I'm struggling with an SEO issue and I'm wondering if anyone here has any thoughts...
I have a blog farm, but I've also incorporated a magazine-style front page and buddypress community. My intent with the front page is to 1) showcase posts from sub-blogs and 2) offer a community-wide search solution.
This goes a step further than most magazine-style communities where member-bloggers all post on the main blog. I allow them to have their own blogs, and then aggregate the content.
To do this, I've commissioned a custom plugin that allows an Admin to "Promote" a sub-blog post to the main blog. This solution works well, but I'm afraid I'm getting punished for duplicate content.
When I "Promote" a post, it duplicates onto the main blog and brings forward cats and tags. By default, no comments are allowed and the permalink of the new post links to the main blog. So, if I click on the post title on my front page, it will direct me to the "promoted" version, without comments, on my main blog.
BUT, if I do a quick edit and allow comments, the permalinks change. Now the link directs a reader to the sub-blog. Very cool. And, I can reassign various cats and tags to properly organize the post. And, because it has been "promoted" the main blog, the post shows up in Brajesh's Unified Search results.
While the solution works fantastically, I'm worried that it's killing my SEO.
Some questions for the group...
1. If the permalink of site.com/posttitle redirects to subblog.site.com/posttitle, do the google-bots still know that the cloned content exists on the main blog? Wouldn't they have to because all of my tag, cat, search, and archive results all pull from the main blog (though the link takes you to the sub-blog).
2. Could my "promoted" posts be made invisible to robots and would that help?
3. Is there a way to know if I'm getting punished? And by how much?
I'm getting more comfortable with WP and basic coding, but SEO theory is beyond me.
Thanks!
