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
-
Impact on backlinking with https://www.domain or https://domain
Hi, this questions have bugging me for a long time now; we check our website how is indexed on Google and we see that we have most of the backlinks for URL https://www.speedhub.eu , but 15% are linked to https://speedhub.eu , in the past we had our website for http requests redirected via 301 htaccess to https://speedhub.eu without giving it importance, now we have it with www included. Bottom line questions: Is it important if your links are with www or without www, do you lose "link juice" by splitting your backlinks via links with www or without www ? Does Google make a difference for domain positioning via this criteria ? Best regards,
Link Building | | SPEEDHUB_eu0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Owning a ton of domain names
I have a question really a matter of opinion for those other SEO's and marketers out there. One of the companies I work for has a ton of domains, just about every variant and international version of its domain name. Do you think there is real value to owning something like .mobi? It's not a mis-spelling variant and as I understand it the forwarded domain means nothing to Google. It's also not much used, so what is the point of spending thousands of dollars to own all these variations?
Link Building | | ScottOlson0 -
What is the best backlink? Homepage or specific post?
I am working hard to get backlinks from other blogs by submitting deal tips. I am a deal blog so I am wondering - is it better to get a backlink to a specific post that will expire because it is a time sensitive deal or sale? Or is it better to get a backlink to my homepage? I focus on the best blog with PR of 7 and DA of 72 as well as others that are high up there. In case I am not being clear, which backlink is better? A. www.mysite.com B. www.mysite.com/awesome-sale-of-the-day Sometimes I won't have a choice but just wondering what I should focus on or if it even matters. Thanks!
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Paid Blog Posts getting Deindexed?
Hello, We've used a popular paid blog posts platform to get back links through blog posts. Recently, performed a link audit noticed a very interesting problem. 40% of the 49 sites we purchased paid posts from, have been de-indexed. These blogs are the kinds that would take money from almost anybody in any given niche to write a review and give a paid link to you. So, I assume most of these blogs had a high number of outbound links. Their page rank has also been demoted to 0 (obviously since they're deindexed). Now, our dilemma is that should still go ahead with paid blog posts, after checking for the following: 1. PR 2. Google Penalty The sites at the time of purchasing the posts were not penalized. But 40% of the sites being completely de-indexed is a staggering number. Can someone please suggest whether to go with paid blog posts techniques or not?
Link Building | | globaleyeglasses1 -
Which Link Strategy is Better: .edus or Blogs?
Suppose you only have enough resources to execute a strategy that will earn links from 100 .edu sites or a strategy will earn 100 blogs on your industry. Which would you choose?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Blog Commenting Question Off Page
While blog commenting, many people tend to use their 'anchor text' when asked to provide with their name. Hyperlinking anchor text inside the blog comment is perfectly understandable for me but using anchor text when asked to provide your name is something that I see as spam and something that totally confuses a normal user who reads the blog comment and sees a weird name in the name section. Search engines too must be perfectly aware of this and thus I am of the opinion that such anchor texts don't care much weightage in the eyes of search engine. However many of my fellow SEO colleagues tend to differ. They say you should use anchor text when asked to provide with a name. And I am totally against this form of promotion That's why I wish to ask the opinion of experts in SEO MOZ on this topic. Awaiting your feedbacks
Link Building | | pulseseo0 -
Is there a way to optimize our other domains for our primary domain?
Hi guys, At the moment we have our main website that is at .com We have also bought all the other domains that are available, such as: org.uk, .jp, .it, .mobi, co.nz, co.za, com.au, .cn and .eu Is there a way we can make these domains work for us a bit more? Currently they all just redirect to .com. Would it be better to put a holding page with a link to us and then a redirect on?
Link Building | | Benj250