Content Marketing

September 4, 2014 at 5:32 am

Content Syndication… Really?

Blog promotion, whether organic or paid (or advertising that is spearheaded by an Internet marketing agency), is often regarded as a puzzling zone for the content creators. The creators themselves are seemed confused to which camp they should belong: create less, promote more or create more, promote less. Should it be create more, promote more?

 

syndicating content

Guest blogging remains to be the topmost choice of the creators. However, there is one important strategy that these creators forgot about: syndication. No, this is not about paid networks, but rather the organic channels syndicating the RSS feed of your blog.

Syndication is the process of republishing contents as is on other websites with proper credit to the content’s original author. Syndication has various benefits, some of which are:

  • More traffic
  • Wider reach and sharing
  • Content exposure to new audiences
  • Obtain expert status
  • Obtain quality links
  • Better search ranking

 

Further, syndication is often frowned upon by creators because of the following reasons:

1) Duplicate content

Google penalizes duplicate content; we all know that. However, the attribution will make it clear to Google bots which is the original article actually. Ranking authority (or link juice) will be passed onto the right website. This is the reason you should syndicate contents on reputable syndication networks, putting a link that points to the original article.

If, in case, you have a reputable network in hand but will not link the article, simply put a canonical URL. You can do this through Yoast SEO plugin, advanced setting in WordPress. Go to the editable blog post and input the canonical link.

2) Stagnant traffic

Traffic will stay on the syndicated network and won’t necessarily flow back to the actual website. To continue with the above, traffic will pick up because of the link back to the original article. Such a link is regarded as a quality link.

Further, syndicated contents allow the readers to know more about the topic, clicking through the entire website is possible.

3) Status dilution

If you already have an expert status, this might be diluted and spread too thin on the syndicated networks. This won’t happen as long as you get to share your contents to those who will find value in it. Keeping it in one place is kind of selfish.

Oppositely, if you have yet to establish your credibility and authority, syndication could be the perfect venue.

 

Come to think of it, we painstakingly create contents. The next best thing for us is to have as many people as possible to read such content. On the other end, we should not treat syndication as a panacea. We shall all proceed with caution.

Anyhow, here are some of the content syndication best practices.

  • Choose only the highest quality sites possible
  • Make sure the site manually reviews every post
  • Make sure the site is not using RSS feeds automation
  • Ensure the fit between your content and the site
  • Publish regularly for at least three months prior to contacting the site
  • Make sure the site checks for blogging consistency
  • Write about consistent themes
  • Write following a concrete, well-planned editorial guidelines
  • Provide adequate internal links to the to-be syndicated contents
  • Ensure the existence of relevant conversion elements on your site

 

Here are some of the best sites to syndicate content:

  1.         Quora
  2.         Reddit
  3.         AllBusiness
  4.         BizSugar
  5.         Huffington Post
  6.         Business Insider
  7.         Social Media Today
  8.         Business2Community
  9.         The Social Customer

 

Original content is still king. We all love that phrase. So, don’t go overboard with content syndication. Make sure that the contents you will syndicate offer great value to whoever will read it otherwise the purpose of syndication will be futile. What will it be – to syndicate or not to syndicate?

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