When LinkedIn added the ability to publish content on its platform, many users rejoiced. Here you have the top professional network and one of the biggest social media platforms today, giving you a tool to showcase your professional thoughts, experience, abilities and talents with others, in the form of blog posts.
And you get to do this without needing to know anything about blogging or even managing a blog or website of your own!
But what if you are someone who already blogs for your business? What kinds of benefits does this feature available to anyone with a LinkedIn profile offer you? You are already publishing content on the internet and sharing your blog post links to your profile.
Should you stop blogging on your own site and publish on LinkedIn instead? (Definitely NOT!)
Can you publish the same post on LinkedIn as you do your blog? (Maybe, but there are some big risks involved)
If you do publish the same content both places, are you at risk of angering Google due to duplicate content? (Possibly)
Let’s take a look at what we do and don’t know about the benefits and risks associated with republishing your blog content on LinkedIn.
Should I Republish my Blog Posts on LinkedIn?
Benefits of republishing your blog posts on LinkedIn:
- You can kill two birds with one stone, as they say, because you are publishing your own content on 2 platforms without doing twice the work.
- You get the benefit of publishing new content on your own website or blog (website traffic and links are always good things) while also getting the benefits of adding your content to LinkedIn’s publishing network and having a chance to have your blog post picked up and featured in LinkedIn Pulse.
Risks associated with republishing your blog posts on LinkedIn:
- You are creating a situation of duplicate content, meaning the same exact blog post is published twice on the internet.
- Google currently says that it can tell what site published the content first, which is good. However, Google’s rules always change so even though right now Google says it can tell if you published the blog post on your site before LinkedIn, there is no guarantee that Google won’t make a different determination about search, ranking and duplicate content at some point in the future.
- LinkedIn blog posts are indeed indexed by Google, and LinkedIn is going to outrank your own website or blog in search. That means the chances are pretty high that any organic traffic to your blog posts would benefit LinkedIn instead of your own site.
If you’re unsure about how to move forward, here are a few alternate options for you:
- Continue to publish your blog posts on your own site, then publish an intro for your blog post plus a link to it, on LinkedIn.
- Alternate between publishing on your own site one week and publishing on LinkedIn the next.
- Rewrite your own blog post and publish that on LinkedIn in order to prevent duplication.
What are your thoughts on republishing your blog posts on LinkedIn?
Thanks for sharing, Liz Jostes.
I usually publish my posts first on my blog, then an intro on Linkedin with the link to my blog. I decided to do this way a few weeks ago, but I was worried because I was not sure this was the best option. After reading your post, I’m happy with my decission.
Regards from Vigo (Spain) 🙂