How to Have the Same Content on your Blog as your Website
Unless your website and your blog are one and the same, many times people have and off-site blog or subscribe to a blogging platform. While this is important as the blogging platform may have the higher authority and get your blog indexed quicker, if you want to copy and syndicate the blog post over on your website there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.
If you want the same information on and off-site blog as on your website that can be tricky but it’s not impossible. The ideal way to do this is to post first on your main website so that your website has the authority and carries the higher value. Once your website has been indexed or you can find the blog post or article on the search engines, then copy and paste (syndicate) that post over to your blog. The vital and crucial part to this step is posting were crediting where the content originated. Somewhere within the new syndicated post or article there needs to be a link back to your website where you originally published the content. It can be an anchor text link or a naked link of the actual URL but somewhere there has to be a link to the source of where the content originally came from.
Related Post: Keeping Things Unique
If you don’t put this link in the content Google will think you have scrapes this content illegally and plagiarized it without giving proper credit to where it originated.
The Internet is full of duplicate content in the form of news briefs and syndicated articles but the reason that they work is that the original author, whether it’s you or someone else, is always credited.
Peggy Wester and Beth Atalay both have WordPress websites that they blog for on a regular basis, but they also blog off-site on ActiveRain. While they benefit from the instant indexing on ActiveRain, they may want some of their blog posts to syndicate over on their website. My suggestion is that this is done minimally with only the articles you truly want in your website and properly link back to the source for optimal as SEO results.
Other websites can have a blog off of their main website but still offer the same information just in different formats. 100% Australian offers a blog at 100% Aussie.com with reviews and link backs to their main site but still maintains all the major content on the main site. Advantage Legal Group has a WordPress blog where they blog about Bellevue bankruptcy but still maintain a main website for contact and basic services.
Choose your content carefully and try to keep them separate so you can be found for more information in more places.
I love this tip because it is much easier than the approach I have been taking which is to change the titles, slightly change the first paragraph, photo name/title, and all of the words I want to rank for. Thanks Tammy!
Well, that is the BEST way AND still provide a link back, but if you don’t have the time, by all means, post a attribution. Thanks Anita!: )
Tammy, thanks for clarifying this in such an easy to understand way. ActiveRain indexes so well immediately, but we do want people to find out own blogs as well. Thanks!
Right. you want both. AR for the fast indexing and blog roll attention but sometimes we want that valuable information on our own sites.
Great tip Tammy, thank you!
Tammy: thank you so much for this great tip. I have been wondering about how to approach my website blog vs my Activerain blog.
Tammy, I always wait to make sure my post on my web site is indexed (taking longer than it use to) before I syndicate with canonical code. So far it seems to be working. Glad to read this, because some are still preaching not to syndicate!
There are so many news briefs that quote the source of regurgitated material that it’s all the same thing. Go for it. And yes, it can’t hurt to wait until it’s indexed first. Thanks Lori!
Tammy,
I am so excited to have found your website and the great information you provide! I have wondered about duplicate content and if it’s of value. Thank you so much.
I’m new to blogging. I have a wordpress blog on my website and an active rain rainmaker account. So, I should post the blog on my website and wait for it to get indexed. Then, I would post that on Active Rain. can you give examples of an anchor text link or a naked link of the actual URL but somewhere there has to be a link to the source of where the content originally came from.
The source link just has to be linked back to where the post originated. You will see this on a lot of posts from the wall street journal or various news sites. You can do it a variety of ways either [Source] and link the word source back to your post on your site or give the actual linked URL – the naked link saying something like, “Adapted from or Source from http://www.yourwebsite.com“
Should you just say “source from http://www.blog.PrincetonAreaRealEstate.com” or does it have to be the specific blog post it came from, i.e. “source from http://blog.princetonarearealestate.com/blog/west-windsor-nj-home-prices-january-2014/” ? And would it be put at the end of the blog.
This is great stuff. I had someone else who blogs a lot on Active Rain and her wp website say it’s ok to post at the same time and it won’t be dinged as duplicate content. Since I’m brand new at this, I need to know what is really correct. I appreciate your help.
Yes, you want the actual URL from where it’s posted, not just the main URL. You know, I haven’t found a definite pattern one way or the other on when to post but if you have the source at the bottom and post right after, then Google will know that the source came first, not the reblog on AR. I think it’s fine to do it right away as along as you link back to your site first.