6 of the Most Important Steps for Content Syndication

Content syndication is one of the best content marketing hacks to get more traffic and visibility for your blog. What is content syndication? It’s when you republish your blog posts on reputable websites to win new audiences. 

These websites allow you to post because they get a free, regular supply of good-quality content and get massive amounts of traffic without much effort. So, it’s a win-win for both sides.

However, if you do not do it right, content syndication can do more harm than good for your SEO. Having multiple versions of the same article on the internet can confuse search engines and some of it may be tagged as duplicate content.

But, there are ways to avoid that. 

Want to learn how to do content syndication right? Read this guide and find out how to syndicate content in six easy steps.

1. Create Good Content

Before you even begin syndicating content on other platforms, you need to ensure that you are creating good-quality, relevant content for your target audience. 

The main reason why you would syndicate content is to get more traffic to your blog and get some industry recognition. This is especially important if you are new and have just started a blog. 

You need to pay special attention to what your audience would like to read and then create the best possible content on the topics that might be relevant to your audience. Also, you need to optimize your content to ensure that it ranks well.

Once you have good content on your blog, you can then use syndication platforms to repost your best work and help it reach more people.

2. Make a List of Content Syndication Platforms

There are numerous content syndication platforms that you can choose from. So, it makes sense to organize the process and make an exhaustive list of content syndication platforms. 

Once you have that, you can then use various filters to sort through your list to come up with a final list of platforms that are relevant to you. 

Some of the criteria that you can use to filter your list are niches or topics that these platforms post about and the audiences that they cater to. You should also look at the traffic that a website attracts as your main goal is to reach more people.

3. Do Your Outreach

Once you have finalized a list of content syndication platforms that are relevant for your content, you need to start reaching out to them. Remember that you should not reach out without proper preparation.

So, what do you need to prepare for before you do your outreach?

First, select the right content to post on each platform, depending on who the audience is and what type of content is usually published on that platform. When you reach out to any website editor for the first time, it is important to introduce yourself properly and then make your pitch.

Make your pitch short and informative and don’t forget to mention which other sites you contribute to. Mention your achievements and establish credibility to tell the editor why their audience will benefit from your content.

Another reason why you need to do outreach is to find out whether a site allows content syndication or not. Sometimes, it is not explicitly written and you need to contact the platform to find this out.

A lot of content syndication platforms are not that selective and you can simply register and start posting your content. Even then, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you are posting content that is relevant to the audience of that platform.

4. Choose the Ones That Allow NoIndex or Canonical Tags

One of the biggest downsides of content syndication is that it creates duplicate content and your posts might compete against each other for Google rankings. 

And, given that the syndication platforms may have a higher domain authority than your blog, chances are that your republished post will rank higher than your original content.

To avoid such issues, you can use NoIndex or Canonical tags in your republished content. 

When you add a NoIndex tag to your syndicated content, you stop it from being indexed by search engines. This tag tells the search engine that a particular piece of content does not need to be indexed or shown in the SERPs.

This way, you can ensure that only your original content ranks and does not have to compete with republished posts. 

When you use a “rel=canonical” tag, you basically link your syndicated content to the original content source i.e. your original blog post. So, Google will know that the content is not duplicate content and that the original content needs to be ranked and not any other version of it.

Most syndication platforms provide this option where they add a “rel=canonical” tag to all syndicated content and tell Google the original content source. 

However, if any syndication websites refuse to add this, do not post on such websites. Otherwise, it will create duplicate content issues and will adversely affect your SEO and do more harm than good.

Don’t forget to SEO-proof your content before you decide to repost it on any syndication platform. After all, SEO and content marketing go hand-in-hand and you can’t ignore either when syndicating your blog content.

Make a list of platforms that allow these tags and keep posting regularly on them. This will save you the time and effort of doing research every time you want to repost your blog content.

5. Start Reposting Your Blog Posts

Now that you know where to syndicate your content and how to SEO-proof it, you can then start posting content on those platforms. Post your best articles that are good for marketing and useful for your target audience.

Remember, the goal of content syndication is to reach new audiences and to win them over with good content. So, you need to post your best content on syndication platforms to achieve this goal.

Once you post enough good content on a platform and have a loyal audience there, you then need to direct them to your website. The “rel=canonical” tag that we talked about earlier will do that for you. It adds a link to the original content in the post, so your audience can check out your blog if they want to.

Also, use proper backlinks and calls-to-action to further motivate your audience to check out your blog and other useful content on it.

Another quick tip for you is to not go overboard and start syndicating all of your content. After all, why would someone visit your blog if you share everything on the syndication platform?

The key is to win your target audience’s attention on the syndication platforms and then direct them to your blog for more good content. So, only post some of your best work there, but give your audience enough reason to visit your blog.

6. Promote Your Content

Just like with any other content marketing tactic, you need to promote your syndicated content as well. 

But, why would you promote your syndicated content?

Well, a lot of syndication websites are quite reputable and bring in good-quality traffic. So, if you ask people to come and read your post on a popular website, they are more likely to do that than check out your blog that no one has heard of.

Therefore, it is important to promote your latest syndicated content on social media and other channels where you are active. You can use tools to promote your content on social media  every time you publish an article.

Conclusion

Most people think that content syndication is as simple as finding a syndication platform and simply posting content on it. However, in reality, you need to do a few more things to ensure that you are doing it right.

If you are new to this, use this post as your guide and follow these six steps to ace your content syndication game.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started right now and start syndicating your best content to get more traffic to your website.

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant for 15 years with an emphasis on Influencer Marketing in the last 5 years. He is specialized in sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, Influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.