Content Syndication: What it is & how to do it successfully

Content syndication is the secret to getting your excellent content in front of more people. Instead of posting your content on your site only, content syndication requires repurposing content across the web.

Yes, the exact same content. And no, it’s not a duplicate problem, providing you correctly publish content on secondary websites using canonicals. I’ll get into this in more detail later.

Content syndication is something I do for a handful of clients; some don’t need it, others can’t handle the additional workflow. Those who use it can benefit from increased traffic, more eyes on the content, increased brand awareness, and more visits to their website. Plus, a layer of trust is built between the brand and visitors. If another website trusts and values your content to publish, you must be a trusted source. And with trust comes sales.

At this point, you might be wondering — what’s the best way to use this tactic, and how can I avoid the drawbacks?

In this blog post, I’ll show you the content syndication best practices you need to be aware of to make this tactic work for your business.

But first, let’s talk about what content syndication is (and what it’s not).

Table of Contents

• What is content syndication?
• Content Syndication and SEO: Syndication Without Duplication
• Benefits of Content Syndication
• How to Syndicate Content
• How to Find Content Syndication Partners
• Content Syndication Services, Sites, & Networks

Content Syndication means republishing the same piece of content — an article, a video, an infographic, etc. — on one or more different websites. Publications, big and small, like to syndicate content because it helps them give fresh information to their readers without having to create it themselves.

Authors also benefit from content syndication since it gets their brand in front of a new audience.

It’s a win–win.

There are two ways to go about content syndication — free or paid. The free way means you focus on finding the right publications, pitching your content, and building partnerships, one at a time. The paid solution means using tools to get your content recommended in major publications more quickly.

If you’re in camp “struggling to get leads and sales from content,” know that it is actually a common problem for 24% of marketers. While there are many ways to increase leads, content syndication stands out because it’s really cost-effective, helps you boost brand awareness, builds trust with readers, and can benefit your SEO performance.

That’s if you do it right, of course. Otherwise, you risk being outranked by other publications with your own content. Additionally, you could negatively impact your SEO performance by picking the wrong website to syndicate on.

Content Syndication vs. Guest Blogging

I think it’s important to note that, although it might seem similar, content syndication is not the same as guest blogging.

A guest post is completely new content written specifically for one publication.

Syndicated content is taking the same piece of content and republishing it with permission on other platforms.

From the reader’s perspective, one can tell if an article was syndicated, and not a guest post, because there’s usually a mention on the page about the original source. Typically, publications mark a syndicated piece with text like this:

“This article originally appeared in [Original publication + Link].”

OR

“This article appeared in [Original publication + Link] and has been published here with permission.”

Source

This is a very important mention, not only to give credit to the original author but also to avoid duplicate content issues.

Content Syndication and SEO: Syndication Without Duplication

As you probably know, Google doesn’t like duplicate content. It’s always been this way, and as far as I can see, Google hasn’t changed its stance on duplicate content since 2008!

When I talk to my clients about duplicate content, I like to make a differentiation between:

• Duplicate content
• Plagiarized content

Content issues more commonly surround plagiarized content, where one website steals content verbatim from another, and doesn’t ask for permission. This is an issue, and it can be reported.

Duplicate becomes an issue when it’s done with bad intent, perhaps to manipulate search engines.

Duplicated content created with value for readers is much less of an issue. Google won’t penalize a website directly for duplicate content, but it might not help SEO performance.

Syndicated content isn’t the same as duplicate content, and it’s definitely not plagiarized since it’s published with permission from the original article.

Google’s Stance on Syndicated Content

Google has always separated syndicated content, or legitimate cross-domain content duplication, from plagiarized content, or duplicate content created to manipulate search engines.

Posting content in multiple places is fine, but you need to do it carefully. There are two ways to handle content syndication. I highly recommend reading both solutions before deciding what’s best for you.

1. Noindex the duplicated content on publisher websites.

Recommended, but not always warmly welcomed by publishers.

In an ideal scenario, publishers would noindex duplicate content. This means that the content would not be available within Google’s index.

The noindex tag looks like this:

The upside of using a noindex is that there’s no risk of content ranking better on a publisher’s site than on the original site. Unfortunately, the second, more popular option, the canonical (see below), is a request to Google to prioritize ranking the original content. Google can ignore the request.

Here’s what Google has said in syndication guidelines:

Source

On the same page, Google says, “If you want to avoid duplication by syndication partners, the canonical link element is not recommended because syndicated articles are often very different in overall content from original articles. Instead, partners should use meta tags to block the indexing of your content.”

A recent tweet from Google SearchLiaison confirmed the stance on the noindex tag.

Here’s the tweet:

The tweet suggests using noindex on syndicated content because it’s a more reliable way to ensure the original content outranks duplicates. While cross-domain canonicals aim to achieve the same result, search engines can confuse or misinterpret them. Using noindex removes that ambiguity by preventing syndicated versions from appearing in search results.

While the noindex tag is the best practice according to Google, unfortunately, it’s not always practical. Some partner sites might insist on canonical tags and links.

2. Add a canonical link.

Although not the ideal scenario, a canonical link is perfectly fine.

Canonical links signal to search engines and readers that what they see is a syndicated piece and that the original piece can be found at the URL. Ideally, your third-party publication will include a canonical link. You can also ask them to include a link to the original article within the on-page content.

A canonical link is part of a canonical tag that lives within a page’s HTML. Ideally, every piece of content has a canonical link. Pages without duplicates have a self-referring canonical link. For self-referring pages, the link within the canonical tag is the same as the page it’s on.

Here’s what the self-referring canonical link looks like on this page:

For pages with duplicate content, the canonical should link to the original content.

Read more: The What, Why, and How of Canonical Tags & URLs

How you add the canonical link typically depends on the publication. You must discuss how canonicalization is handled with the publisher’s editor from the very beginning and before the content is published. You must understand how the publication handles content syndication. No matter how prolific the publisher is, do not be tempted to publish your content on their site without a canonical pointing to yours.

Let’s not forget about the references (links) included within the content. Again, each publication has guidelines about references, so it’s good to discuss this with the editor before starting a partnership. But if you can reference your content, a syndicated article can drive referral traffic and improve your rankings and organic traffic performance.

Scott Mathson, senior web strategy and SEO manager at Auth0, says that “If you include internal links, content that you syndicate across platforms often passes authority and equity through to these links. Signals from an increase in traffic from new and different referral channels, alongside a broadened backlink profile (whether nofollow or follow), and other factors give search engines further context around your content and its relevancy and popularity.”

Mathson has seen how content syndication can impact a website’s SEO performance (directly and indirectly). Over the past two years, he’s used content syndication (among other tactics) to grow the website’s backlink profile from 200K to over 4.4 million backlinks.

Noindex vs. Canonical: My Opinion

In my opinion, the noindex is the safest way to manage syndicated content, but is it always possible? No.

It’s important that you manage this in a way that works for you, but my thoughts are: in many cases, a canonical link will do just fine. I’d be comfortable using a canonical if my content appeared on a well-established, high-authority site supporting my brand and business goals.

Benefits of Content Syndication

With content syndication causing such a potential headache with attribution to the original article, why would you bother? Let’s explore that next.

Visibility From New Audiences

Syndicating content allows you to tap into relevant audiences who follow and read content on other websites. It’s a brilliant way to introduce your brand to fresh audiences. The key with content syndication is finding publications with audiences similar to yours. You can review the likelihood of a lookalike audience by asking for demographic details or exploring the content on the publisher’s website. Also, if the site publishes content you know your audience will like, there’s every chance they’re there.

Increased Traffic

Ensure publishers will link to your site with content like: “originally posted on…” as this may encourage audiences to click through to your website.

Quality Backlinks

The link added to the publisher’s content to yours is a backlink. You have earned an easy, high-quality backlink if you’ve published content on the right websites (highly relevant, authoritative in your niche).

Lead Generation

If your content makes it onto prolific publishers, you might find that your audience trusts you more. For example, if an industry-leading journal publishes your content, it must be good.

Increased Value From Content

Content marketing is hard. It takes a long time, and it’s not cheap to create good content. Content syndication allows you to get much more from one piece of content. By sharing it on other websites, you’re increasing the reach of that content and making it work harder for your business.

Now that we have the basics covered, here’s how to successfully syndicate content.

Here’s everything you need to know about free and paid content syndication methods.

Free Content Syndication

There are four main ways in which you can syndicate your content for free:

Republish your latest or best-performing content on bigger websites, with more readers and higher authority than yours.

When you syndicate to a bigger publication, you amplify your reach. However, since readers can consume the entire content directly on the third-party website, they have little incentive to check out the source. So only a small percentage of the readers will visit your website. That said, if your main goal is to increase your brand awareness, then I think syndicating on major publications is the way to go.

Syndicate old content on websites with roughly the same audience and authority as yours.

If you want to focus more on a niche audience, you should consider syndicating content to smaller, more focused publications. Ideally, look for publications with authority and readership similar to yours. They might also allow more contextual links so you can reference your blog from the article. It’s a great way to let your readers discover more content on your blog and generate new leads.

Guest post on a bigger publication and syndicate later on your website, Medium, or LinkedIn.

Sometimes it’s worth publishing on a big site first, as they might only be interested in fresh, original content. You get the benefit of getting your thought leadership in front of a big audience that otherwise wouldn’t have reached your content. After a while, depending on the publication, you’re free to republish that piece to your audience and social channels. Basically, you get more bang for your content buck.

Get picked up by websites that naturally syndicate content.

If you take the title of a recent article from a big publication and type it into Google, you’ll see it’s been picked up by many small publications. These usually publish an excerpt from the original piece and link back to the source.

To make your blog more visible, try first creating a page where you explain how people can syndicate your content. This “steal our content … please” page from UniverseToday.com is a good example of how to do it.

Then, make sure you optimize your website for syndication.

Scott Mathson told me, “Syndication often relies on feeds and sitemaps, so take the time to focus on optimizing your website’s posts, feeds, sitemaps, and other XML files to ensure it is valid and in line with guidelines for various publishing platforms. Once optimized, set up the connections for automating syndication, whether through setting up connections to sitemaps and feeds or through developing API connections to various syndication sites. Setting up this automation for cross-posting your content to sites like Flipboard saves time in the long run.”

Lastly, give other publications a reason to syndicate your content either entirely or partially. For example, include charts, infographics, or diagrams that can easily be picked up and syndicated.

“Presenting key statistics, tips, and takeaways from your content in a visual format, like an infographic or slide deck, can make your content more attention-grabbing. Even if sites don’t want to syndicate an entire article, they may still be open to sharing your visual content, since it can complement their existing piece and help boost the engagement on their page,” said Sara McGuire, content lead at Venngage, where they used visual content to grow their site traffic by 400%.

Paid Content Syndication

Paid content syndication is, well, when you pay to be published.

The most common form of paid syndication has been around for a while. Big brands often collaborate directly with big publishers to get their content to a big audience. This tactic, however, wasn’t available for smaller brands with a more limited budget.

Fortunately, tools like Outbrain and Taboola make it possible for even smaller brands to appear as recommended content on sites like CNN, BBC, or The Guardian.

You’ve probably seen these ads before:

The way these platforms work is pretty much like any PPC campaign. You can set a capped budget, a cost-per-click, and a target audience. Then the platform serves readers with your ad as a recommended article, featuring an image, a short title, and a link to your website.

It’s probably worth mentioning that these links don’t carry any SEO authority. They are seen as “sponsored content” by search engines and sometimes by readers.

Every time a reader clicks on one of these ads, you are charged a cost that varies depending on the target audience and other campaign settings.

That said, paid syndication is a much more straightforward option to get your content featured in major publications. It’s probably the only way to get your content on sites like CNN. However, paid doesn’t give you the same SEO and even brand awareness benefits as free syndication.

In this next section, I’ll show you how to find publications where your competitors syndicate content, which ones to choose, and which to avoid.

How to Find Content Syndication Partners

You can use numerous tools, including BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, and Semrush — just to name a few. You can check any website’s latest backlinks for content syndication opportunities.

Most likely, the easiest place to start is a Google search. Look for articles that mention:

• “Originally published in…”
• “Republished with permission.”
• “Originally appeared on…”

To narrow your search to publications in your niche, add inurl:[domain] to your search. Here’s a real-life example of inbound blogs that syndicate content:

When selecting publications, look for the ones that have:

• Similar or better authority than your blog.
• A readership that’s similar to your buyer persona.
• Canonical links to original articles.

There are also publications you need to stay away from. Publishing there might ultimately harm your brand and SEO performance. Make sure you avoid publications with:

• Low authority.
• Spammy outbound links.
• No clear editorial guidelines.

To help you get started, I’ve compiled a list of websites below where you can syndicate content immediately.

Start syndicating your content today.

In my experience, content syndication is a fantastic opportunity to reach a new audience and potentially convert those readers into leads. Additionally, if you syndicate other publications’ content on your site, you can serve your readers fresh, valuable content without requiring them to leave your site to find it elsewhere.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2014 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.