August 24, 2016 by  Ashley Guberman

When we put time and energy into creating content, we want lots of people to see it.  We may be inclined to put it on our blog, on facebook, on LinkedIn, and maybe on a few others.  This is “duplicate content.”

A colleague of mine just wrote something about The Value of Collective Wisdom.  She posted it on her own website, as well as on LinkedIn as a long-form post.  Since her article was the genesis of this post, I’m happy to link to her content.

Marketing Morsel

Posting the same content on multiple media is a mistake.
Instead, post to ONE location, ideally your own website, then create snippets on other media that link to your original post.

Nutritional Content

Google and other search engines see your duplicate content.  They don’t know which one to value, so they devalue them both or arbitrarily pick one.  Plus, when we post on other media,  they can often do whatever they want with your content, even if you keep the copyright as the owner.  But probably the biggest reason for keeping your content on your own site is that you can track visitors. You’ll also have the opportunity to make them offers or have them opt into your email list by offering them something in exchange, such as downloading a free report for their email.

Further Reading

  • Hi Ashley,

    Thanks for alerting us to the issue of multiple locations for the same content.

    When you say google gets confused or arbitrarily chooses one – would this be avoided if the title is different or there are minor differences in the text?

    I appreciate you are trying to point potential customers to our websites and what we offer. However, we may get better reach by being with a publisher that has “brand equity”, huge following, a reputation etc.
    Also people use mobile platforms for LI, TW etc so can devote time to these when in transit, between meetings etc. and they get alerts which our websites don’t provide.

    • You have to have substantial changes for Google or other search engines to see that it is really different… not just a title change.

      Plus, say you get twice as many views on LinkedIn as your own site… but on your own site, you can capture email addresses. What is more valuable? Getting email to build a list.

      But even if you don’t have list-management set up yet, by sending people to your own site you can “retarget” them. That means that with a tiny snippet of code from FaceBook already on your site, you can then place an advertisement on FB to ONLY those people who visited your site already. You cannot do that if your content was on LinkedIn rather than your own site.

      So instead, just put the opening paragraph or an abstract on LI, and link to your original article on your site.

      There’s another level / option for when you guest post on another site called a canonical URL, which lets you duplicate posts, but the canonical URL tells search engines “this is a copy,” and where the original (canonical) version lives.

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