Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?
-
A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences.
The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time.
Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content?
I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided!
Thank you!
-
It depends. If the article goes on your site first it gets indexed and all the credit. If someone takes it for their own usage and does not link back to you it can hurt them. If they syndicate your article and trackback to the original, AKA the first one indexed they will not be punished.
-
There is a larger issue at play here.
Submitting the same article to multiple outlets is a sure way of pissing off editors and destroying relationships. It could be seen as less than exemplary conduct. I speak as a former editor.
If your client is a thought leader, the best bet is to submit one article to one outlet. Which is not to say you can't write another article for another publication that is a variation on the theme.
I work with thought leaders in several fields. Guest blogging is a hugely effective technique. The outlets are thrilled to get a free article from a leading expert that is far more authoritative than what they usually publish.
But you must insist on a link back or there is no SEO benefit. (There may be a marketing and branding benefit.) Often the link back can be done in the author's note. Even better is getting it in the text in a natural way. And you have to be relentless is ensuring the links actually appear. Not infrequently, you have to follow up post-publication.
My strategy is to time the guest blogging activity to coincide with the release of research or an e-book. We target 5-7 leading publications. Each gets an original and unique article that focusses on one aspect of the material. The articles on the third-party sites point back to the full version on our own site.
Just to be clear: we're not talking about cutting and pasting. We're talking about an original article customized to the third-party site and its audience that may have go through several drafts.
It's quite a bit of work, but it pays off. Big time.
These days, I call myself a web strategist. But sometimes I also act as a content strategist. I really think this is the future of our industry, post Panda and Penguin.
-
If the text is exactly the same in each article then yes, Google looks for large chunks of duplicate text. Usually the way to do this would be to rewrite the article for each site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Help Setting Up 301 Redirects from Coldfusion Site to Wordpress Site.
I have created a new website and need to redirect all of the previous pages to the new one. The old website was built in coldfusion and the new site is built in wordpress. One of the pages I'm trying to redirect is www.norriseal.com/products.cfm to http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/. This is what I have in my .htaccess file <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymlinks
Technical SEO | | MarketHubb
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
Redirect 301 /products.cfm http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/</ifmodule> The result of this redirect is http://norrisealwellmark.com/products.cfm How do I prevent the .cfm from appending to the destination URL?1 -
Does my "spam" site affect my other sites on the same IP?
I have a link directory called Liberty Resource Directory. It's the main site on my dedicated IP, all my other sites are Addon domains on top of it. While exploring the new MOZ spam ranking I saw that LRD (Liberty Resource Directory) has a spam score of 9/17 and that Google penalizes 71% of sites with a similar score. Fair enough, thin content, bunch of follow links (there's over 2,000 links by now), no problem. That site isn't for Google, it's for me. Question, does that site (and linking to my own sites on it) negatively affect my other sites on the same IP? If so, by how much? Does a simple noindex fix that potential issues? Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
Technical SEO | | eglove0 -
Will Adding Publish Date at end of Page Title for Blog posts Hurt SEO?
I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO? The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content
Technical SEO | | inhouseninja0 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
Is pointing multiple domains to a single website beneficial for SEO or not?
A client has purchased many domains with keywords in each. They want to have us point each domain to their site for better SEO. Is this a good or bad thing to do?
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
Can dynamically translated pages hurt a site?
Hi all...looking for some insight pls...i have a site we have worked very hard on to get ranked well and it is doing well in search. The site has about 1000 pages and climbing and has about 50 of those pages in translated pages and are static pages with unique urls. I have had no problems here with duplicate content and that sort of thing and all pages were manually translated so no translation issues. We have been looking at software that can dynamically translate the complete site into a handfull of languages...lets say about 5. My problem here is these pages get produced dynamically and i have concerns that google will take issue with this aswell as the huge sudden influx of new urls....as now we could be looking at and increase of 5000 new urls. (which usually triggers an alarm) My feeling is that it could be risking the stability of the site that we have worked so hard for and maybe just stick with the already translated static pages. I am sure the process could be fine but fear a manual inspection and a slap on the wrist for having dynamically created content?? and also just risk a review trigger period. These days it is hard to know what could get you in "trouble" and my gut says keep it simple and as is and dont shake it up?? Am i being overly concerned? Would love to here from others who have tried similar changes and also those who have not due to similar "fear" thanks
Technical SEO | | nomad-2023230 -
First click on SEO redirecting to a competitor site?
I just experienced something VERY odd and wondered if any of you had an idea of what it might be. When I did a search on Google and clicked the top SEO listing I was taken to a competitor of the number 1 listed site i.e. NOT the site I clicked on. When I clicked the back button and clicked it again, I was taken to the correct site. This happened with two different searches and I was taken to two different sites. Could this be a clever/sinister cookie implemented by the competitor; a site I frequent regularly? Could this be malware implemented by an affiliate? Could this be a Google glitch?
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
What are the pros and cons of moving one site onto a subdomain of another site?
Two sites. One has weaker sales. What would the benefits and problems for SEO of moving the weak site from its own domain to a subdomain of the stronger site?
Technical SEO | | GriffinHansen0