Content syndication is a powerful content marketing technique. It helps you in generating leads, reaching a different buyer persona, backlinks, and boosting brand awareness. However, it is important to do it right. A wrong move can badly hurt your website’s SEO. But before you go ahead and do it, an understanding of how does content syndication work is important.
If you don’t know what content syndication is, read this blog post to get a better idea of its definition.
How Does Content Syndication Work?
You can syndicate content in several ways. It is all about republishing your content on more than one website or platform. Unlike content curation, syndication can be automated and the republished content doesn’t have any reviews or comments.
Content syndication is simply a full republication of the content on any other website. Here are four ways content syndication works:
- Syndicate to an authority website
- Syndicate content to similar websites
- Self-syndicate on platforms you own
- Create a syndication page.
1. Syndicate to an Authority Website
The best way how content syndication works is by increasing the reach of your content. You can republish it on an authority site to reach a bigger audience. You can find authority sites that republish content in your niche with a simple search query:
Your keyword + “originally published on”
Here is an example:
You can easily identify authority websites in your niche. For example, you can see that the Washington Post publishes content from other sources from the above example. You can target it and relevant content for republishing.
The problem with authority sites is that it isn’t easy to get your article syndicated to them. Your content needs to be high-quality and extremely relevant to the site’s niche. If not, it won’t be picked up.
What’s more important is that once your article is syndicated on a top website in your niche, it is least likely that you’ll receive referral traffic. The majority of people will read your article on the authority website.
Syndicating content on a bigger website is best for brand awareness and exposure.
2. Syndicate to Similar Websites
There are a lot of smaller websites in your niche that syndicate content. These are the websites that are easier to approach and you are more likely to receive contextual backlinks. And the majority of the readers will visit your website too.
The best part: The original content on your blog has a decent chance of ranking at the top. This means your blog will receive a major portion of organic traffic. This doesn’t happen when you syndicate content on authority websites because the content on an authority website will always outrank the original piece.
How to find such websites?
Look for websites that publish guest posts. Offer them to republish your best post. Share analytics too such as engagement and session duration to make your content appealing and worth syndicating.
Business2Community, for example, lets you syndicate your blog to connect with its audience:
If you see a blog that only accepts original content, there is no harm in reaching out and asking if they’re interested in syndicating a great piece that is performing exceptionally well for you. For example, if you have an infographic, you can republish it on other sites too.
BestSelf Co used this syndication strategy to generate $2 million in revenue.
3. Syndicate on Platforms You Own
Most blogs want you to publish original unpublished content. If you have to publish a guest post on a niche blog, you’ll need to submit an original post. If you send them a published post, they won’t accept it.
So, what you need to do is publish an original article as a guest post. Once it is published and indexed, you can syndicate it on platforms you own, such as your blog, Medium, LinkedIn, Quora Spaces, etc.
There are a few things to consider before you syndicate your guest post:
- You must be the author of the guest post. If you aren’t the author of the post, don’t syndicate it even if you wrote the content
- Not all websites like getting their content syndicated. You should ask and seek permission before syndicating your guest post.
Once your guest post is published, it is the property of the host website whether you are its author or not. So, always take the blog’s editorial team in the loop before syndicating.
4. Make Your Content Available for Syndication
Perhaps the best way to do content syndication is to create a content syndication page. Here is an example:
Creating a dedicated page where you share content syndication rules and allow others to republish your content is a great idea. This has several benefits:
- Bloggers and publications can find your blog easily. Use relevant terms to make sure your content syndication page ranks for desired keywords
- It kills the confusion. A blogger who loves your blog post will know he/she can republish it. No second thoughts
- It shows your policy about content syndication. You’ll not receive emails asking for permission to republish your content
- Share rules clearly. For example, adding a link to the original post.
Having a content syndication page does not mean your content will be syndicated by publications. You need to create content that publications and bloggers love and can’t resist republishing. Mediocre content won’t be syndicated.
Publish content that’s valuable and worth republishing.
Is Content Syndication Effective?
Indeed, it is.
Content syndication must be an essential part of your content marketing strategy. And you must create clear goals for content syndication. You can use it to drive referral traffic, acquire backlinks, expand reach, boost brand awareness, and build connections.
You need to have clearly defined objectives for your content syndication strategy. And choose the appropriate technique to achieve your syndication goals.
For example, if you want to acquire backlinks via content syndication. Create a syndication page and manually outreach to relevant niche blogs for syndication.
When done right, content syndication can take your content marketing game to the next level.
Featured Image: Pexels
