Content is the cornerstone of an effective online presence. It has become a critical element for pretty much every business website.
So, you work hard to write exceptional SEO-optimized content to post on your blog and social media pages. Then, you add backlinks to it so that it can bring traffic and push your site higher into the search results page. This is SEO 101 to move up in search results.
Unfortunately, after all the effort, you still get unimpressive results. This is especially true when you’re promoting a new website or posts with a low or unengaged audience. This is where backlink agencies such as FatJoe, LinkLifting, RankoVerse, and LinkBuilder come in to help. These services will help you build links on sites relevant to your website which increases your site's ranking
However, there’s another strategy you can try—content syndication.
Content syndication is a strategy of republishing your existing content on a third-party website.
Any kind of digital content can be syndicated including articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, and more.
According to Profit Parrot, a reliable SEO agency in Ottawa, content syndication, when done properly, helps you get free publicity, exposure, and backlinks to your site—ultimately boosting your organic traffic and SEO efforts. The third-party site, on the other hand, gets relevant content for free.
The web is so big and noisy. It is impossible to think that all your target audience will read your story just because you published it.
Syndicating your content, either a shortened version or the full article, allows it to be in front of a different audience who would otherwise have never known it existed.
In addition, this method is a low-cost way to expand your content’s reach. It’s also quicker and easier than writing a new blog post either on the same topic or on something entirely different.
A lot of websites are open to syndicated content. That said, if you’re going to re-publish your content, you want to do it on a high-ranking and popular website to reach a wider audience.
Research and reach out to potential syndication partners. If your content is a good match, they’re likely to be interested.
Content syndication has a major SEO risk as it creates duplicate content issues.
According to Google, when you syndicate your content, the search engine will always choose to show the version that is considered the most appropriate for users in each search, which may or may not be the version you want.
Because you don’t have control over which version Google’s algorithm will choose, there’s a chance that the syndicated content will outrank your original content. It also becomes uglier if the syndicated content is highly converting.
The good news is that you can avoid this scenario in two ways:
This tag is an effective solution to resolve duplicated content. When you tag a page or post with the “rel=canonical” tag, you’re linking Google to the original content source. It also doesn’t just attribute you as the original source but also gives you the benefit from all the links that the syndicated content and network attracts.
Thus, make sure to always request third-party publishing sites to use this tag.
Another tag you can use is the “NoIndex” tag which prevents syndicated content from being indexed by Google bots. When a blog post isn’t indexed, it won’t show up in search results.
This way, you won’t lose organic search traffic and you’ll prevent the original content from getting outranked by syndicated content. So, consider asking third-party publishing sites if they’re willing to use the “NoIndex” tag for the syndicated content.
You can always request these two tags, but what if the publishing partners don’t agree? Well, you can ask for attribution and a backlink to your website instead.
Content syndication is not limited to re-publishing on other third-party websites. You can also publish on several platforms including:
Provides a great venue to share your expertise and take advantage of existing reach and traffic. What’s great about LinkedIn is that it shows up on search results, but it’s unlikely to outrank your website for the same content.
The most popular Q&A site, Quora is an excellent platform to do content syndication. You simply search for topics related to your content, answer the questions using excerpts from your content, and add a link back to the original content and your site.
The most popular online forum, Reddit allows people to discuss their interests. Like Quora, you can join forums and answer questions with excerpts or a link to your content.
For effective content promotion and better SEO ranking, it’s not enough to create original, quality content pieces, build backlinks, and wait for heavy traffic and high SERP rankings to come.
Supplement your content marketing and SEO efforts with content syndication. If done right, this strategy can help increase brand awareness, boost website SEO, improve traffic, and gain more leads.
