Have you ever found that you’ve written excellent content but aren’t able to generate enough traffic to your website? You might be surprised to know that this is a common problem for most marketers. One way to solve this is to use content syndication, which occurs when you republish existing content on other websites and publishing platforms. It allows you to reach a broader audience. Not only does this method benefit you by giving you exposure to a different audience, but the syndicated website or platform also receives fresh content. It may involve an article, image, video, or infographic.
When you look at how to syndicate content, it’s important to note that it’s not the same as duplicate content, which can hurt search engine results. Including a link back to the original article can help circumvent the results. It’s also not the same as guest blogging since that involves an entirely new piece of content specifically written for that site.
Where should you syndicate your content?
It depends on the status of your content. If it is a new content, you will have to see whether or not it has already been published on some other website. If the answer is ‘no’, you may republish or syndicate it on some site that is bigger and more popular than yours. You may republish your best pieces or post your latest articles on such sites.
Moreover, you also have the option to post your original article as a guest post on some other site for the time being. Later on, you may syndicate it to your own website or some other pages if you like.
However, it is also possible that your article has never been published already. But, if it is among your best performing articles, it will be wise to syndicate it on a site much bigger than your own.
On the contrary, if you feel your article not among your top pieces, but still solid enough to be useful, you may syndicate it on some site having a matching level with yours. Remember, you can certainly gain traffic with syndication on sites that have about the same audience and authority level as your own.
Is syndication practically useful?
The answer is a big ‘yes’. Anna Crowe of Search Engine Journal syndicated some of her original posts to LinkedIn and Medium. She observed a 34% increase in page views each week for a month.
Moreover, content syndication is being used as an effective tactic by around 65% of companies to generate appreciable leads.
The story of content syndication is somewhat different with big brands. They believe in perfect content marketing mix consisting of 65% new content, 25% content curation and 10% content syndication.
How can you syndicate successfully?
You can use the following tips for successful syndication.
- You should work with sites that use rel=canonical tag. It will establish your article as the original one for SEO purposes.
- If you want to syndicate to multiple sites, stagger publication dates.
- Search engines do not index the syndicated content if you have used a ‘noindex’ tag. So, use it immediately and let searches to point to your original.
The bottom line
If you are good at thoughtful content syndication, you can have your content working overtime across multiple sites. It is highly advisable to explore syndication so you can expand the reach of your posts.
