Duplicate Content--Friend or Foe of Your Blog?
If you are like me, you have more than one blog. Feeding those blogs can be quite a challenge because of the time needed to create engaging posts. You make your living selling real estate, not writing, and you need to spend most of your time actually engaging in the practice of real estate.
I would like to share with you my experience with maintaining two blogs and invite your comments about your experiences. I would also like to hear from those of you with SEO expertise.
I started blogging in 2008. I started with a blog that is embedded in my website. I soon added an Active Rain blog and found the Active Rain community and staffers a great resource. Everything that I know about blogging, I learned here on Active Rain.
I discovered that posting the same content on both blogs was the easiest way to feed the blogs. There was much discussion of duplicate content in those days but the consensus among Active Rain members and staffers was that duplicate content was fine and that the search engines would figure out which blog was the primary blog and elevate that one in the rankings.
My system of writing once and posting twice worked fine until last year. Duplicate content was my friend because it saved me valuable time. The leads came in from both my website and my Active Rain account.
The number of leads from my blogs started to dwindle during the last half of 2011. I wondered why I wasn't getting much of a response from my efforts. Was it a seasonal or market issue or had my website and blogs lost their effectiveness?
Then, I read some comments from Nikesh here at Active Rain that duplicate content was a problem and that it could harm both sites where the content was posted. Had my duplicate content become a foe of my blogs?
Late last year, I decided to stop posting the same content in both blogs. It meant a lot more time spent blogging but I hoped that I would see a payoff in more leads from my efforts.
The result? Since the first of the year, the number of calls and emails from both my website and Active Rain has increased tremendously compared to last year. Is it a seasonal thing or is it the elimination of duplicate content? I suspect that it has to do with the latter.
What do you think? Have any of you had a similar experience?
Copyright 2012. Carol Fox. Allen Tate Realtors. *Duplicate Content--Friend or Foe of Your Blog?*
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