To Syndicate: repeat or make available on other mediums or sources.
Syndicated Content: Share or repeat summaries or full renditions of previously published articles or post.
I'm not talking about the syndicated reruns of Gilligan's Island, but your own content shared elsewhere from where it was originally posted.
First, we should do it, then we shouldn't; what about duplicate content, blah blah blah
We've talked about this a lot but now, Google almost expects it. If a blog post or article is noteworthy, some big name blog or website will pick it up and run with it. And that's what you want, as long as they are giving you credit. Most of the time, big name syndication websites will give credit and if not, that's plagiarism, something you should definitely take care of. But most of the time, a reference at the bottom of the post stating where the information originally came from is pure SEO gold.
Of course, that means that those syndicated articles have the potential to rank far better than your own website and sometimes that's not a bad thing.
Would you be pissed if an article you wrote on your website was picked up by Yahoo news and now ranks well for that title or topic with a lovely little link back to your site at the bottom of the article? Probably not. Because it will add more authority to your site as a whole and maybe next time, that big bot could come back to your site for more juicy information and/or readers could subscribe to you personally as long as they click on that little (originally posted here) link at the bottom.
So, what's the best way to syndicate (repeat) content for better exposure? Well, there are about 100 ways but I'll just give you some basic pointers, the why, and how to properly do it.
Let's start with the why - I kind of mentioned that previously, more exposure for your content and for you. Better SEO and back links.. but the why is to broadcast your amazing information to reach more readers, get more subscribers or contacts and build your authority. The more you are the authority on a subject, the greater your sphere of influence and the more chances you'll have to get more leads which should equal more income.
How to do it.
There are a lot of ways to syndicate your content one of which being ActiveRain. You may or may not have your own website (but you probably should) and if you want to syndicate your content is perfectly fine to do it on places like ActiveRain. But there are a lot of other places you could do this as well. Syndicating content is not exactly like guest blog posts. Most of the time when you are guest blogging on someone else's website they wanted to be original content, not duplicated content from another website or blog. When you write a guest blog post that content just sits on the other website but when you syndicate your own content to a variety of different websites and sources, you expand your authorities influence can gain higher quality backlinks, increasing traffic to your website, exposing you and your brand to a brand-new audience and establishing yourself as an expert.
You want to first plan out your syndication strategy. You want to look at your goals and your target audience. If you're writing about real estate you certainly wouldn't go on to a fashion blog or a food blog because it doesn't relate and you're not reaching your target audience. But places like RealtyTimes.com, Inman.com, RealTown.com or other real estate websites that offer a blog are great options for syndicating your own information. There's usually a place to have a profile which links back to your website and creates authority for you and your services.
But, there is also a wide range of other types of syndicating content websites out there. Some will allow you to write an excerpt or summary and some you can put in the full rendition of the article. You can even do this on social media such as Google Plus, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
There are general content syndication websites out there that are for a variety of topics such as WikiHow, Hub Pages, SideShare, Medium or SheKnows.com. You can also share content from sites such as Flipboard, Scoopit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit. These sites get extra comments and upvotes to pending on how popular the topic is.
RSS submissions and blog directories may also be a good option for you want to be careful that you don't spread yourself too thin and cause your site to gain mediocre or low-quality backlinks. Stick to sites that have some heavyweight, page authority and domain authority. If you've heard of it before, if you've read anything on the site, or you've heard other people talk about it, it probably has some weight.
Newsletters and emails are also a great way to syndicate your content. True, this is not on the web out there.if you created an amazing article you might want to include that in your next newsletter or email to future, current or past clients.
Share and share again. Don't forget to share things that you might have shared in the past especially if it's good information that is valid and relevant to today. Just because you share it once doesn't mean that you never have to share it again. Share it on Twitter, thank people that may have picked up and shared your information themselves, connect with others on social media and asked them to share information that might be relevant to their audience.
Plus, don't forget to credit your articles everywhere else you post them. A simple "post originated on (yourwebsite)". By linking back to the original post, Google knows that the information is syndicated and where the original content actually came from, however, this doesn't mean that the original post will rank higher than all the syndicated posts. Google will find the website that they feel is the best resource for the potential audience. You can alter that by adding a canonical link tag or no index tag into the backend if the syndicating website allows it. Google is great at interpreting this type of tag so if possible it's always a good idea to ask that the publishing sites use this rel=canonical tag whenever possible, which tells Google where the original content is and it can be an effective solution to duplicate content issues. But, you shouldn't get penalized, especially if you state where the original content came from.
Don't let your amazing content just sit on one website growing mold. Get it out there and get it out there again. You never know who might actually read your article, pick it up and broadcasted on some high-quality sites, especially if you offer valuable information that's relevant, current, and no one else knows about.
This post Originally published on PersonalSEO.com
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