The 101 on Content Syndication: Who, What, Where, When & Why

Creating great content is, unfortunately, just half the battle for small businesses. Because Google has put such a huge weight on quality content both on your site as well as on other sites across the web (and rightfully so), there is a lot of competition. You need to make sure you’re not only writing great content, but people are actually seeing this content amongst all of the choices a SERP offers. SEO is a huge part of this step, comprised of many different methods such as social media promotion, link building, content optimization, and many more.
One interesting tactic that is a little bit less popular: Content syndication. Syndicating your content is a great way to earn visibility on other platforms without having to put in any extra hours to write a great article. It’s too easy.

Content Syndication Basics for Your Small Business

Of course whenever you’re going to try any new content strategy, it’s important to understand all of the basics as well as some of the curveballs you might be thrown. Below explains the who, what, where, when, and why of content syndication (not necessarily in that order!):

The What

Syndicating your content means you’re publishing either a piece of content you’ve written or a video you’ve created onto a different website. Your content will be published on this website for others to share and comment; however it is imperative that you earn a link back to where the content was originally posted. You’re not allowing someone else to take credit for your work; you are simply allowing your content to be published with credit given back.

The Why

It is always better to offer a unique article to another website, but this is a quick way of getting your name out there in front of relevant audiences. While you do run the risk that someone might not read the part of the page where it says “this article was originally publish by…” it’s usually obvious and so you get that link back to your website as well as that visibility.

The Where

There are many different websites that actually focus on primarily syndicated content, so these are usually a good place to start. You can oftentimes just upload your RSS feed so that the website is alerted that you’ve published something on your site. Once the site checks out your content, they can choose to publish it and give back credit or do nothing with it at all. Where you can find these opportunities depends completely on your industry. Social Media Today is one of my favorite websites that works this way, and Reddit is one of the most popular for many different kinds of industries.
Other syndication options include paid as well as non-paid. When it comes to non-paid, it’s all about going out there and talking with blogs in your industry to see if they are interested in syndicating your content or getting an RSS feed (much the same way you talk with editors about a guest article). Paid options include websites that will syndicate your content for you on some very major sites like CNN or Time. Outbrain and Taboola are two of the most popular.

The When

It’s best to syndicate your content once you are very established on your own website. Publish on your website first so that you can iron out any issues you have with your goals or the tone you are striving toward. You need to make sure that you’re able to publish quality content frequently. Once you have this mastered, go try to syndicate your content and get the word out about your great website.

The Who

You should put your main content manager in charge of syndicating content. Be sure to just have one person in charge so that you do not have a lot of people trying to syndicate your content in the same place. This looks unprofessional and could confuse the websites considering a syndication partnership.

Content Syndication and SEO Considerations

As discussed above, syndicating your content is great for your SEO because it helps you earn links as well as visibility without having to write an entirely new and unique article. It saves you time and helps you establish ongoing relationships with different sites (which isn’t always easy to do when you’re guest blogging). There are, however a few problems that come along with syndicating content.
First, it is possible that another site could outrank you on a Google SERP. This would bring more clicks to the other website as opposed to your website. While you’re still getting that visibility, you might be losing out on your end goal. It’s usually a good idea to syndicate your content and then remove your RSS feed after you get a little bit of visibility before you lose out on any more clicks.
Second, you really need to be careful when it comes to duplicate content. You don’t want to syndicate your content with too many sites because Google doesn’t like to see a huge influx of links. This could get you penalized with Penguin, not to mention the duplicate content penalty. It’s important Google knows you are the source of your content through canonical tags and internal links in the article.
Have you syndicated the content on your website in the past? What did you find to be the most beneficial about this method? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Source:  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-content-syndication/68590/

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We’ll Help You Develop a Clear Website Strategy to Identify Where You Want to Be and How You’re Going to Get There

Website Strategy & Consulting

We’ll work with both your company’s key stakeholders and target audience to help you develop a clear website strategy that will allow you to better:

• Identify your Key Goals & Objectives
• Understand your Target Audience’s Needs & Wants
• Identify your Road Blocks
• Assess your Competition
• Assess your Marketing Campaigns
• Identify & Measure the Correct Web Site Success Metrics (i.e. KPIs)
• Track & Improve your Lead and Sales Generation (i.e. Conversion Rate)
• Benchmark & Measure your Progress toward Meeting your Goals

Digital Analytics & Key Performance Indicators

Assumptions are very dangerous and can lead to disastrous results on the web. Gathering accurate (quantitative and qualitative) data allows us to validate or dispel assumptions of how people use your site. Using focus groups, surveys, web and campaign metrics as well as usability studies, we can develop a holistic understanding of how people use your web site. Then we combine our experience and current industry research with this data to determine the proper course of action to intelligently make incremental changes to your web site. Next we analyze the key performance indicators (see common KPIs below) to ensure that we have in fact improved the site and are trending in a positive direction.

Some common Key Performance Indicators based on web site type include:

• Ecommerce Web Sites – Overall Purchase Conversion, Average Order Size, Items Per Order
• Lead Generation Web Sites – Overall Conversion, Registration Process Dropouts, Conversion of leads into actual customers
• Customer Service Web Sites – Percent of support touches served online, average cost per touch, drivers to other support methods
• Advertising Based Content Sites – Visits per week, page views per visit, advertising click ratio, recency and frequency
• Subscription Based Content Sites – Conversion of non-subscribers to subscribers, active subscriber base, average subscription length
• Branding Web Sites – Page views per visit, average time spent on site, visits per visitor over a certain period of time

Usability Reviews

Too often websites are never properly tested before they launch. Are you too close to your site to notice the problems you have? It often takes a fresh set of eyes from an unbiased perspective to notice the small roadblocks that keep your site from reaching its optimal performance. We regularly perform in-depth usability reviews that cover a site’s design, messaging, pathways/information architecture, usability and usefulness in order to provide specific recommendations that can greatly enhance the usability and effectiveness of a site without a complete redesign.

Site Improvement Checklists

As part of any strategic or consulting service we provide easy to follow checklists. The action items can then be performed by your current internal or external web design team.

Key Tactics

• Website Strategy Development
• Marketing Strategy
• Usability Strategy/Heuristic Evaluation
• Project Definition
• Prototyping/Wireframing
• Business Process Automation Analysis
• Analytics & Reporting
• A/B Testing & Multivariate Testing
• Personas & Audience Segmentation
• Contingency Design
• Short & Long Term Planning
• User Centric Messaging/Copy Writing
• Site Management/Maintenance 
  
  Source: http://www.blastam.com/web-site-strategy