The success of any brand or business in today’s fast-paced digital environment depends on creating exciting and valuable content that connects with your target audience. However, consistently generating original content that maintains your audience’s interest can take time and effort.
Content syndication can be a very effective content marketing strategy in situations like these. Without having to produce entirely fresh material, syndicating current content enables you to reach a larger audience and raise the visibility of your business.
The idea of content syndication, how it operates, and its considerable influence on content marketing will all be covered in this article. We’ll also share practical tips to help you develop a successful content syndication strategy that maximizes the reach and effectiveness of your content.
What Is Content Syndication?
Content syndication is republishing the same content, such as an article, a video, an infographic, etc., on one or more different websites. Large and small publications like syndicating content since it enables them to provide their audience with up-to-date content.
In general, you can increase your reach, but the secret to successful content syndication is choosing networks that connect you with a customer base prepared to purchase.
The change from content syndication to performance marketing occurs at this moment. When syndicating material, these platforms might use a variety of strategies, such as
- Republish the complete piece.
- Reduce the length to make it more concise.
- Post a brief passage from the source.
Credit for the original publication is given; however, syndication is advantageous for both the syndicate and the company that produced the original content because it allows them to reach a wider audience of potential clients.
Who Can Benefit from Content Syndication?
Almost any company can profit from content syndication if the audience and syndicate are accessible.
Businesses, however, are best positioned to benefit if they produce quality and creative thought leadership content.
B2B technology firms regularly find themselves having great content but no audience.
Why Use Content Syndication
Companies that syndicated their content have benefited from excellent product coverage and higher reviews.
Consumer electronics firms who syndicated their content saw a 324% increase in reviews and a 26% increase in product coverage.
Yet, those aren’t the only advantages of syndicating your material. Let’s explore some of the numerous benefits of content syndication.
Content Exposure
By content syndication, you can reach readers, viewers, and potential customers who have never encountered your brand naturally.
When you upload a straightforward infographic on a reliable website, thousands of people will see your content more than if you stick to posting on your website. Also, you can regularly syndicate content on that site to reach a new audience.
You can include articles (or portions from them), eBooks, whitepapers, videos, etc., in your syndicated content. Syndication helps you develop your position as a thought leader and allows you to use multichannel marketing to reach more of your company’s target audiences.
For free content distribution, you can use various platforms, including social media platforms (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube), media-focused blogs, or content hubs (such as inbound or media).
Syndicating your material increases traffic and the number of people who follow your brand and content. So, your website, social media accounts, and other platforms can reach a larger audience.
Overall, content syndication maximizes the visibility of the content you’ve invested a lot of time or money into producing.
Lead Generation
A quick and efficient way to exhibit thought leadership is through content syndication.
Each piece of content that syndicates restricted content can generate an honest financial gain. Prospects must fill up personal contact information to receive their content assets. You can gather the prospect’s data using this lead generation through the syndication technique, which you can then utilize to target them and win them over as clients.
Yet, it’s crucial to keep in mind three factors when tracking the leads you’ve obtained through syndicated content:
- When users register to download an eBook, a webinar, or other content, they aren’t interested in your product but in the subject.
- This user may not be familiar with your brand or service and has not downloaded any content from your website.
- It’s critical to promptly follow up with your leads since they might forget about your company if you wait too long. Time is crucial.
Link building
Link Building helps to improve your website’s SEO, which improves your SERP rankings (Search Engine Results Pages). Whether it be articles, movies, or graphics, content syndication services can publish your work and give you credit by connecting to it and, at the same time, increasing your site authority in that niche.
Also, the syndicated content and higher ratings could result in more people visiting your website. Having a favorable effect on your SEO can increase your sales and revenue.
Although some risks are involved, content syndication is a practical approach to sharing resources with a larger audience. Unfortunately, search engines dislike repeated content.
Hence, Google will show only one of the pages a search engine finds with the same information on the results page, so it’s crucial to include a link to the source in every syndicated content. The search engine is informed by these links that the post they are crawling is syndicated.
Types of Content Syndication
There are four types of content syndication
Syndicate Third-Party Content on Your Blog
As a publisher, you can request permission to use content from another website on your blog.
Your blog should ideally have 10% or less syndicated content. It’s always a good idea to include helpful content that benefits your readers and is worth their time, even if it is only partially original.
If you manage a blog with numerous contributors, you know how difficult it may be to convince talented writers to agree to write a post for you. An authentic industry influencer won’t often have much time to devote to creating a unique blog article, particularly for you.
Requesting to be featured in an influencer’s published work is much more logical. The influencer will likely consider it an honor to be asked by you.
Your material is instantly more diverse after adding syndicated content. Even though it isn’t brand-new on the web, it offers your readers something fresh and worthwhile.
Syndicate Your Blog Content on Other Websites
You can syndicate your material as a publisher so that it appears on partner websites.
These deals typically come in one of two varieties:
- All Syndicated Content: You don’t produce unique content for your partner. Said your partner reposts your material.
- Syndicated and Original Material Together: You consent to a division with which both parties can live. For instance, you might send them syndicated content for one month and original content the following. Alternatively, if you commit to writing 1-4 posts monthly, at least one must be original.
Publishers are typically open to agreements as long as the quality is good. They know your busy schedule, and hey, it’s free content!
Yet, such publishers typically will only stick to the agreement if the stuff you provide them works as promised. If your syndicated material doesn’t offer traffic or engagement, it won’t be worth their time and effort.
Publishing Content on Sites That Syndicate Their Content
Additionally, you might get your content syndicated by regularly contributing to a website that does so.
Self-Service Syndication
A fantastic site to perform self-service syndication is Medium. You can syndicate your content. There are several excellent reasons to write on Medium, including.
- Great Import Tool
- Built-in Audience
- Engagements
- No API
- Gain New Social Media Followers
Obtaining an author ID and being published in the Huffington Post is easy. They don’t check your qualifications. The dialogue is “I want to write for you.” You may now log in; thanks.
Your writings might be published on LinkedIn as well. Everyone you are connected to is notified each time you do so.
Another excellent resource for self-service syndication is Business2Community. There are huge websites like Yahoo where published content can be syndicated.
How to Syndicate Content Properly
It’s essential to handle content syndication properly, even while it may seem like every content marketer’s dream (after all, who wouldn’t want greater exposure?).
Syndicated content can be mistaken for duplicate content, as we’ve seen above. It has numerous adverse effects, including harm to your SEO and online reputation.
Let’s look at the procedures to syndicate content to avoid such circumstances successfully.
1. Build up linkable content.
Your marketing revolves around the creation of content. Only when you’ve produced some material can you syndicate it. Also, you must ensure that the information you publish is of good quality if you want to syndicate it on platforms with great authority.
Before publishing, concentrate on the contents:
- Quality
- Depth
- Relevance
- Authority
What is my content syndication strategy, you can ask yourself? And make sure your material:
- Meets the criteria set forth by the syndication platforms
- Catches the eye of those websites
- Meets your objectives
2. Contact the appropriate platforms
It’s not enough to produce quality content; you must also syndicate it on the appropriate channels. Examine the media that your target audience reads.
Focus on collaborating with sites with a greater audience than your own when syndicating material. These partners have made a name for themselves in your industry as leaders. Their collaboration will assist you in enhancing the image of your company and establishing your position as a thought leader in the industry.
Once you’ve identified publications that can assist you in reaching your target market, thoroughly examine them to understand their writing style and the kind of information they provide on their websites.
Send a highly personalized outreach message to those sources for publication chances to inquire about syndication potential.
3. Employ proper content syndication strategies.
Use the following strategies to inform search engines that the information you’ve syndicated is original:
Rel=”canonical” tag
On the URL of the syndicated material, the “rel=canonical” tag should be present. That tag will inform the search engines that the page they are crawling is syndicated.
By doing this, you can prevent the possibility that the search engine may think the syndicated content is unique when it is a replica of the original.
Meta noindex tag
Similar to the rel=canonical tag, the meta noindex tag excludes the noindex page (the syndicated page) from indexing.
Only once you’ve indexed can search engines find your material. When you employ the no-index tag, you instruct the search engine not to index your syndicated page.
Your unique content will be the sole authentic material on record. The syndicated content won’t be in direct competition with your unique content.
Regular backlink
The regular backlink is ideal for marketers and distributors who are not savvy coders or have rigorous code implementation criteria.
Although it is the least preferred alternative, it is the best choice for this group of marketers.
With this technique, just a portion of your original content can be syndicated because it is backlinked from the syndicated post. However, to access the whole post, readers of the syndicated piece must click on the link to your website.
However, choosing a rel=canonical or a meta no-index tag is the safest technique to get around duplicate material.
Note: These tags are typically non-negotiable, so you should have written proof that the syndication websites use them.
4. Keep track of the effectiveness of your content.
You must analyze and improve your syndicated material to produce high-quality leads from your syndicated material.
Pay attention to the following to understand lead quality:
- The number of leads that your sales representatives can connect with or engage.
- The percentage of leads that qualified according to the lead qualification criterion.
- Conversion rate: The rate at which qualified leads to go through the sales pipeline and become customers.
- The percentage of opportunities that result in sales is known as the win rate.
Even though it’s difficult to calculate ROI for brand lift and traffic, they can indicate campaign success.
5. Assess and enhance
The return on investment (ROI) you earn from content syndication indicates success in this field. Keep track of it, try things out, and if they work, do it again with more publications. You can go ahead and scale your syndication approach with the help of this.
Where Should You Syndicate Your Content?
The techniques you employ will influence the effectiveness of your content syndication, just like any other marketing plan. Choosing the source of your material is the first step to reaching your syndication objectives.
Free
Free content syndication is available, meaning no money is required to distribute the content.
Nevertheless, finding newspapers that allow free content syndication will take some time. These websites include Business 2 Community, Lifehacker, and Huffington.
The use of phrases like “first published in,” “originally appeared on,” and “republished with permission” in a post typically denotes that someone syndicated the information.
Contact the site editors and request syndication of your work with the existing canonicals and links to your website.
Paid
Specific syndication platforms are exclusively for content dissemination, and you are charged per click with them. Many websites rely on titles that are overtly clickbait.
These headlines’ mismatch with the content causes astronomically high bounce rates, which is the exact reverse of what you want. Taboola and Outbrain are two examples.
Owned
Like free syndication, this technique allows you to roll in the hay alone without dealing with editors or negotiating canonical tag requirements.
These websites include Medium and LinkedIn, for instance. You can post your content on these sites with a link to your original work and a statement that reads “first published on.” You can syndicate any guest posts you’ve written for other publications across various channels.
When Should You Republish Your Content?
Your growth strategy should always include content syndication. Companies should constantly look for methods to create leads and attract high-quality traffic to their valuable content.
If you first published the content on a platform you control, you should postpone syndicating until after search engines have added the original content to their index.
Depending on your site’s authority, you could wait for the content to be ranked highly before opting for syndication. If you syndicate to websites with significantly more power, your syndicated version may easily outrank the original.
Maintaining and growing your brand authority is essential, as any brand marketer understands.
Downsides of Content Syndication
There are certain drawbacks to syndicating content, though. Let’s look at them now.
1. Spam-filled websites might damage your reputation.
Your online reputation could suffer if you syndicate information on some spammy syndication services. Always remember that when you syndicate your content, you lend your name to the importance of the other website.
It is usually preferable to conduct thorough research and learn everything there is to know about the platform where you are syndicating content. To confirm that the platform is reliable and pertinent to your business, examine social media, forums like Reddit and Quora, or other sources.
To prevent using spammy platforms, you can familiarize yourself with your syndication site before you publish there.
2. Your lead generation may not be what you anticipated.
It could be more challenging to convert the leads you’ve obtained from third-party websites than others because they haven’t had much exposure to your brand. Even if the viewer is unfamiliar with your company, you can open higher-level offers that convert them.
3. Syndicated content may affect your SEO
The syndicated content can rank higher in the SERPs than your original content when you syndicate it on a third-party website.
If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.” – Google Search Central.
Some marketers think that syndicated content may be viewed by Google as duplicate content, affecting your original page’s ranking.
But that’s not the case.
When syndicating the information, make sure to include a clear link to the original post to prevent facing duplicate content penalties on your website. To give the search engine enough time to recognize the original post, it’s also a good idea to hold off on syndicating the content for a few weeks or months.
Difference between Web Content Syndication and Guest Blogging
Content syndication and guest blogging are tactics marketers, and businesses use to increase their online exposure and reach. However, they are not the same thing.
Content syndication refers to republishing existing content on third-party websites to increase the content’s reach and visibility. The content is usually republished on multiple sites with permission from the original publisher. Content syndication seeks to reach a wider audience by leveraging the existing network of third-party sites.
On the other hand, guest blogging involves creating a new, unique blog post published on a third-party website, typically with a link to the author’s website. Guest blogging can be a way to establish the author as an industry expert, gain exposure to a new audience, and earn backlinks to improve their website’s search engine ranking.
