Is it OK to Publish Your Blog Posts on Multiple Sites?
It used to be true that publishing your blog posts on more than one website would actually hurt your SEO standing and so potentially decrease traffic to your website.
This is no longer the case!
Google is much more interested in making it really easy for people to find what they consider to be quality content than they are in making sure you aren't repeating yourself.
I often recommend that my clients publish their posts to their own blogs first. Then, after a week or more, cross-publish those posts on the websites that make the most sense for them. Doing so ensures that search engines see your site as the authority or primary source for the content.
LinkedIn and Medium are the sites I recommend most frequently. Some clients love publishing to HuffPo. But, frankly, I have yet to see a brand really gain value from publishing there. (More on comparing these three sites here.)
Wherever your cross-publish, I highly recommend coming up with a good intro or closing script meant to entice people to click on over to your own site to read more of what you have to say. Here are some examples of folks who do this well:
Why would you want to publish your articles to multiple sites?
I'm sure you've figured this out already, but the answer is simple: more eyes on your stuff.
Yes, your site is awesome. And lots of people are probably already reading it. And your audience is probably growing by the day. OK -- whether all of that is true for you or not, publishing your articles to sites like LinkedIn and Medium will get more eyes on your stuff. And that's ultimately the point, right? You didn't spend all that time writing all those beautiful words for no one to read them.
LinkedIn has more than 100 million active users. I haven't been able to find any reliable data on how many people are on Medium these days, just this guesstimate of there being at least 625k users...and lots of great content on why & how you should publish on Medium.
There is one downside to cross-publishing your posts...
The only thing is, it's pretty hard to bring those new readers directly back to your site.
I say "directly" because I haven't seen anyone yet see loads of people clicking over to their sites from the articles they publish on external sites like LinkedIn or Medium.
But...if you're publishing great content on those sites, you're going to gather likes, shares, and new followers that get you in front of more people. On a site like LinkedIn, that means you've got more people to organically see the blog posts you promote there.
One other thing -- I haven't talked much about Facebook as a publishing platform. But it can be. Depending on whether this is right for your brand, you totally could try republishing the entirety of a blog post there and inviting people to click the link to comment on your site.
What if my article really takes off...on another website?
I've seen a bunch of other bloggers ask this question -- but if I publish my article on those other websites and it goes viral there, won't I be losing out because all that traffic will be going to those other sites and not to mine?
Here's the thing about that line of reasoning -- you're still getting a whole bunch of eyes on your content (and that means eyes on your name or your business) that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Are you really going to say no to that simply because they're not finding your stuff directly on your site? If someone walked up to you tomorrow and said they could drive 10,000 views to your next article, would you really say, "Well, ok, but only if those are all on my website. I don't want all those thousands of people seeing my stuff if it's on somebody else's site."
I didn't think so.
Want some more smart stuff on this topic?
If you want even more explanation on the SEO side of this practice, and actionable ideas on how best to cross-publish your posts, I highly recommend this article: Strategic Guide to Reposting Content on Medium and LinkedIn. Buffer also provides a ton of awesome ideas in its Complete Guide to Medium for Marketers.