SEO Case Study: How Sproutbox Increased Their Client Successes While Saving Time+Money
SEO Case Study: How Sproutbox Increased Their Client Successes While Saving Time + Money Sproutbox,
Home » How Content Syndication Reaches More Customers
SEO Case Study: How Sproutbox Increased Their Client Successes While Saving Time + Money Sproutbox,
How a Technical SEO Audit Can Boost Your Business Ever feel like you’re doing everything
Do you have a ton of high-quality, popular content and you’re looking for a way to connect with new audiences?
If this sounds like you, then you should consider including content syndication in your overall marketing strategy.
Getting more traffic for content can be a struggle. The good thing about content syndication is that you’re recycling content that already exists on your site.
And if its popularity was higher than average on your site, imagine what it could do with a bigger publication?
In this blog, we’re going to discuss all areas of content syndication.
First, we’ll discuss what it is and how to do it. We’ll also discuss what content syndication tools can help you through the process, and the difference between paid and unpaid syndication.
The ultimate goal of content syndication is to boost your traffic and rankings. If done right, it can achieve both of these objectives.
Ready to get started? Keep scrolling to begin.
When businesses discuss new marketing strategies to reach potential customers they often skip over content syndication because they feel it’s tough to break through to bigger publications.
But, if done correctly, content syndication not only improves your website’s SEO but it reaches new audiences you never thought of before.
Let’s start by answer the question, “what is content syndication?”
Content syndication is defined as republishing the same piece of content. Most businesses think you can only syndicate blogs or articles, but the truth is you can syndicate any type of content.
Syndication has been used by newspapers for decades. Many different types of publications will syndicate content to provide fresh materials to their readers, but it doesn’t require the same time and energy needed to write something brand new.
Here are two other important points about content syndication.
First, syndicating your content is not the same thing as guest blogging. Guest blogging involves a unique piece of writing tailored to one specific publisher.
With syndication, you’re literally taking the same copy and releasing it across several publications. Most publications will include a line at the bottom stating that content was republished from another source.
You’ve probably seen many of these syndicated articles before and never realized it.
As we mentioned above, any type of content can be used for syndication.
The most familiar version of content syndication includes blogs or articles. We would suggest choosing blogs that educate readers or bring value to them in some way. They should be high-performing.
Otherwise, your syndication won’t matter if readers aren’t interested in your content.
The types of blogs you could use include how-to guides. listicles, new hacks, or commonly asked questions. It’s important that this content is compelling and is representative of your brand.
Maybe you didn’t know this, but infographics are commonly syndicated as well. Other sites can easily share or post your infographic.
Infographics are perfect for syndication because they boil down complex information into an easy-to-understand visual. But, we recommend only selecting high-quality designs that already have a track record of being effective on your site.
Don’t forget that everything you syndicate needs to be a reflection of your brand.
Videos are one of the most popular formats on the web. Companies can post videos highlighting products or services, and get this content syndicated to reach new audiences. Or they can turn existing blogs or articles into new videos for syndication.
Just like with your blogs, these videos should be interesting or entertaining. They don’t need to be professionally produced. But, they should appear moderately polished.
Some of the best places to syndicate your content are on social media platforms like YouTube or Facebook.
Podcasts are also more popular than ever before. Influencers or companies can syndicate podcasts across Spotify or SoundCloud.
And, finally, if you have corporate documents like case studies or white papers, you can syndicate them as well.
This will require additional research to find other sites that would be interested in sharing your corporate content. But, it can be done! They may even share your white papers in return for you sharing theirs.
If you’re familiar with SEO, you’re probably wondering how content syndication doesn’t cause a Google penalty?
After all, Google punishes sites with duplicate content.
The fact is Google understands how content syndication is a marketing technique and doesn’t crack down on it as much as it would with duplicate content obviously created for malicious purposes.
Google’s message about syndication states:
“Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the ‘noindex tag’ to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.”
To ensure you won’t run into any problems, make sure all parties have agreed to the syndication ahead of time. Include an attribution with a link at the end of the content.
You would want to include attribution anyway, but it’s a good idea to protect yourself from a Google penalty.
So you’re probably wondering how content syndication actually helps SEO?
For one, it’s a way to generate more backlinks for your site, which helps your ranking. But, it’s also a good source of referral traffic to your site.
Being syndicated by a major news website or larger company could result in thousands of new monthly visitors.
Identifying the right websites that would be interested in publishing your content is like looking for a needle in the haystack.
That’s why many marketers and businesses decide to go the paid route. But, if you’re intent on earning your own syndication, there are easy ways to do some research.
One of the most straightforward ways to find websites that accept content is by Googling articles with the words “originally published in.” These searches can be narrowed down by industry or niche to find one that matches your company.
Then, once you identify sites that are open to syndication, reach out to them to find out how you can start the process. There’s no way of knowing how many sites you’ll have to pitch before one says “yes.”
It’s important to note that most publishers have guidelines for submission so you’ll need to follow those to be considered.
We also recommend avoiding sites that have a lower authority than you, seem to have many spammy-looking links, or accept anything without any clear direction. These wouldn’t be good sites to interact with anyway, and they could hurt your SEO.
When it comes to content syndication, you always want to punch up.
One frequent question we hear from first-timers interested in content syndicated is “when should I do it?”
Do you immediately syndicate new content or wait a few weeks or months before getting it out there?
While you should always be looking for new syndication opportunities, one tip we can provide is to wait until the original content has been indexed before republishing it. Why?
First of all, remember that the whole point of syndication is to benefit your site.
Sometimes syndicated content can outrank the original version if it was published on a site with higher domain authority. This means your syndication is benefitting the other guy’s site more than yours.
We recommend you wait before syndicating any new content. First, make sure it’s indexed by Google, and second, let it rank higher. You’ll also want to verify that it’s one of your more popular pieces of content before sharing.
For these reasons, it’s impossible to say the exact amount of time you should wait. It could take weeks or months based on several factors.
The important thing for you to do is to regularly monitor it so you can act quickly when the time is right.
As a marketer, you can attempt to syndicate items on your own or work with a paid service (more about that below).
One of the most natural ways to syndicate your content is by entering into a co-marketing promotion with a company similar to yours. During this promotion, the two of you agree to share each other’s content across your websites or social media accounts.
Articles and blogs can be republished under what’s known as “earned syndication.” This could be from news websites or popular blogs that need a steady supply of new content to publish new issues.
Many news websites operate entirely on previously published materials so all you have to do is reach out to them to get something placed.
Publishing platforms like Medium or Quora are useful for syndicating previous articles. They are free and have a large following.
Social media apps have also made it easier to syndicate content. Influencers or companies could reach an agreement about sharing each other’s work and, therefore, reaching each other’s social networks.
Three really useful social media platforms for syndication include LinkedIn (which has its own publishing platform), Pinterest, and Tumblr.
If you’re doing it on your own, try to syndicate to another website that is the same size as you or larger. Even better, try to get it picked up by a major website with high domain authority.
If you don’t have the time, interest, or knowledge to syndicate content on your own, SEOJet offers paid content syndication services to make the process easier for marketers and businesses.
As one of our clients, we’ve already learned about your business and content strategy. The next step would be working with us to target specific publications in our syndication network.
Rather than throwing requests in the wind and seeing which one sticks, we’ll reach the right publications that are more likely to republish your content. SEOJet content syndication gives you access to over 300+ sites that can publish your content and get you a link back to your site.
The costs for paid syndication vary. There is a wide range of options based on your goals, budget, traffic trends, and how your content performs.
SEOJet only charges a one-time fee of $99 to let you in on our impressive network of high-authority sites.
Paid content syndication will generate referral traffic for your site but earning a new backlink will propel you to the next level. Don’t forget that backlinks from high-authority sites are one of Google’s top-ranking factors.
We hope you have a better understanding of the power of content syndication after reading this blog.
Most marketers like it because it allows them to reuse amazing content that has already been created. The real effort comes in identifying the right websites that will syndicate this content.
Anyone can do syndication outreach on their own to secure space in a publication, but paid services are available.
SEOJet has been helping businesses obtain and optimize links for years using our sophisticated backlink management system.
Soon we’re offering content syndication services to complement our guest blogging program. Clients can now use our software to plan backlinks, order guest posts, and syndicate their popular content across the web.
Are you interested in learning more? Contact us now and we can answer all of your questions!