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.
Is it okay to post my blog posts to both an internal blog on our domain and an external blog?
-
We have a blog internally at kay-grant.com/blog and also created an external blog at ActiveRain.com
Is it okay to post the same blog posts to both sites or should I have different content for each blog?
-
The only safe move here is to create amazing content for both blogs - but why have 2 blogs? Why double your effort when you could be using all the content to prop up the main site?
Andy makes a very good point here. If you have a good article about Brass Widgets on your website and you decide that you want to write a second Brass Widgets article to publish on another website, then you are going to publish a second article that will compete with you and take some of your traffic.
Even if the articles are slightly different or very different they will still be "competing" - either at the short tail keyword level or the long tail keyword level. The result will be damaging to your traffic. The amount of damage will be proportional to the strength difference of your domains and the diversity of keywords in the articles. If the second domain is a lot more powerful than your own domain you could lose almost all of your traffic to the second website.
I have a website that publishes only unique articles. Some of those articles have been written by other people in my industry who have similar articles or entire websites about the topics that they gave me to publish. I never asked any of these people to write an article for my website. Every one of them came to me with an offer. With content written by these other authors, my website frequently outranks their website for primary and secondary keyword of the industry. They might have a website that is powerful for the topic, but I have a website that is authoritative in the industry. It can be hard to predict who will win at different levels but my site now competes and brings in lots of traffic for topic areas where I have never written.
Publishing on your own site, as Andy suggests, builds the strength of your site and does not invite potentially strong competitors into your keyword space. There are benefits of sharing articles. You get exposure as an "expert" on another website, which might have amazing traffic that includes visitors who will seek you out to do business. You can often get a link on those websites that will send lots of traffic to your website. The best situation for all is if you simply want to get your message out to as many people as possible, but if there are competitive concerns then you must weigh the value of a link with the value of the exposure and the risk of a very strong competitor moving permanently into your space.
-
That's the wrong way to try and gain backlinks Geoff. You want to build links to your main site, but you want to be creating something in one place that is going to benefit you. An external site that then links back to you from duplicated content wont do it for you.
Good linkbuilding takes time, and it starts with your content - write something that is better than others have and take to social media to promote it.
I could honestly write a book about link building - it is that involved, but start by perfecting content that others will want to share and link to.
-Andy
-
I publish blogs on my company's blog and sometimes I will take that same topic and expand on a few key points that were previously discussed. Andy is correct though you need to create unique content especially if you want to use the blog to obtain backlinks.
Next time you write a blog try to take a topic you covered and go further in depth and see what new information you can come up with instead of duplicating the content.
Hope that helps some.
-
This is indexed by search engines. When I say internal I just mean hosted on the domain.
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the response! My thought behind this is to develop backlinks.
-
Hi Geoff,
This isn't best practice at all. You don't want to have two or more copies of anything anywhere.
I don't even think that re-purposing any of the articles would be a good move.
Imagine that you are Google - if you see the same article in more than 2 places, what do you do? Penalise one site? Realise that both sites are owned by you and punish both sites? Don't show either article in a good position?
The only safe move here is to create amazing content for both blogs - but why have 2 blogs? Why double your effort when you could be using all the content to prop up the main site?
-Andy
-
Unique content would be preferred. Is the internal blog being indexed within search engines or is it just for employees?
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
-
How To Increase Blog DA to 50+
Hey, I am wondering to know the key metrics which MOZ considers before giving a blog of DA 50+. I have tried to search but couldn't find the best answers so was wondering how it's achieved. For example a site named "SportsALA" have a DA of 20 but i see they have links from many sites. I have checked other sites as well for example and they have less RDs but still had higher DA. Can anyone help me to explain Moz DA 2.0 factors a bit more. Thanks
Link Building | | Hamzayounas11 -
More than one link on an external website
Just wanted to clarify my understanding of this... I'm of the understanding that if an external site has more than one link going to your site, then it is only the one link that passes value. If this is the case.... Which is the link that passes value (i.e the first link established or the link that, all factors being considered, is the most valuable for passing authority?) If a second link established on an external website comes from and goes to a different webpage than the first (and is done for the purposes of targeting and boosting a different keyword category/theme), is this then a beneficial practice? If multiple links on an external website all serve to generate solid referral traffic, will this boost rankings, and thereby be a sound practice? Thanks in advance for your help in clarifying this for me!
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Sponsored posts against Google guidelines?
I'm a bit confused. Every blog I try to outreach on always give me a quote for a sponsored post. Isn't this against Google guidelines because you paying for a link technically even though your paying for a post? Do you guys buy sponsored posts? Should this be avoided? How do you outreach to a blog that offers sponsored posts? They can smell that you want a link from a mile away and give you a nice fat quote.
Link Building | | The_Kiwi_Man1 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Domain Authority and nofollow links?
Hello, I'm wondering, are 'nofollow' links from websites with high domain authority beneficial? Would they boost our own DA? In essence, I'm wondering if there is added value (other than visitors clicking the link) to being linked to by a 'nofollow' link. Thanks!
Link Building | | yacpro130 -
Should we BackLink to Guest Post ?
Hi, I have been actively doing guest blogging for last few weeks . But the page authority , moz Rank and moz Trust of my guest posts appear 0 as those posts have their own pages on blogs with snippets of posts on home page. I wanted to ask if i should backlink to my guest posts to increase the authority, mR and mT of pages. Those posts are already appearing as backlinks in webmaster tools but if i backlink to my posts to increase mR and mT, then will it also increase the juice passed by backlinks in those posts to landing pages on my site ? Thanks,
Link Building | | shaz_lhr0 -
Too many links in my blog post created by comments. Should I worry?
Every year, we do a popular "Favourite pictures of the year" contest where people vote on the best picture (i.e: their mate's) in order to win something. But I just found that I'm going way over the "Too many links" limit and I think it's because of all the comments. 1. Is it a problem 2. Is there a way to de-activate the links? Thank you! 🙂 Ioan
Link Building | | IoanSaid0 -
Building Links to Exact Match Domains
What are the pros and cons having exact match domain and how can you create a brand name and build backlinks? Say we have a domain personalizedbirthdaygifts.com We are quite stuck with what anchor text we need to use and how do we vary it? I've heard that we have to stay away from using commercial keywords as anchor text heavily. We have to also use our brand name. And here we get stuck as we don't have a brand name. In this case Our brand name should be personalized birthday gifts but this is also commercial keyword. I have seen before similar websites droped from ranking because they have commercial keywords in their domain and most of their backlink anchor texts are commercial. If I had a website called twentyfive.com selling birthday gifts it would be a lot easier. But when you have a website personalizedbirthdaygifts.com and trying to rank for personalized birthday gifts and birthday gifts it's tough. OR isn't it? I hope I explained it well and didn't confuse anybody... Thanks
Link Building | | Jvalops0