Editor
The world of marketing is full of trends that come and go, but one thing that has remained constant is the need for informative and entertaining content. Content is king, nearly every marketing blog proclaims: and they’re not wrong.
Common Problem: Nobody is Reading My Content
Content is a huge reason why you have an audience at all. From the simplest product description to the keyword-laden SEO content that helps your Google ranking, content is the number one way to gather followers and make those all-important conversions.
But killer content is meaningless unless people are actually reading it. It can be tough to get your site’s blog off the ground. You have to spend as much time marketing your blog as you do your products and services.
There are a few ways to get more traffic to your blog quickly, however. Syndication is one such method to help your content show up in more Google searches, gain more readers, and get shared and liked around the world. So how can you get more traffic with content syndication?
Let’s take a look.
What Is Content Syndication?
Put quite simply, content syndication is the process in which your articles or blog entries are posted on third party websites.
The purpose of this marketing strategy is to allow you to build links to your own website, which will then increase your website’s traffic.
Publishing in more places gives more readers a chance to read your stuff. Then, captivated by your witty and informative words, they click a link to learn more about you and your brand. Once on your site, they are drawn in by your wisdom and become life-long customers.
Well, ideally. As with everything in the process of owning a business, it’s never quite as simple as that.
What is a Syndicated Article?
One important thing to note is that content syndication is different from guest posting or content repurposing.
When you write a guest post, you create brand new, original content specifically for publication on another person or business’s website.
Content repurposing is the process in which you take a highly popular blog post, YouTube video, infographic, etc, and turn it into a different type of content for another person or business’s audience (ie- turning a popular blog post into a YouTube video to post on another person’s channel, or vice versa).
Content syndication is taking an existing article, with no changes or edits, and publishing it on a third party website
There’s rarely any fanfare or credit to the author, aside from backlinks directly to the source. In this case, that source is your business’s website, where prospective audience members will encounter a wealth of content as amazing as the article that led them there.
How Do I Syndicate My Content?
The first step is pretty obvious: create amazing content.
Of course, this is easier said than done. The goal of content syndication is to drive more traffic to your website, so you’ll need to make sure all of the content on your site is amazing, not just the one article you plan to submit for syndication.
You want to keep the “wow factor” going from the third party site across your own site to ensure you not only gain traffic, but you keep it coming back for more. Whether you write your own content or hire a content creator, leave no sentence un-reviewed before you search for a syndicate.
The next step is finding syndicates. This isn’t nearly as hard as you might imagine, especially for someone with your level of Google searching expertise. Try search terms like “originally published in” or “republished with permission.” Many websites are open to the concept and a few even specialize in it.
Some Free and Paid Options
There are a few paid options for syndication, including our Syndication Services, which can help you connect with the just the right resources in order to get your content in front of just the right audiences. You can also self-syndicate at no cost on sites like Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn.
A few things to keep in mind as you search for the right syndication outlet: make sure it fits.
Not only do you need to have the right audience for your brand, but you’ll want to make sure the format works, and that the domain authority of the syndication site is higher than your own. There’s no point posting content on a third party site if it’s not going to gain more viewers. Therefore, don’t just zip off an introductory email to every site you see.
Do some research to make sure your content is a good fit.
How Content Syndication Increases Site Traffic
The number one way in which content syndication drives higher traffic to your site is through backlinking. If at all possible, make sure the link to the original post is conspicuous, so readers know where to go when they want more.
Additionally, content syndication is a great way to automate the promotion process
You write one article. The third party site publishes it. Then their audience shares, circulates, and otherwise promotes your content. The third party’s audience actually does the heavy lifting for you.
Over time, this can be exactly the jump start you needed to become the trusted authority figure that people want to buy from. Research shows that people trust brand names they see more frequently; therefore, as more articles with your brand appear on more websites, you’ll gain authority within your niche.
Read also: How to choose a Business Name for your Startup
Granted, gaining traffic through content syndication is a “long game” effort. You might see spikes in activity with each publication, but it will take some time before your brand becomes a household name, so to speak.
Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that content syndication will become your primary method of attracting new audience members.
That being said, content syndication is one very low cost, low effort way to gain traffic for your site.
You will need to invest the time and effort into making sure all of your content is gleaming gold before you get started… but you were going to do that anyway, weren’t you? After all, content is king!
