Article Syndication Simplified

Article syndication is a cost effective way to build inbound links to your blog or website and increase audience outreach. Article syndication is a simple process where the original and published content on your blog or website is republished on some other website by you or other webmasters, crediting your link as the main source.

The concept has been present since online marketing took hold since the late 1990s, but has undergone a lot of changes in the last few years to comply with Google guidelines.

In the current scenario, you need to have a specific content marketing system in place and accord article syndication its due importance.

Here is your guide to build inbound links through article syndication.

Places to Syndicate Articles

It is easy to discover a lot of places to syndicate articles. However, do you need all of them? Certainly not. Therefore, it is important to inspect and finalize a list of places to syndicate articles before getting started.

For instance, if you’re a brand dealing with social media or running a social media blog, syndicating on Social Media Today makes sense because

(a) The created inbound link is relevant.

(b) The referral traffic is relevant too.

Triberr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, DoSplash, Outbrain, Taboola, Ezinearticles and Social Media Today are good places to begin article syndication.

Establish Article Syndication Purpose

Without a clear purpose, the time and money spent in syndication will be a total waste. Zero in on what you are trying to achieve.

• If you want to capture leads, increase traffic or gain backlinks, syndicating the full article is a bad idea. In this case, publishing a snippet and linking back to its main source works perfectly.
• If you want to create brand awareness, syndicating full article is fine, but it can create issues of duplication. However, you may use canonical tag in this case.

However, a knowledgeable webmaster will always recommend you to publish snippet, consisting of the article headline, the thumbnail image and a short description. The description should be rewritten every time to avoid duplication.

Search Engine Ranking

The search engine ranking is a major concern too. Sometimes the syndicated content ranks higher than the original content. This happens when the whole content is republished or when the content is syndicated on a popular website which clearly has higher search engine presence than your blog or website.

This is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

This is an advantage because you want to connect with syndicating sites bringing you quality traffic; a disadvantage because their syndication can outweigh your original content.

Step-by-Step Article Syndication Process

Even though the process is cost effective, it is time consuming and can go wrong if done without complete knowledge.

• Research and finalize article syndication sites relevant to your niche. If the site is immensely popular, getting them to approve your feed / content may be tough. Clear away this hurdle before you do anything else.
• Some Article syndication sites will not republish anything appearing on the content feed. They are selective and might reject your submission. Hence, make sure the content is worth re-sharing.
• Keep keywords, a custom description, good headline and thumbnail ready.
• Once you hit the publish button in your blog/website, one of these could happen: (a) if the blog feed is linked to the article syndication sites, the newly published content will automatically sync with them, or (b) if the blog feed is not linked to the article syndication sites, you have to manually submit the new content piece to these sites.
• Once republished, sit back and see the referral traffic rolling in.

…that’s it.

Reaping benefits with article syndication sites depends wholly on the content quality and its relevance to the readers of the syndicated site.

A Word of Caution

Do not syndicate your article on low quality sites like article directories. In the past, this was a top method to generate inbound links in a short span of time, but various Google algorithm updates later, it is not recommended.

Spinning the original content into hundreds of low quality versions and sharing them on low quality article directories is a complete no-no practice. Know that such inbound links will be of low quality and will not benefit your website or blog at all.