Would Google penalise me for this?

[dots and spots Jeff]

I have a blog on 'blogger' and a website that is an entirely different entity. Now, if I was starting over, I'd have the blog on Wordpress as part of my main site, something like www.mysite/blog (http://www.mysite/blog)

But I didn't know that at the time and so I find myself with a successful blog separate to my website. So this is my thinking:

Keep the blog going as it is (on blogger) but then also set up a wordpress blog on my website and post some of the blog posts on there as well - I'll probably call the 'blog' on the website my 'Lifestyle Pages'.

Will google penalise me for having the same blog posts appear twice on the whole wide internet, or is it such a small amount of duplication amongst the millions of web pages out there that I could get away with it?

Thanks

Jeff

[mattsaw]

You won't get penalised for it, but it it a bit of a waste of time to divert content and links away from your main site.

Have a read of this, the topic crops up so many times with clients and developers that I now have it bookmarked :)

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites

[ozbon]

There's a risk of being penalised for duplicate content - because both sites would be utilising the same company name as well.

But why not export your blog from blogger and import it into wordpress ? Or have the link from 'blog' on your site go across to the blogger site?

When all's said and done, if you're legitimising/integrating, that'll be fine. And why dilute your presence by having it in both places?

[mattsaw]

There's a risk of being penalised for duplicate content - because both sites would be utilising the same company name as well.

Bear in mind that duplicate content is a filter rather than a penalty. The worst that would happen would for one of the posts not to appear in the search results, not ideal to lose control over what content of yours appears, but it wouldn't be as bad as a penalty.

[AaronB]

I agree I cant see you would be penalised for this, no. Look at all the blogger sites that all link up, and press releases people carry out . Duplicate pages on your site yes.

Think if someone likes the pages on your site, and blogs it, its bejond your control, you will be fine as matt says.

Thanks

[PETTE]

Personally I would transfer the blog to my website together. And use wordpress instead of blogger. Mainly because with wordpress you'll have much control over your contents and much better quality. And this might drive traffic to your other site as well, Since the blog is popular.

[edmondscommerce]

I wouldn't advise posting content twice

[dots and spots Jeff]

Personally I would transfer the blog to my website together. And use wordpress instead of blogger. Mainly because with wordpress you'll have much control over your contents and much better quality. And this might drive traffic to your other site as well, Since the blog is popular.

But my worry is that inmoving it my main site I'd loose all my current readers

[estwig]

I'm gonna stick my not so techy neck out here and suggest a 301 redirect from the old blog domain to the new one.

Don't take my word for it, it would be nice for someone a bit more techy to either shoot me down in flames, or say 'top idea, Keith, have a gold star'!!

:)

[mattsaw]

I'm gonna stick my not so techy neck out here and suggest a 301 redirect from the old blog domain to the new one.

Don't take my word for it, it would be nice for someone a bit more techy to either shoot me down in flames, or say 'top idea, Keith, have a gold star'!!

:)

Nope that's exactly right. I'm just not sure if you would be able to create a 301 redirect on a Blogger blog.

[estwig]

Nope that's exactly right. I'm just not sure if you would be able to create a 301 redirect on a Blogger blog.

Does the app being used matter, it's just one url redirecting to another??

[mattsaw]

Does the app being used matter, it's just one url redirecting to another??

You have to either have access to the server to edit the htaccess file, or the software has to have the functionality to let you set up a redirect.

Blogger obviously won't let you have access to their server, and not having used Blogger before I'm not aware if they give you the option to 301 URLs

[mattsaw]

It looks as if there is a 301 redirect workaround, have a read of this.

http://www.techcounter.com/wordpress/301-permanent-redirect-from-blogger-beta-to-wordpress/

[estwig]

You have to either have access to the server to edit the htaccess file, or the software has to have the functionality to let you set up a redirect.

Blogger obviously won't let you have access to their server, and not having used Blogger before I'm not aware if they give you the option to 301 URLs

Ah I see, blogger is a hosted package type thing, their host, their server.

Thanks for explaining.

[PETTE]

So this leaves the perfect solution around this to transfer your blog to wordpress on your other website. Publishing the contests twice seems ridiculous. And I don't see how that will benefit you in anyway. If you've used wordpress before you would know that there will be a lot of work involved formating your contents to match each blog each time you want to post. You might like to use wordpress blog more and first.

If your blog always has great contents then you shouldn't have trouble attacting subscribers. You could leave banners and links on the blogger blog informing your members the blog has been transfered to a different location. Or could post on both blogs for mini while until the new blog has gained a lot of members then close the other one.

[ozbon]

But my worry is that inmoving it my main site I'd loose all my current readers

Putting in a redirect will help - if you can on Blogger, I don't know.

The alternative would be to have a change to the Blogger template, so you can say something like "From 1/1/2010, this blog will be at www.site.com/blog . Please click here to go to it" If it's on the template, it'll be in every page/post, so you know people will see it.

[ozbon]

Or change the template so that at the start (in the <head> section of the template) you have

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://www.site.com/blog" />

Which is the equivalent of a 301, but done in the HTML

[dots and spots Jeff]

Thanks to you all who have contributed to this thread, giving me some great advice.

I really do appreciate all your comments and I am hugely grateful to you all for taking the time to help me out.

Thanks again!

Jeff