Location, Location, Location.
They say that location is the key to value, and the same is true with blog posts. Many people ask me where they should post their content - on their own blog or a group blog such as the ERP Software Blog. (I know it is tempting to post the same article on both sites, but we all know that duplicate content is bad, so just don’t even consider that as an option.)
My Options
In my role as Director of Marketing for CAL Business Solutions, I write blog posts about Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting software.
When I have a blog article ready to publish, I could post it on my company’s own blog. That blog has our name on it, it is all ours. All the traffic stays on my website.
That might be good for my ego, but if I don’t have very many people coming to my blog, that doesn’t do me too much good.
I want to put my article on the site where it will get the most readers. After all, I worked hard on this post and I want people to see it.
So where will my blog post get the most readers?
My Proof
To answer this question for myself I did a little experiment in December 2012.
- I posted an article on my own company blog. In one year it got 260 views.
- I posted a rewritten version of the article, on exactly the same topic, on the ERP Software Blog. In one year the article got 6,539 views.
That is over 2000% more traffic to the article posted on the group blog site.
So you tell me, where should I put my content if my goal is to attract the most prospects to buy my software?
Some people have the objection that posting content on a group blog is benefiting that site’s SEO more than my own site. But that just doesn’t matter to me if that site is getting more people to read my content.
To me it is simple: Traffic = Leads = New Clients = Revenue.
My Strategy
My personal strategy is to publish all of my existing customer/client focused content on my company blog at www.calszone.com/blog-cal . This keeps my company website active and is good for our SEO. Our whole website www.calszone.com gets about 7,000 visitors per month, which is actually very high for a Dynamics GP partner site.
But the ERP Software Blog gets over 40,000 visitors per month!
So I publish my prospect focused blog posts at www.erpsoftwareblog.com. I know that my articles that appear on this group blog site will be seen by the most people and get the most traffic.
Another company I know has the strategy to write two blog posts per month and post them on the CRM Software Blog. Then he pays a writer to re-write those articles and posts them on his own blog site. This works too.
My Other Choices
But then again…….sometimes traffic is not my only priority.
- I might post on a partner’s site to trade links and build relationships.
- I can post on industry specific sites to reach a certain audience.
- I like to publish on new blog sites I haven’t used before to test it out.
The site with the highest traffic is often, but not always, my first choice.
So I post some articles to these other sites because I think they also provide value:
Your Proof
The best way to prove to yourself which locations are providing the most value is to track the analytics. Which sites are referring the most traffic to you? Of that traffic which site is referring the most qualified traffic?
My Answer
In the end, my answer to the question, “Should I Post On My Own Blog or A Group Blog?” is that ideally you should post on both sites. But if you can only choose one, then choose the site that will give you the most traffic to that post.
Update: My SEO Consultant, Dave Foreman from Interactive Limited, has a suggestion on this topic too.
Dave says, "We do not make rules, but we can give you recommendations on what strategy will give you the most SEO value. If your company blog is not very strong in search results and the home page of your site has a “Domain Authority” below 30 we recommend you put 90% of the original copies of your posts on the group blogs. (Check domain authority with OpenSiteExplorer)
This will insure that you get the most readers and visitors to the post but still have a duplicate post available as a resource on your company site. And the 10% of original posts on your company blog will use the strength of the group blogs to boost the Domain Authority of your company site.
If your company site has a Domain Authority of 30 or above we recommend doing a 50/50 split with half of your original posts on your own company blog and half on the group blogs.
Domain Authority is a rough measurement of how your site stacks up against other sites on the web based on backlinks and other factors. It roughly corresponds to how your site will rank on Google when competing with other sites for the same keyword string and using similar content and meta-tags."
What is your strategy? Leave a comment or send me a tweet.
By Anya Ciecierski, Collaboration Works Marketing
Twitter: @AnyaCWMktg