Don’t cheat off yourself.
Let me explain WHY with an analogy…
Imagine you’re back in school (if you’re not in school anymore), it’s Midterms season, and you have a huuuuuge take-home essay due in a few days. The paper is for your Poli Sci class and it’s about whether we should adopt a monarchy and why/why not.
Then you have an epiphany: “I wrote a paper about that exact same thing for my Business class a while back and got an A. Yeah, it was about how monarchies make it more difficult for businesses to operate*. So I’ll just reuse that!”
* Don’t know if this is true or not, but just follow along for this analogy’s sake :).
And you do reuse it. Sure, you change a handful of things here and there, but basically it’s the exact. same. paper.
A few days after you submit it, you get an official-looking email from your university and your prof stating that you’ve cheated, plus all the ramifications that follow and yada yada…
OH “%€¥#&$+#=,” you think to yourself. “They found out.”
Now let’s go back to you, your blog, and the Interwebs: You/your blog’s author(s) represent(s) well, the student, the star of the story ^above^, your blog and your old posts represent that paper you had aced (b/c lets face it, you’re a wonderful blogger!), and blogland/the Internet represent the prof AND the school.
Now one of my profs called reusing assignments “cheating off yourself.” I’m not 100% sure whether my school frowns upon it (since it does come it handy on occasion) but the point of the story is: The Internet DOES penalize you for recycling/reusing/REPOSTING your old posts–as harmless as it is.
And the reason why you’ll get penalized is because you (i.e., your blog) will be considered SPAM. Yuck. Not good.
You don’t want to become SPAM. (via Today I Found Out)
You see, Google, the reigning king of the Internet, pretty much determines who’s worthy of appearing on the Internet. Yup, Google. So when Google sees that your site features duplicate content (regardless of whether it’s yours or someone else’s), it’ll think it’s just like those innumerable sites whose sole purpose is to litter Google’s home.
So Google penalizes those sites by either having them rank WAY lower in search results or kicking them off its home (i.e., search results) completely.
But what if you have a really cool post that performed very well the first time around?
For the love of blogland, DONT REPOST IT. Simple as that. If you want more/new eyes to look at it, just do either or both of these things:
1) Promote it like crazy (again): Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, etc. will be your best buddies for this step. Just make sure to promote it at least three times and at DIFFERENT times so that it gets the attention it deserves from as many different pairs of eyes as possible.
2) Take that post’s link plus other links from stuff you’ve enjoyed (not your stuff! You don’t want to promote yourself TOO much here), and run like a “Link Love”-type of post. That way, you’re just linking to that post and not copying it entirely, because that’s bad… (But before you do this, you might want to learn how to link to stuff the right way.)
There you have it!! Just say no: Don’t repost your old posts. Instead of reposting, promote them again and/or link to them in newer posts… >> Way easy!
Do YOU repost old content? Will you stop after reading this :)? Let me know what else you think or if you have any Qs and thanks for stopping by!!
Hope you have a lovely and enchanted evening full of sweets!
Thanks for the tips! I’ve seen people reposting more often lately so was considering the same but this is super helpful.
I’ve seen the reposts too and I cringe. Hope they learn it’s actually not advantageous! Thanks for your comment!!
I don’t ever repost my stuff and practically never due a favorites or most popular type post but this is interesting. I never would have even thought that it gets considered as spam.
Right? It’s odd that to blogland they’re not spammy (as they help us discover great old posts), but they are in general :(.
Thanks for stopping by!!
What are your thoughts on bloggers who use a guest post they’ve written for another blog as a post on their own blog as well, either before or after the guest post has been published?
Amberly, great seeing ya! To answer your Q, that’s not good, either. Think of it this way: Google doesn’t know that Blogger X wrote a post on Y on Blog Z. Therefore when Blogger X posts Y on her own blog, she’s technically copying off Blog Z (does that make sense?), which hurts her in Google’s eyes.
Therefore, Blogger X shouldn’t post that post on her blog. Instead, she could post a blurb where she then links to Blog Z, and promote that.
Hope that helps!!
Good to know how that works. I have seen it happen a couple of times with guest posts that I was publishing of someone else’s on my blog. One time she posted two days before it was set to publish on my blog, so I e-mailed her and let her know that I only wanted to publish original content on my blog and didn’t want readers to be confused when they went to her blog and saw it there as well. When she did a guest post the next time, she posted it on her own blog a couple of weeks later and I’ve seen it happen multiple times. I’ve thought about writing a “blogger tips” post from the things that I’ve been learning and this is one of my pet peeves, so I wondered what you thought!
Haha I understand!! Thanks for wondering and I just replied to your email, too :)!
I don’t ever repost blog posts, but I didn’t realize that google actually penalizes that. GOOD TO KNOW! :)
xox
giedre
http://www.walkingdotphotography.com
Glad you learned it, today, Giedre, and thanks for commenting!
Hmmm…interesting. I know I’ve seen this tip on several blogs about reposting popular posts when you’re too busy to write or whatever. I’ve never done it, but it’s good to know it’s harmful.
BTW….I’d wondered why I was missing your posts. You don’t have GFC anymore which is the only way I read blogs unless I happen to catch something on social media. I love the new look, though!
I’m glad I taught you something today, Megan :).
That’s a bummer that you haven’t been able to find my posts, lately! I have an easy fix (this is something that’s done on your end, tho): I’m assuming you read blogs on your Blogger blog roll (the list you see when you go to Blogger.com), right?
K click on the Gear to manage the blogs you follow (or go to http://draft.blogger.com/manage-blogs-following.g) >> Go to my blog >> Settings >> Stop following this site.
THEN at the bottom click on ADD and use THIS link: http://xoannie.com/ OR http://xoannie.com/feed (the latter is probably better).
Hope that helps and lemme know if you need anything else!!!
Thanks! I’ll do that. Yes, that’s how I read blogs. I know a lot of people love Bloglovin’ but I just like what I’m used to. :)
That’s totally fine! Looking fwd to seeing ya here again :).