When you start creating content, you’ll probably wonder where the content should go. Most of the time, the posts should be on your site; but sometimes you’re going to want to put information on other sites too. Putting content on other sites will help you become more well-known, build your audience larger, and help establish authority in your niche.
Let’s quickly define a couple terms.
Content On Your Site vs. Content On Other Sites
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process by which you optimize the content you publish to ensure the most targeted website visitors and traffic are going to your offers. There are two types of SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
Anything you do on your website or blog to improve search engine results. That includes all the content you put on your site including blog posts, articles, images, keywords, titles, subheadings, and more. If it’s an adjustment to your property (your website) that is designed to get more visitors, then it’s on-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
Anything you do to improve the content in all its forms on third party websites, including social media, is considered off-page SEO. For example, if you improve your LinkedIn profile so that it better describes you, and links you back to your website, it’s off-page SEO. Likewise, publishing your website on other sites is considered off-page SEO.
Both types of SEO are important to ensure that you maximize the traffic that comes to your site, spread brand awareness, and build relationships with your audience. There are a few different thoughts about how to do this most productively.
One school of thought states that you should publish everything on your website first. Then, either link back to it, or rework it for other sites. The other says that it’s okay to push out content to other sites once you’ve published it on your website as is—otherwise called content syndication. The truth is, BOTH ways work. The idea of duplicate content has frightened people away from repurposing it, using PLR to its full potential, and getting the most out of all of it in general.
Ensure that if you let any publication republish your posts, that they use the right source code to tell Google that your site deserves all the credit for the content—and not to index their version of the article.
If you already re-write/re-work the content you don’t need to do this step; but that’s really all you need to do to ensure that you do not suffer a duplicate content penalty. Yoast has a great article explaining what a canonical URL is and how it works. (https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/)
Your Site First
Your focus should always be on putting content on your own property first. However, publishing content on other platforms helps with SEO too, as it can help establish you as an authority. Whether it’s publishing on LinkedIn, guest blogging for someone, using a platform like Medium(.)com, or syndicating your content via a syndication system like Outbrain(.)com, it’s important to study and understand the effects on search.
Publishing information off of your site onto other platforms can help with SEO by providing links back to your site while tapping into an entirely new audience. However, make sure you understand the ramifications of how you’re doing it before you get started.