Great content is one part of a winning digital marketing strategy. You still must attract traffic to the content you spent weeks on.
Traffic isn’t easy to generate. According to a 2021 marketing report by HubSpot, 61% of content marketers find it their biggest challenge to get new visitors to their website.
Here’s the good news:
Content syndication can answer these challenges.
Content syndication enables marketers to broaden their audience and increase web traffic.
What is content syndication? How can you use it?
What Is Content Syndication?
Content syndication occurs when a website reproduces another website’s original post while giving credits. The attribution message looks like this:
Syndicating content is different from republishing duplicate content, which can affect your website’s reputation and search engine rankings.
Content syndication is a legitimate strategy in content marketing that benefits both parties. The original content creator gains a larger audience, while the third-party website gets to share high-quality content.
The original owner can also self-syndicate the piece of content to relevant forums, creating crowd marketing links.
Is it guest posting?
No.
In guest posts, a person writes explicitly for someone else’s website. In content syndication, website owners copy the original content and post it with permission from the original owner.
By nature, content syndication is less time-intensive than guest blogging, as you can share the same existing content in multiple places.
Why is content syndication important?
Content syndication, which involves sharing and distributing your content on various platforms, holds importance for digital marketing and SEO. Here’s why it matters, incorporating the provided keywords:
- Enhanced reach and visibility
Content syndication expands your reach, allowing your content to appear on multiple reputable websites. This increased visibility in diverse online spaces can attract a wider audience, ultimately benefiting your SEO efforts.
- SEO advantages
Syndicating content on authoritative platforms can lead to backlinks and increased referral traffic, which positively impacts your SEO. These inbound links from syndicated content contribute to your website’s authority and search engine rankings.
- Wider audience engagement
Content syndication allows you to engage B2B audiences and reach potential customers who frequent specific industry-focused platforms. This targeted approach can improve lead generation and customer acquisition.
- Cost-effective marketing
Content syndication offers an economical way to distribute content across multiple channels. Compared to traditional advertising, it’s a cost-effective marketing strategy.
- Establishing authority
Consistently syndicating high-quality content positions your brand as an industry authority. When readers encounter your content on reputable sites, it fosters trust and credibility.
- Repurposing content
Syndication allows you to repurpose existing content for different platforms, extending the life and value of your content assets.
- Syndication partnerships
Collaborating with syndication partners can expand your reach further and leverage their established audiences.
Popular Syndicated Content Providers
- Quora
- Slideshare
- Mix
- Medium
- Business2Community
- Taboola
- Outbrain
- Content.ad
- Revcontent
- Sharethrough
- Quora
Quora is a social medium formatted as questions and answers. Users post their questions and the rest of the community answers in reply.
You can syndicate a portion of your content while answering a relevant question and include a link to your website. Or you can republish your complete content on Quora’s blog.
Reddit is a popular social media platform. Users share articles, photos and videos or write up original posts in subreddits — topic-specific Reddit sections.
You can share your articles or post a portion of your content on relevant subreddits to spark a discussion and generate traffic.
- Slideshare
Slideshare is a place for internet users to share their expertise in presentations, graphics and slideshows.
If your content relies heavily on visuals, Slideshare is a great place to syndicate.
LinkedIn puts your content in front of professionals and businesses as a business-focused social medium, making it ideal for B2B content.
- Mix
Mix is a social sharing platform that enables users to collect and share online content. You can curate your content into relevant categories and reach out to your target audience.
- Medium
Medium is a blogging platform that empowers writers to publish any content they choose and gain a following.
You can import your content in Medium and send traffic to your website.
Pinterest enables users to share their favorite visuals from across the internet.
You can share your eye-catching visuals — infographics, graphs and images — on Pinterest and attract traffic.
- Business2Community
Business2Community specializes in publishing business news, market research and thought pieces.
If your content offers new insight into your field, Business2Community may be the ideal content syndication partner.
- Taboola
Taboola is a paid service that syndicates your content to large publishers. The syndicated content appears next to similar articles as the suggested content.
- Outbrain
Like Taboola, Outbrain works with its syndication partners to show your content next to relevant articles. You pay a small fee when someone clicks on your article.
- Content.ad
The content.ad offers promotion for your articles through their paid distribution channels.
- Revcontent
Revcontent is a paid marketing service that syndicates your content to high-quality publishers.
- Sharethrough
Sharethrough is a programmatic advertising company for sharing articles, visual content and videos. Whatever you want to syndicate, Sharethrough can help your content appear in front of relevant audiences.
SEO considerations for content syndication
Worried about duplicate content?
Readers can tell the difference through the attribution messages, but how will search engines differentiate the original content from the syndicated content?
A canonical link is the answer.
The best practice to ensure your content receives benefits rather than penalties for duplication is to include a canonical tag in the syndicated content like the one below:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”[Original article URL]”
A canonical link informs the search engines about the original post that should appear in search engine results.
This extra step ensures that you reap the full benefits of content syndication.
Check if your content syndicate includes a canonical link:
- Right-click anywhere on the syndicate’s page.
- Select Inspect from the drop-down menu.
- Press Ctrl/cmd+F to use the search feature.
- Type “canonical” in the search box.
If the webpage is using a canonical link, it will return a canonical link.
Content syndication: Benefits for your business
How does content syndication benefit your business?
Content syndication has several benefits.
Continent syndication:
- Saves money: Most content syndication sites share your content to their broad audience for free.
- Increases brand awareness: Visitors learn about you and your products when your content appears on content syndication sites.
- Builds authority: When your name or brand is associated with high-authority publications in your niche, the audience sees you as an equal authority or thought leader.
- Generates high-quality traffic to your website: Readers interested in your insight or offerings click on the internal links in your syndicated content.
- Promotes lead generation: Your syndicated content can turn cold leads into customers. You can increase subscribers and conversions by including a link to your gated content, newsletter, book or course sign-ups at the end of your syndicated content.
However, major syndication websites often prohibit this tactic.
- Improves SEO performance: Backlinks to your website from relevant publications build your backlink profile and pass on their page authority to you. It elevates your search engine rankings and brings in organic traffic.
For these reasons, you should incorporate content syndication into your content strategy to increase your referral and direct traffic.
Do check out the syndicated content for canonical links. Otherwise, search engines may not display your preferred content in the search results.
How to syndicate content?
By now, you know how content syndication works.
But how do you syndicate content?
Here’s how:
Step 1: Optimize your content for syndication
Step 2: Select a content syndication platform
Step 3: Find your partners
Step 4: Master pitching
Step 5: Evaluate
Step 1: Optimize your content for syndication
Content publishers are more likely to republish high-quality content that provides a unique value.
How can you provide a unique value?
Think about the type of content that you see frequently shared on social media.
More often than not, it’s images.
Include visuals to make your content valuable and increase the viewer’s desire to engage. Here are some ways to include visuals:
- Infographics
- Images with key takeaways
- Charts summarizing information
- Helpful screenshots
For inspiration, check out Canva’s best infographics
The content itself must also be well-written and insightful.
As it will reach a large audience, include unique insights to establish yourself as a thought leader in your space.
For SEO, include links to your website in your syndicated content. It will pass authority to improve your rankings and direct traffic to your website.
As you wrap up your syndicated content, be sure to include a relevant call to action that inspires the audience to click through to your website or sign up for your newsletter.
Step 2: Select a content syndication platform
Not all content syndication platforms are the same.
From building relationships with well-known publications like Forbes to self-syndicating on platforms like Medium, each has its advantages and disadvantages.
Here are the main ways to republish content:
- Syndication on larger platforms: A prominent publisher with a wider audience publishes your content.
- Syndication on similar size platforms: Your content reaches relevant yet new audiences that may not be familiar with your business.
- Co-syndication: You and another relevant business share each other’s content.
- Self-syndication: You publish your content on free platforms.
Paid content syndication: You pay third-party services to feature your article in supported publications. It is like search engine marketing
Consider the advantages and disadvantages to each of these content syndication services, along with your niche.
For example, if your target audience comprises other businesses, focus on B2B content syndication platforms.
Step 3: Find your partners
Find the relevant content distribution channels. They should have an audience you want to reach, a more extensive user base or both.
Choose partners with high-authority sites. Check their domain rating or domain authority to determine if they are like you.You can use Ahrefs’s Website Authority Checker or Moz’s Domain Analysis to check these essential metric
You can find smaller publications by searching:
- Previously published on
- Originally published on
- Originally appeared in
- Republished with permission
- Reproduced with permission
- Shared with permission
To find a possible partner in your niche search: “previously published on” + [Niche keyword]
Step 4: Master pitching
When you reach out to a possible syndication partner, your email should convey your authority and professionalism. To do so, customize each email for the recipient.
Do your research on their audience and content curation style. Look for a content hub on their website that your content may fit into and provide the most value and potential return.
Craft a compelling pitch email. Mention a recent article they’ve published similar to yours that has done well to show that you read their content.
Include links to your content in the email so they can see the quality.
Step 5: Evaluate
After some time, look at the results of your content syndication.
Here are some key metrics to consider when monitoring your content:
- Are the pages you linked in your syndicated content seeing any traffic or rankings boosts?
- Is your website seeing any traffic increase?
- Are average rankings increasing?
Google Analytics is a powerful tool to measure your website’s success traffic. Look for upticks in traffic after implementing any marketing strategy to get a sense of your campaign’s success.
Free content syndication
Free content syndication is a strategy that involves sharing your content on various platforms without incurring costs. Here’s how it works:
- Republish your top-performing content
Share your latest or most successful content on more prominent websites with higher authority and a larger readership than your own. This broadens your reach and exposes your content to a wider audience, potentially boosting SEO benefits.
- Syndicate older content
Syndicate older content on websites that have a similar audience and authority level as yours. This approach revitalizes and reuses your existing content to reach new readers without the cost of creating new material.
- Guest posting and syndication
Contribute guest posts to more prominent publications, and later syndicate the content on your website, Medium, or LinkedIn. This dual strategy leverages the reach of larger publications while driving traffic and SEO value back to your platforms.
- Natural syndication opportunities
Aim to have your content naturally picked up by websites that frequently syndicate content. These platforms have established syndication processes and can amplify your reach without direct effort.
Content syndication best practices
Modify content as appropriate
Before syndicating, adapt the content to suit the hosting platform’s audience and guidelines. This ensures that the content remains relevant and engaging for the new readers.
Use canonical tags
Implement canonical tags to indicate the source of the content. This helps search engines understand which version is the primary one, preventing duplicate content issues.
Add a link back to your site
Always include a backlink to your website within the syndicated content. This directs interested readers back to your site, promoting traffic and enhancing your SEO.
Share syndicated content on social
Promote syndicated content through your social media channels to reach your existing audience. Encourage sharing and engagement to maximize the content’s exposure.
Measure key metrics
Monitor key performance metrics, such as traffic, engagement, and conversions, to assess the impact of syndicated content. Use these insights to refine your content syndication strategy.
Final thoughts: What is content syndication — How to leverage it
Once you know how to syndicate content, it can be a valuable strategy for increasing your content’s reach and ROI.
Not only can it grow your audience, but it can also establish your brand as an authority in your niche.
However, you’ll need optimized content that promotes sharing and inspires readers to discover more of your work to see maximum benefits.
Optimize your content with thoughtful internal links and select your syndication partners carefully to reach the target audience.
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