Avoid duplicate content with canonical URLs
Whether you're quoting content from another site or forming an explicit partnership with a press site, the problem of duplicate content arises immediately. You can't copy all or part of an article without being penalized by search engines for content theft. But don't panic: there's a simple technique you can use to identify what's original and what's a copy. Find all our CMS tips here.
How to avoid duplicate content?
Search engines, and Google in particular, penalize the copying of content, even if this has been agreed between the two websites. This frequently happens between sites publishing content on the same theme: offering the same article in two universes enables you to reach a wider audience and pool your efforts to offer new content more frequently. However, Google's robots make no distinction between the original and the copy when faced with two texts that are more than 50% identical. They therefore penalize all copies with a positioning penalty (degradation of SEO).
To enable robots to identify original content from its various copies, you can use the "canonical" tag below:
<link rel="canonical" href="http: // sitepartenaire.fr/article-original" />
This tag is to be placed on all versions of the duplicated article (including the original). The url contained in this tag is that of the original article.
Wordpress offers a number of extensions for adding canonical URLs. The best-known and most user-friendly is Yoast. After installing the plugin, go to the article you've just duplicated on your site with the author's consent. At the bottom of your article, you'll see the Yoast module and a logo with a cogwheel for parameter management. You can then paste the URL of the original article in the "canonical URL" field. Save your page and you're done!
The Drupal CMS also offers this functionality via the Metatag module.
Article translated from French