xenu-on-seo-steroids.html

Screaming Frog has a paid version, but the free version will you crawl up to 500 URLs, so that might be sufficient for ya.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Mark

Sounds very interesting and like a great opportunity for you.

What I don't get - why build a strategy for a site that you're going to eventually 301? Why not register the candidate's name, build up the content and the brand of the candidate over there, and then eventually just launch a site redesign/more formal look on the site once the candidacy is announced. Why the need to 301 to a new site? You don't want to lose some of your hard earned equity in 301s.

I also think in terms of social, be authentic, and let the candidate tweet about issues facing the community, etc. I think an authentic social media campaign will be more successful than a political censored one even before the candidate announces that they're running.

I agree with what William wrote, it's just not super easy. In addition to building out the great content, you have to market it. You have to get the word out - you have to do the outreach. It's not enough to build awesome content, you have to share it, via social networks, email, outreach, word of mouth, contacts you may have, the press, etc. You can build the best blog pieces out there, but if no one hears about it, it ain't gonna do you much good.

Adria wrote a great post here on SEOMoz the other day - I'd check it out - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/why-link-building-strategies-fail

You'll have to do this in Google docs and not in Excel, but try this solution:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/updated-tool-seomoz-api-data-for-google-docs

No problem. Let me know how it goes.

Why are you launching the .ca site - to target Canada, right? So then it pays to get any advantage you can to rank in Canada, and so whatever advantage the Canadian hosting will have, isn't it worth it to go after that?

HI Joel,

I'm looking at a blog post now on the site - http://activerain.com/blogsview/3275081/the-true-cost-of-collecting- - it's links are followed - you can use the mozbar to check/highlight followed and nofollow links. The links on this page are certainly followed and passing link equity.

That being said, blog here for the exposure to the readership and potential clientele, in addition to the brand exposure. Don't just do it for SEO purposes, but contribute value to the community - your returns will be greater in the long run with this mentality!

Mark

Hi,

It will very clear to Google the two sites are related, simply from the URLs and similar content alone. With eyeforweb.com being hosted in the US, and you may want to boost your Canadian rankings by hosting the site in Canada.

I'd certainly recommend, depending on the overlapping content between the two sites, that you implement the rel alternate tag as well - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 - it can be a bit tricky, but it's worth it.

Hope this helps,

Mark

This sounds like a plan. Give it a shot and test the results

You should check your rel canonical in the header of your html, and see where it's pointing to. Sounds like it's pointing to a different page. You can check this with the mozbar - analze the page, and go to the page attributes section - it'll show you the rel canonical tag for the page.

Send an example of the page if you want us to look at it and see if we can give you more specifics.

Ideally you should remove one and 301 redirect it to the other. If you need to keep both pages on your site, then definitely use the canonical tag.

As an aside, I'd also configure your server to fix your URLs and remove the capital letters - configure your htaccess file on your apache server to automatically redirect capital letters to lowercase, thereby avoiding further canonical issues. See here for more info - http://www.stateofsearch.com/three-htaccess-tips-for-seo/

Hi Marisa,

It sounds like you're advocating for all of us members to get organized and create the largest link network the world has ever seen (mwahahaha). While there is some logic to it, I really think this is exactly the type of stuff that Google is going after. In the end, what it would come down to is the user. By your linking from your site to the coat hanger site, are you benefiting your user? Is the link in context and does it make sense? If someone was genuinely interested in reading your article, would following your link help them? If so, by all means do it. I don't think Google will penalize people for naturally linking to friends, business partners, associates, local businesses, etc. But what happens when this becomes organized, and your DIY furniture blog starts linking to forex sites and cheap online prescriptions? While that is clearly an exaggeration, I see it as only a matter of time before things would deteriorate. While you should by all means be building relationships and establishing connections and then leveraging those connections for all purposes, including link equity, you need to keep your user in mind in the end and be focused on them.

That being said, I'm all for contextual outbound links to relevant sites - let's all spread the link love a bit more!

I'd try SEMRush - http://www.semrush.com - although they only offer some of the data for free, I'd check it out - sounds like it can help you and would serve as a good comparison to Ahrefs.