Syndication is a great way to make your content work harder for you. Instead of constantly producing a new piece for every new online outlet, you can re-use content that you’ve already created.
This means, for instance, that you might publish one of your blog posts to LinkedIn Pulse or Medium – giving you a much larger reach. With a few strategically placed links, content syndication also helps to drive more traffic to your website.
While you might be dubious about content syndication, it’s a perfectly legitimate content marketing strategy used by some of the biggest names out there: for instance, as Search Engine Journal explains, articles on Entrepreneur can be syndicated to Fox News.
Will Content Syndication Affect Your SEO?
One worry that many marketers have is whether content syndication will affect their SEO.
Contrary to what you might have heard, Google does not penalize “duplicate content.” With syndicated content, though, it does seek to show a single version of your content to a user when they search. This could well mean that the syndicated content (e.g., on Medium) will rank instead of the content on your own site.
Google advises that to mitigate this, you should:
- Ensure each site syndicating your content includes a link back to the original article.
- Consider asking those using your syndicated content to include the “noindex” meta tag so that search engines don’t index their page.
If possible, you could also include the “rel=canonical” tag to link to the original source (i.e., the article on your website) from the syndicated piece. This makes it clear to Google which version of the content is the original one.
You should also avoid syndicating every single post on your website. As well as likely being a poor return on time invested, this could cause issues with Google.
Types of Content Syndication to Consider
There are lots of different ways in which you could syndicate your content – and it’s worth keeping in mind that syndication doesn’t necessarily need to mean reproducing the entire article. Sometimes, you might offer an excerpt of your piece rather than the whole thing.
Here are a few good places to begin:
- Medium – an online publishing platform that many bloggers use to syndicate their content. Medium automatically includes an “Originally published at” link to your website when you import your article (which Medium calls a “story”).
- LinkedIn Pulse – a publishing platform native to LinkedIn, where you can post content that will be seen by your own network and potentially their connections and followers, too.
You might also want to reach out to websites and blogs in your industry that would potentially be interested in syndicating your content. For instance, you could offer one of your blog posts for them to republish as a guest post. (You might want to reciprocate by offering to syndicate some of their content on your blog.)
Key Tips & Best Practices for Syndicating Your Content
Wherever you’re syndicating your content, it’s a good idea to follow these tips and best practices.
#1: Pick Your Best Pieces
Don’t try to syndicate every single piece you publish to your blog – as well as potentially causing you problems with Google, it’s unlikely to be a good return on the time invested.
Instead, pick your best pieces to syndicate: ones that have already proved popular or successful. You might also want to consider which pieces will work best for an audience that isn’t likely to already be familiar with your brand.
#2: Promote the Syndicated Content on its Own Site or Network
While it can be tempting to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, it’s important to promote your syndicated content on its own site or network. That way, you’ll be able to help it gather momentum.
For instance, tweeting out a link to your Medium post could mean that more people will “clap” your post, making it more visible on the platform. Sharing a link to your LinkedIn Pulse post may encourage people to “like” it, again, making it more visible.
#3: Include Links to Your Own Blog and/or Other Syndicated Content
When you produce a syndicated piece, make sure it links back (where relevant!) to other posts on your blog – this can be a great way to drive more traffic to your site.
You could also link to other pieces you’ve syndicated on a specific platform, to help build a stronger connection with casual readers. Links within syndicated pieces will often be nofollow rather than dofollow… but, as Monitor Backlinks points out, they’re still worth having for SEO.
If you’ve not tried syndicating your content before, pick out a few good pieces from your website to begin with, and publish them to LinkedIn Pulse or Medium. Promote them via your social media channels, and see whether you gain some traction.
Content syndication can have a positive effect on SEO when done right, but you can also boost engagement and SEO by using share buttons strategically. Install our social media share buttons today to start generating more traction for your content. They take just minutes to install, and they’re completely free to use!
