February 5, 2012

How Can I Maintain the Same Content On Two Blogs?

Question: Can I have maintain same content in wordpress and blogger blog,if the answer is yes means ..how can i import the data to blogger to wordpress?

This is a tough question to answer because there are so many different tangents that can go off from examining it in detail.  The intricacies of the question center around both the technical and generic reasons for wanting to maintain content in two different places.

First, what is the reason for maintaining content in two places? In the search engine world, there is a line drawn in the sand amongst those who believe in the Google duplicate content penalty and those who do not.  But the bigger issue is why would you want to have the same content in two places?  In my opinion, doing so will only hurt you in the long run.

First, whether you believe in it or not, the duplicate content penalty for Google is always a possibility of being real.  Having the same content in two places can be a flag to the search engines that the same content is being used on two different sites.  Think of it from their point of view – you are trying to get twice the search engine listings for your content using two sites.  It is in their best interests to try and weed out duplicate content.

Second, whether or not the duplicate content penalty exists or not, having the same content on two sites will severely hurt your link popularity.  Where you might have other websites linking to one site and increasing your link popularity and SEO, having two separate sites give visitors two different sites they may link to.  Consider the following:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.domain.com
Site 3 links to www.domain.com
Site 4 links to www.domain.com

You now have four links to www.domain.com which will greatly help your search engine rankings and people to find your site.

Now consider:

Site 1 links to www.domain.com
Site 2 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 3 links to www.anotherdomain.com
Site 4 links to www.anotherdomain.com

Your site www.domain.com is now being penalized because the other sites are linking to your other domain.

Having all links going to one domain is definitely preferred.

All that being said, there are a couple things you can do.

Exporting From Blogger and Importing to WordPress

Exporting from Blogger and Importing to WordPress is fast and easy.  I will post a “how-to” here shortly.  I will post a link to the article when it is ready.

by Exporting/Importing the content, you will now have the same content on a Blogger blog as you do on your WordPress blog.  However, all future posts will not automatically appear on each blog.

Creating Posts From an RSS Feed

In order to keep both sites updated you will need to try and find an option to create new blog posts based on an RSS feed.  There have been a few WordPress plugins over the years that claim to do this, but they don’t always seem to work.

The best I have found is called the AutoBlogged plugin, and it costs about $60 for one domain. Click here to visit AutoBlogged.

The best way to do this would be as follows:

  • Use blogger.com as your “source” blog.  Find your RSS feed by going to your blog and clicking on “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” at the bottom of the screen.
  • Keep this URL handy, save it, bookmark it – whatever you have to do.
  • Purchase the AutoBlogged plugin mentioned above and install it on your WordPress blog
  • Use the feed URL you obtained previously in the settings of Autoblogged
  • Use blogger.com to make all of your new posts.

Setting up Autoblogged is not something we can really help you with, you will have to consult their support and documentation on how to fully configure the plugin to create posts from your feed.

If everything is configured correctly, every post you make on blogger.com will be carried over to your WordPress blog.

The Fine Print

Maintaining the same content on 2 different blogs/services is definitely not what I would recommend.  I always prefer to have once site that I drive visitors to.  There are times where I might create a pointer domain, exclude search engines, and then redirect them to the main site.  This is done a lot of times where a domain name is long, or not very search engine friendly.  For instance we might have hierson-reynolds-insurance.com as a pointer domain that sends people to youroregonlawyers.com.

Trying to maintain the same content on two sites will be tricky, please let us know how it works out.

How Do I Get More Web Traffic?

I’m just getting started, what’s the best way to get traffic to my website?

This is a tough question to answer. Why? Because there is no easy answer. Building website or blog traffic is hard work, and takes time and comittment. To truly get the audience and readers you want, you’ll need to build a high-quality website or blog and fill it with more high-quality content and information that people want. All of that can take a while.

However, in the meantime, there are some tricks to building traffic…

Solve Problems & Think Of The Reader

The best websites or blogs solve problems. People come to the Internet mostly for that reason, to have problems solved. Maybe they need a chicken recipe for dinner? Maybe they need to know how to put up drywall? Whatever, people like to get answers online.

So does your website or blog solve problems? If not, why are readers visiting your site? What are you offering them that they don’t have? Put yourself in a reader’s head. What do they want to know… then give it to them.

Try Digg

Digg.com is a fast way to get attention. Essentially, you write some content on your website of blog that you think is interesting. Then you submit it for free to Digg.com, where it could be exposed to hundreds of thousands of readers if it’s good enough. If it is, watch out, you can see thousands of visitors to your site very quickly, helping you build an audience.

Link Unto Others

Don’t be stingy with your links. If you want to get more traffic, you should be exchanging links with other websites or blogs that match your content. People follow links as that is the nature of the web.

Social Networking

Open up a Myspace.com and Linkedin account and network with similar people in your industry. Don’t spam people, but really go out and introduce yourself and make some friends. Ask those friends to visit your site and build relationships with them.

Things To Avoid

Stuff like traffic exchanges and webrings don’t really work. Sure, they’ll get you some hits, but what they don’t get you is targeted hits. Avoid trying to build a quick audience with tools that claim you’ll get “XXX” # of hits in “XXX” days. Usually it doesn’t work.

Don’t forget, you can always Ask The Blogger for help anytime!

Bonus! AsktheBlogger Video On How To Get More Web Traffic