Duplicate content is bad. You should not post exactly the same blog article on more than one site. There are plenty of articles online giving you all the scary reasons.
But many of you that write for the ERP/CRM Software Blogs also write for your own company blog sites.
How can you avoid duplicate content across company and group blogs?
Here are my 3 tips:
1) REWRITE
If you have a fantastic blog post you want to share on both your company blog AND the ERP/CRM Software Blog, the very best option is to rewrite the original post so you can reap the SEO benefits of each post independently.
You have to do more than just change the title and a few words – it has to be a full rewrite. You can check the “originality” of your post using Copyscape premium.
When you do a rewrite, copy and paste the text into the Copyscape page and do a premium search. You will see results of any matching text that has already been published on the web by you or someone else. Click on the title or “compare text” and Copyscape will tell you the percentage of copied text.
To be safe, aim for rewrites to be less than 50% the same as content that is already published.
I find that rewriting my own content can be difficult, because heck, I liked it the way I wrote it the first time! So I find it helpful to hire someone else to rewrite my content.
I recommend this Blog Rewrite Service.
2) SUMMARIZE
If you do not have time to rewrite a post, and you don’t want to outsource the task, the next best approach is to write a summary of the original post. Then link to the original post from the summary post as “Source” or “Continue Reading”. Be sure not to copy large sections of the original post into the summary; you need to write a unique summary of the post.
3) CURATE
If you have published several posts on a specific topic you can create a curated list. For example, create a new blog post called “5 Great Articles about Dynamics CRM for Insurance Brokers”. Then put the title, short summary and link to the 5 original posts. Be sure to add a short introduction and conclusion too.
But if the temptation is just too much for you, and you insist on posting duplicate content, at least learn how to do it safely using canonical links. Read: How to Safely Post Duplicate Content on Multiple Blog Sites.
For more info download the full “Guide to Duplicate Content” that we developed for our group bloggers.
By Anya Ciecierski, Collaboration Works Marketing
Twitter: @AnyaCWMktg