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Several co-workers and I are authors on our company's blog, and we each also have our own personal website blogs. In an effort to promote our company blog, we are considering syndicating the posts from our personal blogs to the company blog. For example, when I post on my blog mysite.com/blog/post-xyz it'll syndicate to and appear on thecompany.com/blog/post-xyz as well.

What are the SEO implications of doing this?

This must be a win-win scenario. We want to see the company blog improve because it'll have more content, but we don't want to hurt the individual personal blogs either.

If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. - Google

This is basically what we are going for. I would expect that the search result version may end up being the company blog in many cases, which would be the drawback to the individual, but I'm hoping the increased back links would simultaneously help support the individuals own website SEO value.

This is syndication in its purest, most honest form, so I'd like to think it would be a beneficial thing to do, but I really don't know. Could it hurt?

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  • I would be very careful legally and get a written agreement with your company before posting any such material on a personal blog. Take a look at this: guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/27/… Commented Jan 31, 2012 at 22:24
  • As an aside, you might want to look at what Google says about indicating the authors of the articles: support.google.com/webmasters/bin/… Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 10:07
  • @toomanyairmiles - While I agree that there should probably be a written agreement in place, note that what Kurt's suggesting is the other way around - they already publish content on their personal blogs, and want to cross-post it on the company's site. Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 13:50
  • @Zhaph-BenDuguid somehow I read it the other way around, you're quite correct. Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 14:02
  • Many things are innapropriate on a company blog but fine on a personal one. IMO automating it rather than allowing cross/reposting is asking for trouble.
    – JamesRyan
    Commented Feb 1, 2012 at 14:03

2 Answers 2

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You are going to have to choose which site you want to be displayed in search results: the company blog or the personal blog. You might want to decide this on a per-post basis: when your making a post that would be better received if a company was behind it, choose to display the company blog; and when the post would be better received if an individual is behind it, choose the personal blog.

Then, use rel=canonical to tell search engines that they should display the post on the company blog (or the personal blog), and not vice versa. See here, here, and here for more information about rel=canonical.

If you don't do this, your blogs can be subjected to a duplicate content penalty.

If you want the authors of the blog to get credited in the post, consider adding a link to their personal blog in the post, displaying an author bio underneath the post (as shown on this blog post [scroll to the bottom]), or using authorship markup.

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  • Thanks. I'm aware of rel=canonical, but my intent was originally to avoid it. Sites re-publishing a syndicated post would never get organic search traffic from it if we told search engines to only index the canonical page. Your comment about choosing on a per-post basis is right on, and what I've been realizing is the most realistic answer. If an author would like to get credit for a post on both sites, they can do so in several ways.
    – Kurt S
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 23:50
  • @KurtSchindler txs. Per your comment, I updated the answer with ways you can credit the original author of the post. Also, if this is the answer your going with, can you accept it (so people know you've solved the problem)?
    – user6901
    Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 0:03
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I'd like to think it would be a beneficial thing to do

It can be, but you have think and remember about "Duplicated content" from Google's side view. For full clones it applies some type of "penalty"

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    could you be more specific?
    – user6901
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 23:17
  • @Christofian - could you do some STFW? I don't want to replace Google, and I already given the necessary keywords Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 7:24
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    One of the goals of SE is to show up in search results, and thus, help users having the same problem. Directing them back to google defeats the purpose. I wasn't asking you to elaborate because I'm too lazy to search the web: I was asking because sending people who have arrived from google back to google is inefficient. See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5280/embrace-the-non-googlers
    – user6901
    Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 21:13

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