Posting blogs in multiple locations protocol

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Permalink Reply by Carrie Williams, Community Manager on June 7, 2009 at 11:51am

For me, I post my blogs on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. My RSS feed automatically posts my blogs on TBEX. I think it is important to share your posts wherever you can in order to reach a wider audience. I mean, TBEX, for example has a lot of members. All of them may not be following you on Twitter or may not be a member of Matador, you know? It's good to post your blog wherever you can. Are you worried about the "rights" to your blog posts? If so, I suggest getting a Creative Commons License.

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Permalink Reply by SEO Secrets Travel & Tourism on June 7, 2009 at 11:57am

Hello Carrie, could you please explain to me how you post the blog posts to TBEX through RSS? I cannot find this option for my blog. I add them manually now.

Looking forward to hearing your tips!

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Permalink Reply by Donna Hull on June 8, 2009 at 6:59am

I post a paragraph or two of my blog entries in several web locations with a link pointing back to the original post. I've read that if you post the blog entry in its entirety in multiple locations, Google doesn't like it. Hope someone more expert in Google rankings will speak up here.

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Permalink Reply by Nerd's Eye View on June 8, 2009 at 8:51am

Carrie's motivation is spot on and Donna's concerns are pretty standard. The concern is that you'll be dinged in page rank, meaning your stuff won't show up highly ranked in search results.

There's a post on the Google webmaster blog that might help you understand the issue better -- click through on the duplicate content links, too. [LINK]

There's something else to think about, though. One of my editors mentioned this to me once when I asked about posting something I'd written to both their site and the blog -- he said "we want to avoid being part of the echo chamber effect on the Internet" (or something like that). Good point. It's annoying to see the same stuff show up all over the place and worse,it's boring. I unsubscribe when I'm seeing duplicate content. I want to support the value of the places I'm sending you as unique destinations in their own right. (Hey, that echo chamber remark makes sense.) If you post the same stuff to Matador that you do to your own blog, why should I read your blog?

That's NOT the same as posting links to Twitter, FB, whatever. Go ahead and let everyone know you have something new out, no matter where you're posting it. But full duplication elsewhere? Meh.

Disclaimer o rama: YMMV, my .02, etc. Plus, this: I try really hard not to write for The Google Monster AND I am NOT an SEO expert. Also,I have done rewrites and refreshes to older content for other venues. But I always rework the stuff so it's not a straight repost.

P.

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Permalink Reply by JoAnna Haugen on June 9, 2009 at 10:13am

Thanks for all the great insight! I like the idea of posting a "teaser" in several places then leading traffic back to my site and will give that a shot. I appreciate your input!

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Permalink Reply by JoAnna Haugen on June 11, 2009 at 2:28pm

I actually write web copy a company in the travel/tourism industry and just yesterday my boss mentioned the duplicate posting thing, so each place we are placing a certain block of copy on the site I am having to repurpose and tweak it a bit to make it new. I'm using some of the same keywords and adding some similar keywords in, then rewriting it so that the context is the same but the content is differently.

For my personal blog, I think that instead of posting a couple of the paragraphs, I am going to write a one- or two-paragraph "teaser" with the key points. My goal is not to be high in SEO rankings, but to have enough compelling copy to get people to click to my site to read more.

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