Can I use canonical or alternate URLs such that there is SEO benefit to both sites with duplicate local content?

Question

My company manages a network of local websites, all of which run on separate subdomains. Each subdomain represents a different locality (eg brooklyn.example.com, queens.example.com).

Often, we have content that's great for multiple localities, and we post that same content on multiple sub-domains (eg brooklyn.example.com/g-train-schedule, queens.example.com/g-train-schedule).

The content is useful to both sites, but right now we're using canonical URLs to say one version on one domain is the official version (eg <link rel="canonical" href="brooklyn.example.com/g-train-schedule"/>).

This means that even on the Queens site, the SEO benefit is being passed to the Brooklyn domain, even though the content is just as valuable for readers in Queens. If someone searches "Queens G Train Schedule", we're not coming up because our canonical URL is in Brooklyn.

So my question: is this a correct use of rel="canonical"? Is there a way to provide the SEO benefit to both sites? Would rel="alternate" be appropriate or helpful in this case?

Answer 1

Canonical is not a get out of duplicate jail free card

Duplicate content is duplicate content. Using <cite> <link rel="canonical"> and so on doesn’t make your content any less duplicate. If you have hundreds to thousands of pages that are duplicate, then you can expect your site to rank badly or even not at all on some/most/all search terms. In fact, too many of these type of pages will likely make your site rank extremely poorly on every page, never mind the duplicate pages.

Unique and duplicate content

You can, however, get Google to index your pages if your pages have some content of their own. For example, if you’re reviewing a movie and you want to include 5 different reviews and insights from other critics, then using the cite element would be correct, and you’d rank very well by doing so, because you’re adding value.

Canonical links for sites with various pages accessible many different ways

Canonical is designed to work in favor of sites that have various pages that can be accessed by many different URLs. For example, a page may be accessible via /?content=page1/ and its SEO-friendly URL may be /page-1/. Before canonical, Google and other search engines didn’t know what page should be rewarded, and both got marked as duplicate. Now it’s as simple as using canonical and not having to worry about wrongfully being marked as duplicate.