Is It OK to Republish My Blog Posts on LinkedIn Articles?
One of the things I love about LinkedIn is the ability to share content with my connections using LinkedIn articles. By resharing content from my blog on LinkedIn, I can reach more of the audience I want to attract. Republishing my articles also allows me to reach more people that likely would not have seen it.
However, I often get asked a lot if it’s OK to republish your blog posts as LinkedIn articles? And if it’s considered as duplicate content that will affect your SEO? But first, let’s dig into the concept of duplicate content.
What is duplicate content?
According to the trusted SEO experts at Moz;
Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. That “one place” is defined as a location with a unique website address (URL) — so, if the same content appears at more than one web address, you’ve got duplicate content.
While not technically a penalty, duplicate content can still sometimes impact search engine rankings. When there are multiple pieces of, as Google calls it, “appreciably similar” content in more than one location on the Internet, it can be difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.
In short duplicate content matters because it makes it harder for search engines like Google to know which content should be indexed. And most importantly, Google doesn’t know which source or website should rank for search query results since both share the same content.
The technical solution to avoid duplicate content
According to Yoast, who is a trusted WordPress SEO plugin;
A canonical URL is a technical solution for duplicate content.
Canonicals enable you to point search engines to the original version of an article. For example, if you wrote an article on your blog and wanted to republish it on another website, then you could post it with a canonical URL to the original version.
You can create a canonical by linking back to your original blog post from the article on the other site by using the following HTML tag;
You would keep everything the same but swap out the highlighted URL with your own.
Search engines will read this and know that the original content is on your website, and they will show the original instead of the duplicated version in a search query result.
The problem is that this solution works on other blogs that enable you to add canonical URLs. However, there isn’t a way to add canonicals URL links to LinkedIn articles.
So Can I Republish My Content On LinkedIn Articles?
The short answer is that it should be OK as long as you are linking back to your original blog posts within your LinkedIn articles. Although you can’t add a canonical URL, you can still create a link back to your post with LinkedIn’s built-in linking feature.
Now I know this probably wasn’t the cut and dry answer you were looking for, but here’s a direct quote from Google about duplicate content;
Syndicate carefully: 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. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.
What I’m getting from this statement is that Google can’t guarantee which content a searcher will see. However, you should always be linking back to your original article on your website.
So there you have it! You can safely republish your blog articles on LinkedIn without search engine penalties for duplicate content. Do you need help with your content strategy? Book a free Power Hour call with me to get quick, actionable tips.
Originally published at https://karmenk.com on July 29, 2019.
