Duplicating an article I wrote on an external blog

[NikkiGaul]

Hi, I wrote a blog article on another site. I would like to add the article to my site as well and would like to know the best way to do it.

If I duplicate the article that I wrote would I then risk getting a penalty for duplicate content?

If so, then what is the best way for me to include the article on my site for the benefit of my readers, but not lead to the duplicate content problem?

Would it be better to use a canonical tag? Or to noindex the page?

If I use the canonical tag, am I helping to make the article on the external blog stronger? Where is I use the noindex tag I am not helping my site nor that article I think, is that right?

Last question, if I offer the copy of the article on my site and use the canonical or noindex tag then my site does not receive any direct benefit from the article for SEO. In other words the article wont appear in the search index with a link to my site. What about the comments that people write on the article on my site? That is unique content which may have great questions or points. I want to ensure those can be indexed properly. If I noindex the page I lose out. If I canonicalize (is that a word?) the page then I don't know if will send search results based on those comments to the external blog where that information (the comments from my site) does not exist.

Thank you for any help to better understand this part of seo.

[Theo-NL]

"If I duplicate the article that I wrote would I then risk getting a penalty for duplicate content?"

Not likely a penalty, but no benefits either (unless people start linking to the version on your site of course)

"If so, then what is the best way for me to include the article on my site for the benefit of my readers, but not lead to the duplicate content problem?

Would it be better to use a canonical tag? Or to noindex the page?"

Both would work I think, though canonical would be the neater option (assuming it isn't harming you to help the other website).

"If I use the canonical tag, am I helping to make the article on the external blog stronger? Where is I use the noindex tag I am not helping my site nor that article I think, is that right?"

Right and right

"What about the comments that people write on the article on my site?"

I think (this is the toughest one) you're getting the visitors that search for phrases in your comments (Google can't send those visitors to the other site as it doesn't contain the particular phrases) with the cross-domain canonical solution, as with the noindex solution nobody gets these visitors.

[rhutchings]

If its just for your users, and its helpful, go ahead and just post the article.  Its technically duplicate content, but google has already determined that the article site had the original content up first, and yours may or may not get indexed ever.  But you should care.

If you are looking at the SEO implications, thats a whole different reason.  I hope you have a link in that article to your site, since you published it.  If so, you would actually benefit more from the link value from the other site.  If you boost the value of that blog article on the other site, and it has a link to you, that would hold more SEO value down the road then trying to figure out how to get around the dupliate content issue here.

[MarieHaynes]

This sounds like exactly the situation that the canonical tag was created for.  Make the tag point to the article that you want indexed.

Or, another option, if you want both to be indexed is to create a second version of the article with different wording.

[NikkiGaul]

Thank you all for the replies.

@Dunamis, my concern is that if I use the canonical tag for the article then how would a search engine understand the canonical represents the article and not the comments. There can be great discussion within the comments. If the search engine canonalizes the who page and sends users to the target URL then they will send traffic to that site for comments which do not exist on that site. Or if they discount my page all together then the page wont get indexed even though there are some good comments and discussion which otherwise should be indexed.

@Ryan, thank you for reminding me about having a link in the article. That is something I otherwise forgot about but will do in the future.

@Theo, if I had an article on my site which is canonicalized to a URL on another site, and then someone links to the page on my site, do I get credit for the link? I would think the link credit goes through to the canonicalized URL would it not?

[MarieHaynes]

Ah, yes, if you use rel canonical on your blog then the whole page will be nonindexed.  I'm wondering if perhaps rel author is what you need here?  But I haven't quite figured out enough about that yet!

[rhutchings]

I like the rel author option in this case.  It doesnt really take care of the indexing issues, but I lean toward not worrying about it.  In some cases, i let Google figure out which one they want to index given the two.  They will probably choose the original posting, but if you get comments and discussion, I can see that bubbling to the top.  Its more like news sites or aggregators at that point.