content syndication | Hidden opportunity in content marketing

Content-Syndication

Saying content marketing, how many of us remember the word marketing? It’s a smart element which is sometimes ignored. Writing and publishing content is one thing and market the content is second. Content syndication is a great opportunity to market your content to a wider audience.

When it is talked about content marketing it is mostly considered as it is research, write and publish your content. Later that content is socially submitted/bookmarked using social media platforms to let it get found. Adopting or adding content syndication into your content marketing strategy will get you more brand awareness and get you found by a huge number of audience. It is also important to note that content syndication is not a link building technique and it is considered then may hurt your internet marketing strategy. One must be clear about the benefits of content syndication before going into it;

  • It will increase your blog post reach.
  • Your brand will get recognition and awareness.
  • Can help increase direct traffic to your original post?

What exactly is content syndication?

In simple words, content syndication is the process of re-publishing your blog post and/or blog content to get more reach and brand awareness. No doubt you can get a back-link from this process, but it is not the prime goal of the process. The prime goal is to increase chances to get more traffic from to your original article.

Who should go for content syndication?

It is a misconception that content syndication is not suitable for some businesses. If we focus on the prime goal, it can be well understood that it is suitable for everyone from small and medium businesses to enterprises. Though the marketing budget allocation is at high numbers in enterprises there are examples available. The big names like Inc., Times, New York Times, CNN, BBC, etc. do content syndication.

It means if enterprises do content syndication then small and medium businesses should also adopt the process as part of content marketing. Again, don’t forget the prime goal of content syndication to keep yourself clear about its outcome.

Does Google penalize you for duplicate content?

Before going to answer the question, it is most important to understand what duplicate content to Google? It is a block of content which exactly match with another content block within a domain or third-party site.

Now if you are copy pasting the same paragraph at more than one place, it will be considered as duplicate content, which Google will penalize. Content spinning is also discouraged by Google as the crawler getting smarter day by day.

Are content syndication and duplicate content same to Google?

The answer to this question is NO. Google treats content syndication and duplicates content separately. This is what

Google says;

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 meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

It means you must sacrifice taking a better position in Google SERP adopting content syndication. But again, you will get benefits which described in the beginning.

Where to do content syndication?

Getting an approval of content syndication from other bloggers or platform is just guest posting. Even the success rate is more than that of guest blogging. You send a request to the blogger willing to republish your content and it is approved.

Medium is one of the most important places to republish your content.

content syndication on Medium

The process is very simple as you can see. Just enter the URL of your blog post and rest Medium will do for you. You can also republish your content at any of these 16 sites allow content syndication.

How to do content syndication professionally?
To avoid to get a penalty of duplicate content, you need to manage to add two things into the content you are republishing on a third-party site.

Rel canonical tag

It is very important to manage the canonical link at the back end of the page where you or your partner is going to publish your content. This HTML tag will send a signal to the search engine to set all SEO equity to the original URL. Here is a link to set a canonical link in wordpress. If you are using CMs other than wordpress then learn how to set canonical value in it.

Give a mention “originally posted on …”

If it seems hard to include the canonical tag in the CMS you are using, don’t worry at all. If you give a mention at the bottom of the post you republished on third part site, Google will get to know it smartly. This way all the SEO equity will be assigned for the original post.

As we described content syndicating briefly, it should be added to the internet marketing plan. If you have tried content syndication in past, we love to know the potential of the strategy. If you have tried in past but penalized, you should follow the steps described under the heading How to do content syndication professionally? Hope you will enjoy the post. Good luck to the content syndication.

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