Content marketing relies heavily on the supply of high-quality content. As long as you keep generating useful and information-rich content, you’re good.
However, sometimes it becomes difficult to create great content for marketing needs consistently. What can brands do in such a situation?
That’s the question content syndication aims to answer. Republishing your existing content on other platforms and websites allows you to get more recognition and brand awareness.
Now if questions are starting to arise in your mind about it, don’t worry. In this article, we’ll look at everything you should know about it. Let’s begin!
What is Content Syndication?
Content syndication is a way to promote your content on various platforms and websites by re-publishing it with a canonical link to original source page.
This is done to promote your existing content and establish a connection with your target audience. It allows your content to get organic exposure and publicity.
The purpose of content syndication is to increase the reach of your content to drive traffic to your website.
What is A Content Syndication Platform?
A content syndication platform is an online platform where you can republish your content to be seen by other users. It includes platforms like Linkedin Publishing, Medium, Taboola, Quora, and Tumblr.
While publishing your content, you can also include a link to your source page from where the content was taken. If your content is promising enough, it can help drive users of these platforms to your source page on the website.
How Does Content Syndication Work?
Content syndication works by re-publishing parts of your content on other websites and platforms.
These websites usually have a wider reach than yours, allowing you to expand the reach of your content while providing them with useful content without necessarily having to generate the content themselves.
Why is Content Syndication Important?
Content syndication is important for many reasons, but two of them are most important. Here they are:
- It Allows You to Reach a Larger Audience: Only some people will search for topics related to your content on Google. And even among people who do, not everyone will open your link unless you rank #1. In such a situation, content syndication makes your content reach a larger audience through various platforms and websites.
- It Makes You More Accessible: By making your content available on multiple platforms and websites, content syndication also makes your brand more accessible to others. People don’t necessarily need to come to your website to learn more about your brand.
What Are the Benefits of Content Syndication?
There are many benefits of content syndication for a website. However, we’ll focus on 6 major ones here, which include the following:
1. Boosts Traffic
Content syndication can boost the traffic to your website by increasing the exposure of your content on other platforms.
By publishing parts of your content on other websites along with a link to your original webpage as the source, you can make people land on your site from those other websites and platforms.
The only condition is that whatever parts of the content you syndicate should be creative and interesting enough to hook the readers; otherwise, they won’t want to read the whole piece on your site.
2. Grows Brand Authority
Another benefit of content syndication is that it can help you build your brand.
By publishing summaries of your high-quality content on credible websites, you can infuse a sense of trust among your target audience. All you have to do is ensure that the content is crisp, effective, and useful for readers.
It should also explain your business and its relatability to the users. As more and more people come across it, they’ll learn about your brand, thus increasing your brand recognition and authority.
3. Helps Lead Generation
Lead generation is imperative to run an online business successfully. Content Syndication enables you to generate those leads by providing your target audience with useful information on multiple platforms.
When users of those platforms visit your website, you can capture them into your lead-generation system through a lead-capture form. This can help you generate new leads without creating new content to capture them.
The more exposure you get on content syndication platforms, the more traffic and leads you can receive.
4. Educates Your Target Audience
Educating your target audience is important to help them make purchase decisions. By republishing a part of your content on various platforms and websites, you can educate your audience on those sites about your business and brand.
You can also educate them about the latest developments in your business or industry. And when they learn many things about your industry from your brand, it will work in favor of your brand when they make the purchase decision.
5. Improves Backlinks
Backlinks are the links your website receives from other sites. These backlinks are crucial to rank your website higher in search results. The more backlinks you have from high-authority websites, the higher you can rank in SERPs.
Content syndication can help you gain these backlinks for your website by increasing the visibility of your content. Moreover, if you partner with other websites for content syndication, you can acquire those backlinks independently.
This can boost the potential of receiving more organic search traffic on your site from Google.
6. Increases Your Online Presence
If you keep syndicating your content periodically, it can help your brand become more noticeable and accessible among the target audience.
As your content gains exposure on multiple platforms, your brand will access a wider audience (depending on the popularity of platforms or websites where your content goes).
Types of Content Syndication
There are 3 types of content syndication that happen nowadays. Here’s a brief description of each of them:
1. Third-Party Content Syndication
Third-party content syndication is when you ask for permission from other websites to syndicate your content on their blog or site. Of course, the selected website should have a connection with your business or industry.
Also, you can also do it the other way around — partnering with other website owners to syndicate their content on your site. This can provide you with high-quality content without having to create it.
In fact, it can turn out to be the second-best content creation strategy for you after a content strategy like the hub and spoke model.
But ensure that your blog or site contains at most 10% of syndicated content, or else you may face SEO-related issues.
2. Guest Post Content Syndication
Guest post syndication allows you to syndicate your content on other websites through guest posts. Like third-party content syndication, this type of content syndication can also be done the other way around — you can syndicate your guest posts published on other sites on your own blog or website.
This can increase the usability of your blog posts and prove to be an effective way of repurposing content.
3. Using Content Syndication Services or Websites
Third-party content syndication service providers are also present in the market to arrange and manage your content syndication campaigns.
Of course, they charge some money for doing this. Still, the result is generally better than the other two types of content syndication because they are experienced at doing this and have a better idea of which content can perform better for syndication.
How to Syndicate Content
After understanding the various types of content syndication and its benefits, it’s time to figure out how.
So there are 3 ways to syndicate your content, and let’s understand each of them:
How to Syndicate Content Yourself?
To syndicate your content on other websites, you should first check whether the site you want to syndicate your content accepts such content.
If they don’t publish syndicated content, then there’re lesser chances of them agreeing to do it with you. Still, you can try because you never know what’s in store!
But ideally, you’ll be better off focusing on websites that have already published syndicated content in the past.
Once you’ve found a website that publishes syndicated content, you can contact the site owner(s) to discuss a content syndication partnership. These partnerships are usually arranged in either of the following two models:
- All syndicated content partnership: In this mode, you provide only your pre-existing content to be syndicated by the site.
- Syndicated-plus-Original content partnership: In this mode, you provide a mix of syndicated and original content to the site owner.
Usually, the larger and more popular websites will insist on receiving syndicated content with a mix of original content. Other websites that are not too popular may also be okay with the former arrangement.
But as long as your content is high-quality and has signs of performing well, neither of them would refuse a content syndication partnership with you.
Once your partnership has materialized with them, you can start providing them with your content for syndication as per the procedure they lay down.
How to Use Sites That Allow Content Syndication?
You can also syndicate your content on websites and platforms that allow content syndication by default (i.e., Medium, LinkedIn Publishing, Quora, etc.).
The benefit of doing so is that you don’t need to reach out for a partnership. Just create an account, and you can publish your syndicated content on these platforms on the right pages or places.
Another benefit is that some of these platforms may allow publishing content anonymously.
Just make sure that you do not publish the crux of your content. Instead, focus on syndicating an interesting, curiosity-igniting part of your content that makes them click on the link to read the full content on your site.
How to Use Content Syndication Software/Service?
Finally, there are many content syndication software tools and services available in the market that can help you syndicate your content.
How you use these tools and services will vary depending on which ones you choose to assist with your content syndication campaign, but the process generally involves signing up with a user account, explaining your requirements to them, and understanding the process of their service delivery or software usage.
Once you have taken these steps, the rest is done either by software or by the team of content syndication service providers.
How to Boost Your Content Syndication Strategy
You now have an idea of how can you content syndication can get the most out of your content syndication strategy by following the steps explained below:
1. Be Clear About Your Goals
You can achieve several objectives through a marketing campaign. Generating leads, driving sales, and building brand authority are just a few of the objectives that brands try to achieve through any marketing activity.
Without having a clear idea of what goals or objectives you’re trying to achieve and why, any marketing activity would give disastrous results, and content syndication is no different.
So before you get started with content syndication, be clear about the goal you’re trying to achieve through it. Doing so will give you the much-needed direction regarding what you must do and how for a successful content syndication outcome.
2. Diversify
When syndicating your content, do not focus on one-two platforms or websites alone. Try using different places to distribute content, including multiple websites and content syndication platforms.
This will help your content gain more eyeballs from your target audience. But at the same time, remember that it’s essential to select only platforms or websites that align with your business and marketing objectives is essential.
3. Focus on SEO
It is necessary to keep the SEO factor in mind while syndicating your content. If you don’t keep it in mind, it can put your entire website at stake as your syndicated content may be marked as plagiarism or duplicate content by Google.
So do not forget to use a canonical link in syndicated content while linking to your source page. This will help search engines identify syndicated content, and you won’t be penalized for plagiarism.
You can read more about canonical links here in Google’s guidelines.
4. Make Sure It’s High-Quality Content
They say that content is king, but they don’t say that only high-quality content is king! In today’s time, when there’s no shortage of content online, and every other brand is vying for its share of success in content marketing, you can succeed if your content is different and useful.
The quality of content matters the most when you’re syndicating it, so make sure you syndicate only your best content.
Also, do not syndicate all your content or the most important part of your content — instead, publish the parts that would trigger the reader’s curiosity to click on the source link to check out your content.
Top Content Syndication Software and Services
Many companies and software tools are available to help you with your content syndication efforts. Here are the top 4 of them:
1. DemandWorks Media
Nestled in Chicago, DemandWorks Media is a company that provides high-end content syndication services. They collect quantitative data on users’ preferences and prevalent technologies to strategize their syndication tactics.
With planned methods, every piece of content syndicated by them brings targeted results for the customers. Their technology-driven content syndication service also offers the best conversion rates to their clients.
2. Impartner
Impartner is an incredible content syndication service provider focusing on Social media content syndication.
It ensures extensive distribution of your content on social platforms for maximum exposure through its unique technology and understanding of algorithms. It can syndicate your content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms.
3. Opgen Media
This digital marketing agency, known as Opgen Media, also provides content syndication services to its clients.
When they run a content syndication campaign and publish syndicated content of their clients on social media, content syndication platforms, or other websites, they ensure they do it with creatives approved by their clients.
They also try to find the most optimum channels for publishing syndicated content based on the buyer persona of their clients.
4. RELAYTO
Relayto is not a content syndication platform per se, but it can help you with it by transforming your content into various formats suitable for posting on various platforms.
For instance, it can transform your PDFs into articles, content hubs, whitepapers, and more so they can be published on various platforms or websites.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Content Syndication Paid?
Content syndication can be paid or free, depending on how you do it. If you do it yourself, it can be done for free.
Conversely, hiring a content syndication service provider or trying to syndicate on popular websites will require some investment. But it can also provide better results.
What Is the Purpose of Content Syndication?
Content syndication aims to increase exposure to your content and website. It also aims to increase your brand authority. For websites that publish syndicated content, it provides the opportunity to publish fresh content without necessarily creating it!
Wrapping Up
So this was our detailed overview of content syndication. We hope you understood everything about it and are now ready to take advantage to boost your content’s reach.
If you still have any questions about it, on the other hand, then feel free to ask them in the comments and we’ll respond to them. Also, share this page on your social media handles so others can also learn about this strategy.
