I’ve done two posts so far as part of our “Ask The Experts” series on Panda 4.0/Payday Loan 2.0 Update and then a followup a few weeks later. However, I thought now was the time for our SEJ writers to get a chance to tackle one of the hottest discussion points right now, the LinkedIn Publishing Platform.
Here’s what I asked a selection of our writers:
“The LinkedIn Publishing Platform has created buzz among content creators who are excited about the exposure it could provide. However, because best practices aren’t set, the future for it isn’t clear. What is your opinion on the future success, as well as the ramifications of the platform, including duplicate content flagging, abuse of the opportunity (using it for sales promotions instead of real content), etc?”
Thanks to our SEJ writers for their thoughtful responses:
What do you think about the new LinkedIn Publishing platform?
From Neil Patel of KISSMetrics, QuickSprout, and NeilPatel.com:
I think publishing on LinkedIn is a great way to generate additional exposure and branding for your business…especially if you are in the B2B sector. The only thing I would look out for is posting duplicate content. A lot of bloggers are posting their identical blog posts on LinkedIn and eventually I think this will bit them in the butt.
From Amanda DiSilvestro of Higher Visibility:
Using the LinkedIn publishing platform more often is actually one of my goals over the next six months, and I feel like a lot of other people are in the same boat. It seems so great! And it’s so easy! And the potential seems so huge! And….we’re still pushing it to the side. I certainly can’t speak for everyone, but as I look through some of my connections it seems that many people aren’t making a consistent effort, and I do believe the platform’s uncertain future has something to do with this.
We don’t really know much about LinkedIn’s algorithm, and we aren’t sure whether or not these posts will start to gain more popularity in Google search. While it’s wonderful in terms of building up your profile, you want to make sure as a writer your articles are gaining maximum exposure. Because it takes so long to write a quality article, I have to publish it somewhere where I know exactly what I’m getting both now and in the future. If I was able to duplicate content somehow this might be a different story, but for now I have to assume that duplication is a bad idea, and if I want to get involved in this platform I need to spend my time writing something unique. As for sales promotions instead of real content, I haven’t seen it be much of a problem now and my guess is that LinkedIn won’t let it become poor quality in the future.
Finally with all of that said, I absolutely see the value in this publishing platform and I do think it has the potential to grow and become more successful. It’s still fairly new and LinkedIn has some room to improve, and I think they will. Again, I’m still not an avid user of the platform, but I plan to be because I think it has a solid future.
From Razvan Gavrilas of cognitiveSEO:
The LinkedIn initiative looks great. But…as soon as it was launched it generated a lot of traction (maybe too much all at once) and a lot of people started writing all kind of content. I do not think LinkedIn is prepared yet to handle all the low quality content issues. Or maybe they do not care and the system will auto-curate itself. At the moment I am sure a lot of SEOs will try to abuse the system.
Dofollow links can be easily added in those articles and people will start writing on LinkedIn just for that dofollow link. I will not be surprised to see a future Unnatural Links Penalty applied to LinkedIn articles because of this kind of abuse.
On the good side of things, the LinkedIn article platform would allow you to spread more content directly to your LinkedIn network , increasing your perceived authority in a specific niche or area.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” as the saying goes, so let’s see where the new LinkedIn article platform will be in the next two years.
From Prashant Puri of AdLift:
LinkedIn’s publisher platform has proved to be a very powerful content marketing tool in an extremely short amount of time. Posts written by authors have the opportunity of reaching 50k+ people in a matter of hours. The platform needs to be part of any marketers social media plan.
With respect to SEO, the content wouldn’t have direct impact on your SEO but indirectly– most definitely. Just like Twitter can be used as a powerful indexation tool, Linkedin’s publisher platform can we used to get your site content over to Google lighting fast.
What’s important is how LinkedIn will deal with duplicate content and content created to spam the platform. In addition, if LinkedIn doesn’t act fast enough on these policies will Google leverage the same content penalties as it’ s done to other low quality content platforms? That’s yet to be seen.
Featured image credit: Twin Design / Shutterstock.com
