Are you a fan of recycling? The idea of maximizing usage doesn’t just apply to physical products. With content syndication, you can improve the impact of every article that you write. You may be asking right now, isn’t that the purpose of SEO? But there’s nothing wrong with doubling your efforts, and content syndication gives you an opportunity to reach a wider audience using the same text and ideas.
We know we just said content syndication is akin to recycling, but scratch that! It’s more like upcycling. Syndicating content gives you more benefits than just repurposing the text on your website. Learn how this awesome tool can supercharge your digital presence in the rest of this post.
Let’s Start with the Basics: Content Syndication Definition and Overview
Content syndication is the process of republishing a form of digital content somewhere other than your website. And what kind of content should you syndicate? Website owners who want to get into content syndication marketing usually use their most popular content, whether it’s a video, audio, podcast or a good old blog. What makes it a very desirable arrangement is that it’s a win-win. The third-party website where the content will be published gets free syndicate content. Meanwhile, you get more eyeballs on your original work.
What Are the Benefits of Content Syndication?
When we say that this arrangement is a great deal for everyone, we’re not kidding! There really are many benefits to content syndication. So, if you’re not yet convinced whether you should add this strategy to your existing efforts, we hope you stick around. In the following subsections, we’ll talk about how you can benefit from content syndication, and our focus will be what you can gain as a brand, business or website owner who wants to use third-party publishing.
It Lets You Reach a Wider Audience
Content syndication gives you the chance to reach an audience through third-party websites. What makes this so great is there’s practically zero work involved on your part because you’re using content that you’ve already written. You don’t have to do all the work of promoting your website or tweaking your SEO strategy. The third-party website owner has already done all that. Plus, in terms of the number of article views, the results are pretty much instant. All you need to do is publish and reap the benefits.
It Gives You an Opportunity to Monetize
Just to be clear, the opportunity for monetization with content syndication isn’t always in the cards. But once you have established your brand, it’s possible to get paid for it. That’s right, even bigger publishing websites may offer some form of compensation. And what does it take for you to reap this benefit? Normally, it’s one of these three things:
- You have elevated your brand credibility and awareness so much that you’re able to drive more traffic just by providing content somewhere;
- The topic of your content is very interesting to the content publisher;
- The third-party website pays content syndication partners.
It Helps You Establish Brand Credibility and Authority
By creating syndicated content, you’re helping your brand credibility and authority because it gives third-party validation. Even though content syndication is something that practically everyone who’s active in the marketing world will at least have heard of, your average Joe or Jane hasn’t. So, if they see your brand in many corners of the internet, they’ll think that there must be something special about it. This is especially true if you can bag a content syndication partnership with an established publication. Plus, it gives you a chance to display your expertise. If the quality of the content you present through third-party platforms resonates with your audience, they’ll be likely to trust you.
It Helps Improve Your SEO
Content syndication and SEO go hand in hand! The biggest technical contribution of using a third-party site is the backlink, which helps establish your website as an authoritative source. However, content syndication can also help with SEO in the following ways:
- It can increase the number of brand search terms;
- It can improve your site traffic;
- It can build your SEO relevance in particular areas, which can help with local SEO.
The magic of syndicated content SEO can eventually do its work for you, assuming that you make sure that it’s not seen as a duplicate. We’ll talk more about how to do this in a separate section.
It Lets You More Effectively Distribute Your Resources
Let’s say that it takes you a day to write, edit and polish content. Content syndication takes the value of that day and multiplies it many times. If you manage to get even just one third-party site to publish your syndicated content, you’re effectively able to achieve the following benefits through content syndication:
- Expansion of potential readership without writing more;
- Increased visibility;
- Distribution of resources to other endeavors.
Content syndication is the key if you want to scale without spending more resources right away. Fewer resources used generally means smaller risks taken. And with smaller risks taken, it becomes even easier to bet on yourself.
A General Guide to the Content Syndication Process
Are you happy about the potential benefits that you can get? Great! You’ll be glad to know that getting content syndicated is a pretty straightforward process. It can be accomplished in just three general steps, which we’ll discuss in the following subsections. Let’s get to it, shall we? You’re one step closer to reaping the benefits of using syndicated content!
1. Decide What Content You Want to Syndicate
Here, you basically have two options for content syndication.
- Original, unpublished content: This can be a good option if you have a topic that doesn’t completely fit your website. There are also some websites looking for content syndication partners that demand original content, so it may be suitable in such a case as well.
- Existing content: Many brands decide to use their most popular article or video for content syndication. For this, we recommend using evergreen content so that it will be relevant long after it’s published.
As you encounter more potential partners, you’ll see how it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Use what best suits the situation!
2. Choose Your Content Syndication Partners
Apart from your content, the partners you select have a major impact on your success. In fact, it is so important that we have dedicated an entire section to selecting content syndication partners! You can skip to that part if you want all the details now. But here’s a quick run-through of what you should consider:
- Site reputability;
- System for content syndication;
- Content formats accepted;
- Website niche;
- Monetization possibilities or cost to publish.
Are there other considerations that matter to you? Then, add them to the list! This is in no way a final list, and you should always consider the results that you want to yield from content syndication.
3. Have Your Content Published
Sometimes, this is just as easy as sending your work to a third-party publisher. However, this isn’t the case all the time. They may have standards for what they’ll publish via content syndication. The most common article submissions requirements include the following:
- Article length;
- Number of links you can use in the text;
- The topic of the text.
Publishers usually communicate this beforehand, so pay attention to the details. If you believe that meeting their requirements will diminish the quality of your work, consider alternative third-party partners. There are a lot of them out there!
What Are the Different Types of Content Syndication?
We’ve dedicated a lot of the discussion to its benefits and even the process by which you can do it. But there’s one final piece to the puzzle we need to discuss before you can fully implement content syndication and that is the types of content syndication.
- Full: The texts are published as they appear on your website.
- Partial: This only presents a summary of the original content or an excerpt of it. This is a good option if you’re doing content syndication to get people to click that link.
While there’s no fixed or official categorization for this, at least for most purposes, these are the typologies that matter.
Content Syndication B2B Marketing: A Lead-Capturing Machine
Earlier in the article, you learned about the benefits associated with syndication. However, if you’re in a B2B market, having content syndication as part of your efforts becomes a must. It works wonderfully for lead generation, allowing you to add another reliable source of leads. How does this work?
- The reader reads the syndicated content on a third-party website.
- The reader clicks on the link back to your website.
- You lead them down to the bottom of the funnel (it’s your call how you do this!).
Content syndication still boosts your credibility in the field, even if you don’t end up clicking anything on the third-party site. And once the post is up there, you can reap benefits from it perpetually.
The Issue with Duplicated Content: How Does SEO Content Syndication Work?
When we discussed the benefits of content syndication, we mentioned its impact on SEO. However, we know how much Google and other major search engines hate duplicate content. So, how can you prevent them from assessing your content syndication post as a duplicate?
- Use canonical tags on the syndicated content versions. Here, you’re indicating something is not original. However, it will be considered when determining the overall SEO value of the original.
- Use no index tags. Alternatively, you can prevent search engines from indexing the non-original content.
- Use the rel=alternate tag. With this, Google will see it as an alternative to the original.
Factors to Consider in Finding Content Syndication Partners
The process of finding a partner is the easy part. Just look for websites online. They will either:
- Already have a system in place for accepting content syndication posts, or
- Regularly create its own material.
Yes, even if a website owner has never heard of syndication, they can still be a potential partner. The hard part is actually narrowing down the seemingly endless list of websites to the most suitable ones. So ask yourself this: What is content syndication for you? Your answer will determine how you’ll prioritize partners based on the factors we’ll discuss below.
Reputability of the Website
Syndication is a great strategy to take advantage of a built-in readership when you are still growing yours. However, this doesn’t mean that you should just go for every potential partner that will accept your submission. Your reputation becomes inevitably entangled with theirs through content syndication. And while we don’t expect you to partner with the New York Times or other big publications right away, you have to set some standards on where you should publish. These are a few things that you should avoid in a potential content syndication partner:
- Too small a readership;
- Too many ads on the site;
- Low-quality and/or plagiarized content;
- Domain authority (you can check this for free!).
Existing System for Content Syndication
Remember how we talked about how a site can either have a system for accepting posts or not have one at all? This is important in your search because it can affect:
- Whether or not you’ll receive a response at all;
- The entire process of negotiating the deal;
- The chances that they’ll approve your content.
For content syndication partner publishing sites, you can expect the process to be a lot smoother because they already have the entire thing figured out. They already know what they’re looking for, and because they need third-party content, your odds of getting approved are higher. If it’s your first go with content syndication, we recommend this route to more quickly populate various sites with your piece.
Format and Content They Accept
The very basic thing that you should know is what content formats they accept. You can easily tell this even from their home page. If you see text posts, then that’s probably what they’re looking for. If possible, look into every content syndication example that they have published to date. This will give you a sense of what they’re looking for beyond the guidelines that they may have posted. Here are a few questions that you may want to ask to find out if it’s a good fit.
- Do they publish the content syndication format that you’re interested in?
- Are they looking for a particular voice in their submissions?
- Is the existing site content aligned with what you’re going for?
Niches That They Serve
The audience of your content syndication partners must be a good fit for your brand, product and/or services. Imagine you got published in a huge magazine about skin care. How many readers do you think will be interested in you if you’re selling cars? Content syndication may offer the chance to expand your audience, but it’s up to you to determine the direction of that expansion. Today, there are many sites that publish content in various niches. In this case, consider asking for the relevant statistics related specifically to the niche that you’re interested in.
Monetization and Cost
Content syndication may follow a few monetization models. You may be paid a fixed rate or part of the revenues generated from the article. However, just because some sites offer to pay you to publish on their platform, it doesn’t mean that you should expect to get paid all the time. In other cases, you may need to pay to publish. However, you’ll also be able to find content syndication options that will let you do it for free. Essentially, you’ll have three options:
- Pay
- Get paid
- Do it for free
Consider the benefits. There’s nothing wrong with paying to publish if it means vastly expanding your audience.
Content Syndication Best Practices That Skyrocket Its Effectivity
At this point, you already know all the basics. You have a pretty solid playbook that you can use to make your efforts in content syndication a success. But knowing something in theory is far different from actually doing it yourself. Let us hold your hand and show you exactly what you can do beyond following the series of steps in the previous sections of the article. Are you trying to implement a B2B content syndication strategy or something for a small website? Either way, you can implement these actionable best practices to help you get more out of your efforts.
Promote the Syndicated Content on Your Own Platforms
Content syndication meaning lies in the collaboration of two parties who will vastly benefit from the arrangement. However, this collaboration shouldn’t end once you’ve given the text for syndication. You can promote the content in question through your digital assets like social media pages and even email links. Why should you put effort into this?
- The greater the traffic to the third-party website, the more potential eyeballs your content will get.
- It gives you material to promote on your social pages.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort because the main content has been created already, but it can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of the campaign.
Go Beyond Text
Text syndication is easily the most popular type that people use. But you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities by just sticking to articles. When we define content syndication, we have to remember that it covers literally every type of content out there. So, how can this work? You can:
- Use an existing post as your reference for a podcast;
- Revamp a popular blog into video format;
- Make a post available in audio.
The beauty of this is that much of the work has already been done. You’ll just have to format it based on the media and platform, and you’re done!
Get Everything in Writing
At the end of the day, content or article syndication is still an agreement and should be treated as such. Before you submit anything, make sure that the terms are clear. These are a few questions that your content syndication agreement should be able to answer:
- Does either party have to pay the other as part of the deal?
- Does the content have to follow a certain format, like the number of words and images?
- How many backlinks are you allowed to place in the text?
- Who has the rights to the published content?
- Do you or the third-party publisher have other obligations to each other?
More established websites already have their own terms, and you will have to agree to them to be able to publish there.
What Does Content Syndication SEO Mean for Your Brand? A Lot of Great Things!
This may be a staple in the B2B market, but everyone can benefit from distributing syndicated content, like increasing your readership and getting more traffic to your site. We’ve talked about everything from content syndication definition to how you can best implement it for your brand or business. Do you want your content to be seen by people who are most likely to be interested and engaged? Content syndication and native advertising with MGID are a match made in heaven! Sign up on the MGID platform to access advanced tools, expert creatives and a personal manager. What is syndicated content going to do for you? Let us be a part of your journey and success. We can’t wait to see what you can accomplish!
