Content Syndication Explained: What It Is & How to Do It

Looking for an easy and affordable way to increase your website traffic? Then blog syndication might just be the answer that you’ve been searching for. This often overlooked tactic is a highly effective method for enhancing your online visibility and attracting more visitors to your website. What’s more, generally speaking, all it takes is some original content that other websites will be happy to publish on their own sites. 

Given how effective the syndicated content strategy can be, it’s a surprise that more website owners aren’t using the tactic. In many cases, the reason they’re not using the technique is that they’re not sure how to do it. If you’re in that camp, then you’re in the right place. In this blog post, we’ll run through everything you need to know about content syndication, including what it is, how to do it, and the benefits that it can bring. Ready? Let’s go.

What is Blog Syndication?

So what is blog syndication, anyway? Essentially it’s just a distribution tactic that places your content on other websites. Now, you might be wondering why you’d do that when your ultimate goal is to attract people to your website, not somebody else’s. 

The reason why you should be republishing your content on a third-party website is that it can help you to reach a larger audience and increase exposure. The more people that see your content, the greater the number of visitors you will have. 

It’s an investment in your own website. While the website that publishes your content will benefit, it’s your goals and targets that lead the way. If you place your content in the right places, then you’ll be expanding the reach of that content and helping to boost your brand awareness online. The ultimate end is an increased number of website visitors and greater lead generation. 

So what does it look like in practice? It’s a three-step process.

1. You publish your content on syndication sites.
2. Backlinks to the original content are included in the piece, so readers can easily visit your website.
3. Visitors land at your website and can learn more about your brand. 

That’s a pretty clear benefit. However, it’s not a perfect strategy. Many experts advise using syndicated content with care as an SEO tool since search engine rankings can often rank the third-party site that hosts the content higher than the original source. Your content may even hurt your ranking if it’s posted maliciously with no intent, no sources, and no canonical tag. That’s when Google might read it as duplicate content with malicious intent.

Yet, that aside, blog syndication very much has its benefits and is worthwhile exploring. 

Examples of Blog Syndication

There are various ways to publish syndicated content. You can publish the full article or just excerpts on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, or you can distribute your content via RSS feeds. This method allows readers to receive automatic blog updates in their feed reader.

But perhaps the most common way to syndicate your content is by connecting with other websites and publishers, who are happy to publish your content because it means more autoblogged content for their website. In exchange, you get exposure and backlinks for your website. 

You may have read a syndicated blog without being aware of it. Below, we’ll look at just two examples of websites that use syndication as their primary content source.

TravelBloggerCommunity.com

Point your browser toward Travelbloggercommunity.com, and you’ll find a host of travel-related blog posts at your disposal. Yet none of these blog posts can be considered “original content” for the website. They’re all syndicated using the WPRSS Aggregator tool, which means the post was originally hosted elsewhere.

Travel Blogger Community is an example of how syndicated content benefits all invested parties. The website receives a lot of content, which attracts visitors, and the original owner of the content receives backlinks that nudge those visitors to their website. In many cases, the content is only partially shown, incentivizing the reader to click through to the content’s original source.

PersonalFinanceBlogs.com

You’ll have a similar experience when you visit PersonalFinanceBlogs.com. There, you’ll find a wide range of personal finance articles, with new ones added throughout the day. It would take a lot of work to write all that content. But that’s not what’s happening. The website uses WPRSS Aggregator to publish articles from other sites and, as with Travel Blogger Community, includes a link to the original content. 

These websites receive thousands of views each month. By republishing your content on these sites, you’ll be tapping into an audience that may be much larger than your own blog audience. 

What Isn’t Blog Syndication?

OK, now we’ve talked about what blog syndication is, let’s talk about what it’s not. While content syndication may form part of your content marketing strategy, there are key differences to be aware of.

For example, while contributing guest blogs and doing blog syndication as a strategy share some similarities (both involve having your content on other websites), how they function and the purpose of each differ significantly.

Guest posting involves writing an original article to be published on someone else’s website. Blog syndication involves taking an article that exists on your website and republishing it on various different websites and platforms. 

You’ll use guest posting to build relationships and reach a new audience. Blog syndication is focused on increasing the visibility of your content. Both of these strategies are deployed to help boost website traffic and enhance brand awareness, but use different methods for reaching these goals. 

Blog syndication is different from repurposing content, too. When you repurpose content, you take one piece of content and use it in a different medium (for example, turn a video into a blog post, a podcast into infographics, and so on). In blog syndication, it’s the same piece of content doing all the work. So let’s get into your content syndication strategy.

How to Do Blog Syndication 

Ready to use blog syndication to expand your reach, build brand awareness, and get more website visitors? There are a few things you’ll need to know before beginning the process. Blog syndication can be a highly valuable part of your overall content marketing strategy, but only if you select the right outlets and follow the best practice for blog syndication. 

Let’s start with the basics. You can use blog syndication by republishing your articles (either fully or in part) on social media websites, via RSS feeds, or by partnering with syndication sites that publish syndicated content. 

Below, we’ve put together a five-step process for making your blog syndication strategy a success.

Step 1: Create Great Content

It doesn’t matter where it’s posted; if the blog content isn’t up to scratch, then no one’s going to read it. Many website owners create what they believe to be quality content and then hope that other web users will agree with them.

But this is the wrong approach. Instead, it’s better to establish exactly who you’re trying to reach with your content and then create the content with their needs in mind. The goal is to create content that your target audience believes to be ‘great,’ whatever they may be. 

There’s only so much success you have with one or two articles. To build an audience, you’ll need to consistently create high-quality content, ensuring that you’re focusing on the topics that matter to your audience and that you have something interesting to say about those topics. 

Once you have your content, you’ll need to identify third-party websites that touch upon the subjects. It’s OK if their audience is slightly different from your own since this will allow you to reach new audiences beyond the people who already know about you. 

Step 2: Choose Your Channels

Your content will be hosted on your own website. But the point of syndication is to spread the word by hosting the content on other websites. You’ll need to think carefully about which channels will be more appropriate for your needs.

If you’re just getting started with syndication, then LinkedIn and Medium can both be useful since anyone with an account can publish their articles on these sites. You may also test the water by republishing your content (or parts of the content) on social media websites before you move on republish on other websites. This can be beneficial from an SEO perspective since it’ll show Google where the original content came from and will thus be more likely to score highly on the rankings list. 

Step 3: Curate Content

So far, we’ve spoken about republishing your own content on other people’s websites. But it’s also possible to provide syndicated content for your own audience. This helps to get more content for your site, which can increase the number of visitors that you receive.

If you’re taking this approach, then it’s essential that, first of all, you curate your content from syndication partners that allow content resharing. Having a good syndication network will ensure that your website receives quality articles from reputable sources in line with the type of content you want to republish. Plus, you won’t need to manually select each piece of content that gets published, which will save you time. In turn, they’ll probably be open to republishing your content as well, so it’s a win-win.

Join the right syndication network 

Syndication networks are groups of websites or platforms that collaborate to distribute and promote content. Joining one can be highly beneficial, but only if you select the right network. 

Websites within a blog syndication network typically publish each other’s content for mutually beneficial reasons. By joining one, you’ll benefit from enhanced exposure, easy distribution of your content, and building new relationships both with new audiences and other content creators. 

You can search for syndication networks to join on social networks like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

Remember: it’s extremely important to critically evaluate the quality of the syndication network to ensure that the content being published is good and that the websites involved have a good reputation since a low-quality syndicate can do more harm than good. A 10/10 syndication partner will even include a noindex tag on content to give you referral traffic to the original post and credit for creating it.

Step 4: Use Automation

Automation can make publishing syndicated on your website a straightforward process. The best RSS aggregator tools will allow you to curate the type of content that you want your audience to see and automatically post the content to your site in a format and language of your choice. 

A tool like WP RSS Aggregator is ideal for this purpose. To set up WP RSS Aggregator, follow these steps:

1. Install WP RSS Aggregator.

2. Find and add feeds from the blogs/websites you wish to syndicate. 

3. Select automatic posting, which will automatically create new posts on your website based on content from your selected sites.

4. Create your custom post types so the syndicated posts are displayed in the format of your choice (as posts, pages, etc.).

5. Create custom taxonomies and templates to categorize these posts based on topic and other metrics.

Step 5: Monitor Performance

Publishing syndicated content on your website can be highly beneficial, but in order for that to be the case, you’ll need to know what you’re trying to achieve. You may want to see an increase in website visitors or lead generation, for example. 

Once you’re up and running with your content syndication, you’ll need to keep an eye on performance and make adjustments when appropriate. If you’re not seeing the success you were expecting, then you may need to change syndication sources or frequency. 

Use WPRSS Aggregator for Content Syndication 

Content syndication has become popular because of its effectiveness in reaching a wider audience and driving traffic to a website. It’s a relatively low-cost strategy that can bring great results if it’s done correctly, both for website owners looking to get maximum value from their content and for republishing website hosts who want consistent and quality content for their sites.