Why You Should Republish Your Devblog Posts and How to Do It

Why You Should Republish Your Devblog Posts and How to Do It

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Hey there Hashnoders, ๐Ÿ‘‹

If you're just starting as bloggers, it's essential to make sure you build and develop your blog/domain as well as your content right. I have seen so many developers struggle with this topic and make a lot of mistakes along the way, which is why I'm writing this post. Yes, you need to republish your articles and yes, you need to worry about republishing them in a way that won't harm your blog.

A lot of people rely on websites such as Hashnode, Medium, HackerNoon, and similar to find the content they need. To reach as many people as possible, it's helpful to republish your posts on these websites as well.

In this post, I'll dig into republishing, or content syndication, and show you why you should republish your posts, what it means from the SEO perspective, and help you republish your posts right. By doing this, it will be easier for you to promote your open source projects and share your advice with a larger number of devs.

The importance of republishing posts

Through Devblog (Hashnode's new blogging platform), you get an instant audience as soon as you hit the publish button, but this number naturally comes down after some time, especially if you don't blog regularly. This is where SEO kicks in. Ideally, you'd want people to find your posts organically through search engines (e.g., Google search), but if your website is not as optimized, your posts won't be showing on top of Google's search results. Moreover, by republishing your posts on other blogging platforms, you'll reach a larger reader base. Not everyone is fond of searching for articles on Google, and a lot of people use native search options on these blogging platforms to discover the posts they want to read.

As a fresh blogger, you won't have a lot of domain strength. By having backlinks on websites with strong domains, you'll be improving your domain as well. With each republished post, you'll get a link back to your website, your domain will become stronger, and search engines will favorize your posts over others.

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All you need to know about the canonical tag

To help search engines separate republished posts from your original content, websites use canonical tag. Here's what it looks like in the source code:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://yourblog.hashnode.dev/your-post" />

Duplicate content is a real issue, and without this HTML tag in the source code of the page, search engines might prioritize content discovered on a website with a stronger domain, and your website ranking can fall down.

E.g. If a post is published on Hashnode.com without using the canonical tag, it will most likely reach the top of the search results before the original post, because Hashnode's domain is very strong and the website was indexed several years ago.

This is why Hashnode and other publishing platforms enable users to add the canonical tag, or the original URL to a republished post.

How to republish posts on Medium with proper canonical tag

In order to republish your post on Medium, you have to use their importer.

You can't add a canonical URL after you hit publish on your story, so make sure to follow all the steps.

  • Click on your profile picture, and click Stories.
  • Click on "Import a Story"

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  • Insert the canonical URL
  • Import the story, and check if the formatting of your article looks good.
  • Click on "Ready to publish"
  • Add tags to your story and make sure to untick the box which will put your content under the Medium's paywall. This will enable all the users to discover the story on Medium, whether they are paying for it or not.

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That's it, you've successfully republished your post on Medium ๐Ÿ‘

How to republish posts on Hackernoon with proper canonical tag

To republish a story on Hackernoon you need to log in, and go to your profile.

  • Click on "New Draft"
  • Paste the content of your post
  • Click on "Story Settings"
  • Add the canonical URL in the "First Seen At" box

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  • Add tags and the cover photo
  • Submit the story for review

The Hackernoon staff will then decide whether they'll feature your post on their platform.

How to republish posts on Devto with proper canonical tag

To republish posts from your Devblog on Devto you need to:

  • Make sure you're logged in
  • Click on "Write a post"
  • Enter the title and the body of the text. They accept Markdown, so you can simply copy-paste the source text.
  • Click on 3 dots in the top right corner Screenshot_630.png
  • Enter canonical Url and click on "done"
  • Add a cover photo
  • Hit publish

That's it, you've properly republished your post ๐ŸŽ‰

How to republish your posts on Devblog or Hashnode

Some of you might have used other blogging platforms before joining Devblog.

To keep all the posts in one place, we strongly recommend you to republish your old posts on Devblog too.

Here's how to do it:

  • Make sure you're logged in on Hashnode
  • Click on "Create", then "Write Story"
  • Enter the title and the text
  • Use the right tags, add cover and add the original URL.
  • Make sure to add the post to your publication

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Hit "Publish", and that's it! You've shared the post with the rest of the Hashnode family!

Medium Importer on Devblog

If you have used Medium as a blogging platform, you'll be happy to hear that you can import your posts to Devblog in a few clicks.

  • Make sure you're logged in on Hashnode
  • Go to your blog dashboard
  • On the right side, under "Quick Actions" you'll find "Import from Medium" button

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  • Insert the link to your original article
  • Check the preview of your post
  • Make any edits if necessary
  • Add the appropriate tags
  • Hit "Publish" and share the post all over the web ๐ŸŽ‰

โŒโŒโŒ Think twice before republishing posts on FreeCodeCamp โŒโŒโŒ

At the time of writing this article, FreeCodeCamp doesn't support canonical URLs. By republishing your posts on their platform, the post on their website will likely rank better than the original one.

If you'd still like to republish your articles there, it's recommended to add the following sentence at the top of the article:

This post was originally published on - link to your post

This is one of the signals that the post is a cross-post, not the original one. Web crawlers might pick it up, but this is not a 100% safe technique and you should be careful not to do this with all of your articles. By adding the canonical tag to republished posts, you'll keep the original article on top of the search results for sure.

Conclusion

I hope you found the post useful and helpful, and that you will start republishing your Devblog posts from now on. Please let me know in the comments below if there are other Devblog features you'd like me to write a bit more about.


ICYMI, Devblog is a new blogging platform for developers built by Hashnode. Blog on your domain hassle-free, reach the right audience, and don't worry about maintenance and keeping up with ever-changing rules of the web.

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