I’ve been blogging now for 13 years and strategy has always been top of mind. Getting views to your articles and posts is half the battle, and if it isn’t happening, blogging seems like a waste of time.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds smart and helpful, yet how does it really help bloggers and article writers? I’ve come to the conclusion that for most writers, it plays a very minor role in getting views.
I’ve had some success in getting traffic from Google searches (which is mostly what SEO is about), yet it was only because a big publication mentioned my article in one of their articles (mocking it). Whatever the reason for the mention, it still helps me get views from searches even a decade later.
Besides this anomaly, I’ve had very little success generating views to my articles from searches. Unless you are writing exclusively for one site and about a specific topic, SEO isn’t as important as writing for separate platforms.
My strategy has gone through phases of syndicating and not, as it does create this SEO problem of duplicate content. Searches don’t like duplicate content, so writing exclusively is the best SEO strategy unless writers can syndicate it somewhere with a large audience that will bring them views.
Like I said before, if the articles have a specific topic that doesn’t have a lot of competition from bigger websites, then it makes sense to write exclusively for that website and not syndicate. If the articles are quality, they have a good chance of showing up in searches and driving organic traffic to the site.
Otherwise, if the articles are more generalized and about topics that have a lot of competition, then syndicating to separate platforms for exposure makes more sense.
Each platform has its own unique user base, although some will cross-pollinate, they will generally choose to spend most of their time on one or the other. Syndicating your articles to those platforms will expose them to that audience, in the measure of your following and status there.
So instead of trying to desperately drive traffic to your articles through organic search, the game is to build up followings at separate platforms to then gain views from sharing your article there.
I’m specifically talking about syndicating the entire article and not just sharing a link. Those are two different things.
- separate writing sites
- social media sites
- video sharing sites
You can even read your article in a video to reach video platforms.
For instance, here are the platforms I syndicate articles to,
- WordPress
- Blogger
- Medium
- Substack
- Before It’s News
I always put a backlink to the original publication below the syndicated article. This helps give your blog more exposure and support if people are so inclined to check it out, which most of the time they aren’t. If they are, then they might sign up to an email list or support your affiliates, etc.
Then you share the link to the original article with all of your social media accounts.
After all is said and done, the article is exposed to:
- followers and general audience on the syndicated platforms
- followers and general audience on the original platform
- email list
- social media followers
- any organic search that may come
Now, because the content has so much duplicate content, it probably won’t get much love from search engines. If it does, it will likely be ranked highest on the syndicated platform that has the highest rank.
For instance, even if you use the canonical link at Medium to point search engine bots back to the original source, the Medium article will still outrank your blog in any search results it may come up in.
Keep that in mind if you are making money from views. If so, then you probably don’t want to syndicate it to Medium or a higher-ranking platform if it might do well in searches. I made this mistake with syndicating NewsBreak articles on Medium, only to find the Medium article out ranking the original NewsBreak article and stealing my pennies, as I don’t make money from non-member views at Medium, etc.
Most of my articles aren’t going to do well in searches, so syndicating them makes sense. If they do find their way into the search, I have backlinks at least, so my blogs will get some views.
Just some thoughts on blogging, hope it helps someone.
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