Canonical Links 101: Your Easy Secret Weapon for Effective Cross-Posting
Gain a bigger audience and make more money by putting your stories on multiple platforms without tanking your SEO. Anyone can do it.
Search engines hate duplicate content. They see it as spam. However, you can publish your great stories on Substack, Medium, Vocal, and Wordpress at the same time without reducing their visibility or SEO. I'm going to tell you how. Take notes.
My audience grows quickly when I post a story on more than one platform—assuming the content relates to the audience I have assembled on each platform. My authority, that is, the degree of expertise I exhibit, is also enhanced. But I needed to understand canonical links. You may also see them called canonical urls, rel=canonical link, or canonicals. All the same pipeline to a wider audience.
Canonical means related to rules or laws. Let's look at the rules for cross-posting.
Search engine spiders detest duplicate content
Duplicate content may mean spammy content—a content writer's attempt to overwhelm internet users with the same message and no added benefit. It's similar to how politicians advertise in election years. But I may have an audience of freelancers on one writing platform, and my work may be targeted at writing teachers on another. Both groups would find my article about rhythm in writing useful. So I use my secret weapon, canonical tags.
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