Is having two blogs bad?
-
I'm under the impression we should only have one blog, but the company I work for wants to have our original blogger site AND link it to a blog on our website. We're basically just duplicating content, which I know to be bad. Is there any benefit to using both? If not, (which I'm guessing there isn't) which one should we keep? Does google prefer we use blogger, instead of putting it on our company site? Do the links we get from blogger help for SEO more than just putting it on our site?
Any advice would be appreciated.
P.S. The Blogger account has been around longer, but it doesn't have substantial traffic. It gets about 200 pages vies a month, right now. However, the one on the website gets far less than that.
-
I believe that google started blogger to make blogging immediately easy for people who have no technical inclination and who would not want to pay the costs of hosting a website.
In my opinion, a law firm is not an appropriate user of Blogger. They should have the content on their own website where it can be used to impress their visitors and demonstrate why the visitor should hire this law firm.
Lots of people think that links from blogger to their website are going to be valuable. That is only true of outside websites are linking to the blogger blog. And when that happens only a fraction of the power will pass to the law firm site. However, if the blog is on the law firm site and an outside website links to a blog post then the entire law firm site will benefit from that link.
If I owned a site like the one that you are talking about, I would look at the existing blogger blog and if it does not have very many links then I would move all of the posts to the law firm site. All future blogging would be on the law firm site.
All of my blogs are on my own domain.
-
As always, thank you everyone for your advice. This community is great! I really do appreciate it.
-
Well, we were under the impression that since Google owned Blogger, they would value those blogs more (whether they said so or not). Apparently, this thread has made it clear they don't.
-
Our conversion rate for referral visits is around 5 to 10% depending on the blog. Does the unique phone number tracking work well? I don't know much about it. We talked about doing that, but I though it might confuse people, if they saw a different number every time. Has that ever been a legitimate concern?
-
We were working on the assumption, since blogger is a Google property, it would be best to have it there. Glad to know that's not a big concern.
-
I can't imagine why a law firm would blog from an outhouse rather than blog on their own site?
-
Have you identified how many of those 200 visits are converting in some way (unique phone number being tracked or referral visits from there to your domain)? You could keep what you've got on blogger and stop blogging there, delete the content that's been duplicated on your domain and just continue blogging from your domain. The value of moving the content already hosted on blogger may be minimal.
Your law firm is going to look better to potential clients if those prospects find content on the law firms domain rather than on a freebie alternative.
-
Yes, you're on the right track. Duplication bad. If you already spend resources for blogging, make sure the blog is part of the website you want users to purchase your products and services.
If management really cannot be conviced to stop this duplication craziness, at least get them to implement rel=canonical pointing to the company blog on your own domain to minimize duplication impact.
-
Hey there
Your assumptions are correct - there is no benefit from doing this and you're actually running a significant risk with the duplicate content.
I'd highly recommend moving the blog permanently to your own website. Think of it this way - would you rather have a link from a blog post that might have a few social shares and links - or would you rather have those social shares and links be pointing directly to your domain?
It has to be the second option for me. Having your blog posts sitting on your own domain will mean your root domain will directly benefit from any sharing or linking to the blog post - while potential clients are also landing directly to your site, shortening the conversion path. There won't be any added benefit to have it done externally just because blogger is a Google property - even if there was it certainly wouldn't outweigh having those ranking signals directly pointing your site.
Hope this helps.
-
I wouldn't intentionally create duplicate content. I would talk with your company and stress the importance of avoiding duplicate content creation.
As for where to host the blog. I would recommend hosting it on your site if possible. Links to the blog posts will benefit the domain it's hosted on. The only way to really benefit your site would be to link to pages on your site from within blog posts; however, that would not be as beneficial as hosting the blog on your company's site and building links directly to your company's domain.
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
-
Internal Links from Blog
Quick question. In regards to linking to products from your blog. I've read recently that linking excessively between your site can be a bad SEO habit. So, I was curious if anyone else has heard of this. Plus, if you have a blog, how many internal links should you have going to you pages on your site - other blogs, products etc? Thanks.
Content Development | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Two pages for, essentially, the same product.
My client currently has a page on their website that advertises one of their products. The product in question is manufactured by someone else but branded by my client. Recently, the manufacturer have released their own version with their own branding which is available to the public. My client has decided that they are going to stock both their own version and the manufacturers version of the product to avoid losing any sales. This have left us with trying to find the best way to add the new product to the site without it competing with my clients own product in search engine results. We want the page to be indexed so that people searching for the manufacturers product can still find it on our site but at the same time we risk cannibalisation and essentially having two pages with what will essentially be the same content. Does anyone have any ideas for a suitable solution? I am unsure whether we should create a new page for the new product or whether we should somehow incorporate the new product in to the existing page.
Content Development | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Why is redirecting all broken pages to the homepage is a bad idea?
I have a site where all broken pages are redirected to the homepage. I've been told that it's a bad idea in terms of SEO. I just can't figure out why 🙂
Content Development | | VinceWicks0 -
Correction Duplicate Page Title Problems for a Blog
EDITED: To just focus on the issue at hand. I am trying to figure out the SEO rules instead of just working on the content. Please bear with me. I am adept technically. I just do not know the rules of the SEO process or even some of the termology. So I’m trying to attack problems one at time. Today’s problem – **Duplicate Page Titles ** We evidently have thousands of Duplicate Page Titles. We are using Joomla 2.5 & Easyblog. Our sitemap is automated from XML Sitemap Easyblog takes the title of the sites and uses it for a name of the summary pages. We post 5 blog items per page and all the names are the same. http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=5 Page Title = Site Name http://www.OursiteName.com/?start=10 Page Title = Site Name A similar thing happens on the sorting by Author or Category etc etc. Basically non-duplicate pages are looking like duplicates. What is the best practice / approach? Using the Robot.txt or XML Sitemap to tell Google not to crawl these pages? Writing a script or edit the Easyblog code to edit the 2000 duplicate Page Titles? Other thoughts?
Content Development | | Romana0 -
Duplicate Text on Blog & Internal News Page
I have two places I post news for our company. Our blog - typically more informal posts
Content Development | | seo-hunter
mycompany.wordpress.com & Our news page - typically more newsworthy than the blog
mycompany.com/news My question is, It is okay to just copy the exact text from my wordpress blog and paste to my news area of my site and vice versa? Does this hurt ranking potential for either page?0 -
Guest Blogging
Hey Guys, I've been reading about the power of guest blogging and it seems like a fun way to build links. However, finding blogs that allow guest blog posts is a bit tougher than I thought. I read about MyBlogGuest.com and some other guest blog networks. Are these legit and am I on the right track when searching for blogs that will allow a guest post? Thanks!
Content Development | | GoldStarGames0 -
Blog as sub folder or subdomain
Is it better to set up a blog using a sub folder on the website's domain or by using a subdomain: http://www.domain.com/blog/ http://blog.domain.com
Content Development | | yourspares0 -
Tagging Your Blog Posts - Useful?
Has anyone demonstrated measurable value from routinely tagging your posts? I am of the mindset that what is good for a user/reader is good for SEO and therefore the posts should be tagged. I wanted to see if anyone else had specific experience to the positive or negative.
Content Development | | SWKurt0