WP RSS Aggregator
Want to learn an easy way to build your online reputation and improve your website traffic?
Content syndication can help you to both distribute your content to target audiences AND keep your blog updated with content from top-quality websites. It can help build your brand authority, increase your traffic, improve your community reputation, and ultimately increase your revenue.
Don’t believe me? Buffer reported 6K social shares just from content syndication! In turn, companies like Huffington Post, Fast Company, Inc, Lifehacker, The Next Web, and more are syndicating Buffer’s content to populate their own blogs.
In this guide, we’ll explore content syndication, its benefits, and how it works. We’ll also share the WordPress plugins you can use to create content hubs or news aggregators, and the steps you need to take to set them up.
Let’s get started.
What is Content Syndication?
Simply put, content syndication is a way to help content reach wider audiences.
If you’re running a blog or company, you know how important your content marketing strategy is to your business. In order for it to succeed, your content needs to be read and to do that, it needs to feature on the first few pages of Google or it will be lost in internet clutter. When working in a competitive niche, this can hold your content back.
Syndication can help with that.
Content syndication can take place in two main directions:
- You can syndicate your content to high-authority websites.
- You can syndicate other people’s content to your website.
To demonstrate this better, think of your favorite movie or TV series. It is highly probable that you’ve been able to watch it on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and certain TV channels. This technique makes the movie/series get more views, while also increasing the number of users for media service providers.
With content syndication, your WordPress content can reach more people and generate more traffic in the same way. Likewise, your blog can benefit from top-quality articles from other sources.
In fact, there are a number of advantages to content syndication, so let’s dig into that next.
The Benefits of Content Syndication
Content syndication is, in essence, a low-cost solution to distribute content without a lot of effort, and there are benefits for both parties involved (both the source and the publisher).
Here are a few.
For the source:
- It helps share your content with a wider group of individuals.
- It builds your site’s reputation as a thought leader in its niche.
- It helps increase your site’s authority, helping you rank higher on Google.
- It helps you get more backlinks and social media shares.
- It helps you improve your reputation within your community.
- It helps get your brand on top sites.
For the publisher:
- It helps your readers find the best content on a topic quickly and easily, saving them time and effort.
- It provides you with up-to-date, broader content that you might not be so well-versed in.
- It helps build your traffic and directly impacts your income (through affiliate links, for instance).
- It helps give you high-authority external links.
- It helps you build relationships within your community.
As you can see, if content syndication is done correctly, it can bring a lot of benefits to your business. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First, you shouldn’t be using content syndication on any and all content that you or your sources produce. Focus on the best content to ensure that you don’t hurt your SEO.
Next, get permission, use canonical tags, and add appropriate attribution to let Google know that the content being shown belongs to the source website. This will ensure that you do not get penalized for duplicate content.
Below is an example of attribution added to the end of an article:
Finally, choose the right websites for your niche. Finding relevant partners to work with is key.
How Does Content Syndication Work?
Content syndication can be done manually through submissions, but it’s made easier thanks to something called an RSS feed.
An RSS feed is a simple, standardized content distribution method that automatically updates a website with new posts from a source site. An RSS feed can be distributed through an RSS feed URL. In most cases, it will look like this:
https://yoursite.com/feedYou can subscribe to an RSS feed using an RSS reader, or you can embed it on a website using an RSS aggregator. Publishers can then choose to syndicate the entire post or focus on the excerpt or an edited down version.
How to Create a WordPress Content Syndication Blog
If you’re running a WordPress site and wish to syndicate content from other websites, you’ll need an RSS aggregator plugin.
These plugins work by having you enter an RSS feed URL. Next, the plugin will import content to your website, either as posts or as lists.
Let’s take a look at a couple of options:
WP RSS Aggregator
WP RSS Aggregator makes it easy to manage multiple feeds and display them in different ways on your site.
The free version will allow you to display lists of content from various websites, whereas the premium version will let you publish content to your website in the form of WordPress posts. WP RSS Aggregator will take care of everything for you, from canonical links to attribution.
It also allows you to add your own commentary or thoughts on the articles you’re publishing to help you avoid any issues with duplicate content.
Feedzy
Similarly, Feedzy allows you to publish articles from feed sources on your WordPress website. You can display content in the form of lists or as content on your WordPress site.
Just like WP RSS Aggregator, you can also “spin” content with third-party content spinners. These programs automatically rewrite your blog content, making each variation look distinct.
Our Top Pick: WP RSS Aggregator
If you’re looking for a holistic plugin to syndicate content to your WordPress site, we recommend WP RSS Aggregator. It’s easy to use, doesn’t require any coding knowledge, and comes with a comprehensive set of features.
What’s more, it’s highly rated and has great customer support!
How to Set Up Content Syndication Using WordPress
If you’re interested in starting your own WordPress content syndication blog, we’ll show you how to get started with WP RSS Aggregator. To follow along, make sure to download and install the PRO version of WP RSS Aggregator here.
Next, head on to the Feed Sources page.
How to Add a Feed Source
Creating a feed source in WP RSS Aggregator is easy. Simply hit the Add New button to get started.
Next, paste in the RSS Feed URL. You can validate the feed to see that it is correct or check out the preview to the right of your screen.
Your Post Settings
In the general tab, you can set your post status, among other things. In this example, I’ve set my posts to be imported as drafts. That way, I can curate my content before it gets published.
Filtering
WP RSS Aggregator allows you to filter content by keyword or tag. In this case, I’ve decided to import only those posts under the category “economy”.
Images
Under the images tab, you’ll be able to decide whether or not to import images found in the content, their minimum dimensions, and configure your featured image settings.
In this example, I’ve decided to remove the featured image from the post content since my theme displays it by default.
Taxonomies
Under the taxonomies tab, you’ll be able to give your imported content a category. You can also choose to create tags from the imported feed items. This means that if your post has the tags “business”, “finance”, and “economy”, all three will be added to your post tags in WordPress.
Author
WP RSS Aggregator gives you the possibility of also importing the post author. With this setting, you’ll be able to give due credit to the post author of any imported content.
Prepend/Append to Content
As we’ve discussed earlier, getting permission and adding attribution is extremely important when syndicating content. With the prepend or append to content feature, WP RSS Aggregator makes it really easy to add this before or after your content.
You can also format the text to make it stand out against the rest of the article.
Your Imported Posts
Once you’ve adjusted your settings and hit publish, WP RSS Aggregator will get to work importing your content.
Back in the Posts page within WordPress, you can now view all your content, including author, category, and tags, saved as draft.
All you need to do now is curate your content and publish the ones that are relevant to your niche.
Conclusion
Content syndication is a very powerful tool when used correctly. It can help boost your brand’s authority, help with your content marketing strategy and get more eyes on your content.
With WP RSS Aggregator, it is easier than ever to set up your syndication site using WordPress. Add unlimited sources, with no restrictions. You’ll be set up in no time!
Leave a Reply