I've never claimed to be an expert blogger, but what I am really great at is online advertising and marketing, thanks to spending many years in that field of work.
Although the two are different, they have very many similarities.
Thanks to having worked with news sources I also have a pretty good background in smart SEO practices for written materials. Which also makes it quite helpful in blogging SEO. These reason's are why I feel I am a pretty good source of information on this subject and have decided to tell you more about it today to help you while you are trying to grow your blogs.
Today, I am going to tell you the correct way to bring an old post back to life, or how to re-create an old post. As well as make sure you understand the do's and don'ts of guest blogging. In ways that will make sure you don't accidentally have your blog tagged by search engines in bad ways.
I'm going to do my very best to simplify this a little so that even the non-techies can understand it without hearing all the big SEO (Search Engine Optimization) terms and having no clue what I am talking about.
So if you are great with SEO, and you are wondering why the post sounds very basic, then that is why!
BRINGING OLD POSTS BACK TO LIFE
& RE-CREATING POSTS
Let's start with bringing an old post back to life, or re-creating a post from the past. If you are anything like me, you probably do take a bit of time creating a post. I estimate about an hour to write a post, and 20-30 minutes to create the images for the post. Unless its a research post, which then of course takes quite a bit more time.
Occasionally, especially if you have been blogging for years, you may want to go through and pick some older posts that you really liked that you ran years ago and give them a makeover and re-run them.
Did you know there is a right and wrong way to do this?
WRONG WAY - Copy and pasting an old post into a new post, exact work for word.
Why is this wrong? The search engine crawlers they don't like to see the exact same content on more than one web page, they think of it as copied material and allegedly hurts your site to do so. It's also called a big SEO no no Duplicate Content Penalty.
Google treats it as plagiarism, yes even if it is from your own site, and the biggest mistake any writer can make is copying someones work, and lets face it if you want your posts to come up in search engines Google is a big one you don't want to have them bury your site because it considers it plagiarism.
On a side note: If you like to run Adsense ads on your blog and learn a little side income. If in time your site has been tagged as copied content, they can actually ban you from being able to run ads on your site.
How to fix it? You've probably gotten better in your writing anyway, so re-write it. You can still imply the same meaning behind it, and yes you can copy some of it word for word. But for the most part, re-invent it and make it better. Possibly even add more content to it, new things you've learned about the subject along the way.
Another idea, why not take a past post and put an opposite spin on it. Like if you wrote a post on How to Run Uphill, why not re-create it to How to Run Downhill and establish even more credit on your blog as a how to resource that covers the subject.
I have a smaller blog, will it really matter? Depends on if you ever plan on growing your blog, or would like to run advertising on it. Although this is a subject that is widley debated in the SEO field, I like to look at it like this.
If you can learn to do something correctly why not do it! No matter your motives now for your blog, they may change later and if you practice good habits now, then if you change later you won't have to worry about things.
GUEST BLOGGING
It's true one of the best ways we as bloggers can get our name out there to a new audience is guest blogging on larger blogs than our own. That is where we create a post for a website/blog that likely has links to our own. It involves gaining a new audience and link sharing, the very things that help build blogs.
So often bloggers create an awesome post for another website or blog and they are so excited because they spent so much time on it, they want to share it on their own site as well. So they copy and past the exact post they wrote, and put it up on their own site and think nothing else of it, because they wrote it. This can be a huge mistake!
If you are a guest blogger on another website/blog never post the exact same post up on your own blog. Two things can happen, both sites can be dinged by the web crawlers as using copied news sources. Or if one site is much bigger than the other, the smaller can actually be dinged more for bad SEO practices.
Most news media/larger blogs should be telling you and having you agree you won't do this before you guest post. In fact if you write for online newspapers, like I have in the past they will even make you sign an electronic waiver that you wont do this.
However, if you are guest posting on blogger sites, bloggers may not know to tell you this, or they may even suggest you post it up on your own after a few weeks.
IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO IF I WANT TO SHARE MY WORK ON MY OWN SITE?
YES!!!! There is one thing you can do, to avoid getting in trouble with the search engine crawlers
and it's so simple. At the beginning of your re-post, add this tag into your HTML field (replacing the website with the actual link to where your original article ran on the other site.)
<link rel=“canonical" href="www.theblogsitethatyouroriginalpostappeared.com"/>
(Canonical is a computer word that means, original version.)
That is it, and its so simple and if you do that you can re-post your guest post anywhere else you want, and no penalties will be given to you!
If you are asked to submit posts to other sites, or other sites ask you if they can share your work on their site. It's still okay, go for it, get your name out there!
More than likely if they are a bigger website they are already doing this. But it is completely within your right to let them know they need to attach the original version link to the post for correct SEO practices.
If you don't do this, basically when this happens, think of it as the little guy (smaller blog) is the one that will get dinged the most and the smaller one is likely going to be the one who gets the penalties. Or it will be the one who copied and put the content up 2nd.
Don't try to trick the system either. When I say trick, I mean don't think changing a few words here and there or deleting one word here or there will be a quick fix. Just add the simple HTML link and there are no worries you can re post as you want!
We may think of the internet as such a large and massive thing, that how could it possibly find my copied post mistake? But if you are thinking that, you are wrong. Search engines are crawling the web and pulling new data all the time. You are not immune just because you think you are small in the vast world that consists online. Some of the larger blogs, have even been web crawled 10 times in just a few hours of their post going live.
So the keys to take from this are:
* Never copy and past entire posts, word for word to re-run them from your own blog.
* Never share your own exact guest post on your blog without attaching an original copy link.
* If you are going to bring a new post back to life, take the time to re-create it, meaning re-write it, give it new substance and meaning.
DON'T SWEAT IT
Even though this is a How To post, don't let anything I talked about above scare you if you have made mistakes in the past!
Just start correcting things going forward. If you have the time, you can definitely go into past guest posts that you have re posted and take a few seconds and add that tag at the beginning. But don't worry about rushing anything this minute/week/month. Just relax and practice better habits going forward.
This is one of those subjects that many argue on, and wonder who and if anyone actually gets penalized and how they are actually penalized. I have heard so many back and forth on it, I personally don't think the argument matters.
For myself, if I know something "might" not be right, I am not going to do it and I will do what I know "will" be okay.
Education even in the blogging world is key to not only building a better blog, but increasing your chances of growing your blog.
So tell me, was this something you already knew about?
Do you find these types of subjects on my blog helpful? This year during blog hops, and on the first Thursday of the month I have been hitting up Grow Your Blog topics, I'd love to know if this is something you'd like me to keep up, or not for the future!
