What is content syndication and how does it help you in content marketing?

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How content syndication helps content marketing
How content syndication helps content marketing

Content syndication can take place in two directions: you syndicate your content, or you publish syndicated content on your website or blog.

Syndication means when your content is republished by a third-party website. Content that can be syndicated includes blog posts, infographics, videos and articles.

Just as someone may be interested in publishing your content, you may also publish someone else’s content.

Many news websites use content syndication. For example, many newspapers syndicate content from Reuters and Associated Press. These are independent news gathering services. Newspapers and magazines pay them a fixed fee and based on the agreement, they get a certain number of news items or images that they can syndicate from the agencies.

Content syndication can also be a good content marketing tool.

What is the difference between guest blogging and content syndication?

You must be wondering, if your content is being published on another website or blog, how is it different from guest blogging? After all, in both the cases you should be getting backlinks or getting your content exposed to a different audience.

Guest blogging is when you write a blog post or an article, preferably exclusively, for another online publication. This blog post or article shouldn’t be published elsewhere, not even on your own blog or website.

Syndication on the other hand allows you to publish your content on multiple websites and blogs. In most of the cases, an API/RSS/XML connection is used to distribute the content.

If someone uses your RSS feed or an XML link to extract content from your website (based on your permission) and then publishes the content with due attribution, it is syndication. The content exists on your website. It also exists on other websites.

You can syndicate product reviews, movie reviews, authority blog posts, or even social media feeds. Syndication can be paid or free, depending on your agreement with the publishers.

Doesn’t content syndication create Google-related content duplication problem?

The basic idea behind content syndication is that your content appears on multiple websites. Doesn’t it create lots of duplicate content?

Yes it does?

Does Google penalize you for having duplicate content scattered all over the web?

Google says no.

But you need to take care that the websites and blogs publishing your content link back to your website or blog with attribution. You should also advise them to use the canonical link (that tells Google that the original content belongs to your URL).

Most of the content syndication tools automatically insert link to the original website. Content syndication is supposed to be automatic anyway. For example, if someone uses your RSS feed to extract content, whatever script is used to extract content also extracts the original URL and then links back to it.

The benefits of content syndication

There are many. You can promote your best performing content on bigger websites if they are ready to syndicate your content because of its quality and relevance.

Your old content, if it is still relevant and useful, can be repurposed and syndicated.

You generate backlinks automatically sometimes, which in turn benefits your SEO.

You can also use professional content syndication platforms such as Taboola and Outbrain to spread your content on other websites and blogs.

How to find content syndication partners

You can search on Google. You may use the following phrases when searching Google:

    • “published from”

    • “originally published in”

    • “original source credited to”

    • “republished with permission from”

You can also combine these phrases with the niche you’re looking for. For example, you can search for [“originally published in” “content writing tips”]

I have used [] just to club the two phrases together, you don’t need to use these brackets. The above combination should bring up websites that have published on the topics of content writing tips and somewhere they also contain the phrase “originally published in”, which indicates that they may have syndicated the content from somewhere else.

How to effectively pitch for a guest post?

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Effective way of pitching for guest posts
Effective way of pitching for guest posts

I have never pitched for guest blogging. If I ever did, I have forgotten – maybe in the late 2000s. But I definitely get pitched on a regular basis.

Mine is a decently successful blog. Therefore, every day I get at least one guest posting pitch. I mostly ignore them not because I don’t want to publish guest posts. I need to regularly publish content on my blog and if I’m getting free content, why not? Especially if it is well written and provides value to my readers.

Why do I ignore most of the guest blog posting pitches? Because they are not directly written to me. They are template pieces. They sometimes don’t even refer to my website properly.

Here is what I recently posted on Twitter:

They don’t even sometimes take enough trouble to go through the blog and try to find out what sort of content I publish.

Hence, even if I don’t pitch for guest blogs, I certainly know how not to pitch. Here are a few things you can do to get a positive response from a blog publisher.

Carefully go through the blog you’re pitching to

Not knowing what sort of content the blogger is publishing and despite that pitching for a guest post can be quite annoying.

People send me pitches for beauty products, cloud-based software, gaming mobile apps, search engine optimization, web design and all sorts of professional fields. Rarely do they go through my blog and send me an appropriate pitch for a blog post title that would be appropriate to my niche – content writing, copywriting, blog writing, email writing, and to an extent, content marketing.

Mention in the subject why you are writing

I won’t pretend that I get a ton of email and one needs to be specific to be noticed. I notice almost every email that arrives in my inbox.

Nonetheless, if you are writing to a very busy blogger, clearly mention in the subject that you are proposing a guest blog post. If possible, even suggest the title although, in the subject line it may be a bit difficult.

Describe why the blog post will be useful to the blog’s audience

Every blogger publishes content for his or her audience. Hence, while talking about the subject you have chosen, describe how the subject is going to help the visitors of the blog and what value it is going to add.

Include samples of your previous writing, preferably published

It doesn’t matter to me, but it may matter to some bloggers. When I find a good guest post idea, I don’t worry much about samples. I simply tell the person to send me the draft along with the author profile. If I like the draft, I publish it, if I don’t like it, I either request the person to revise it, or simply refuse to publish.

Ask if a blogger has a preferred format

I have a particular way of publishing blog posts and even writing them in MS Word or Google Docs. I have a style sheet defined. For example, for the main name of the blog post, I use the title tag. Then for all the headings and subheadings, I use the <h2> and <h3> tags (in MS Word, these can be simply H2 and H3).

I don’t like long, convoluted sentences. I keep the paragraphs preferably short although, longer paragraphs are fine too if they maintain a flow. Up till six months ago I was publishing paragraphs that were just one sentence long. Since then, I have abandoned the practice because it sounded quite phony and just catering to the search engines.

Main points should be described in bulleted points.

Anyway, if you ask for a preferred style, it shows that you care about the blogger’s time and you’re going to send a blog post that will be easier to publish.

These are the basic points. My main gripe is that most of the people pitching for guest posts send a mass email. This is not a good way of approaching a blog publisher, especially someone who works hard at creating focused, quality content.

It hardly takes a few minutes to go through a blog and get the gist of what type of content is being published. Prepare a direct, personal messages. Address the blogger by his or her name. Give an example of the blog post – from his or her blog – you have really liked to strike up a conversation. Again, let it be known that you’re specifically writing to that particular blog and you’re not sending the template message.

Should you write content based on keywords or customer needs?

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Should you write content for visitors or keywords?
Should you write content for visitors or keywords?

We don’t live in an ideal world. In an ideal world, one would solely write content for the visitors. In the non-ideal world that we live in, aside from writing content for the visitors and customers, one also needs to write content to generate search engine traffic.

In fact, most of the clients who approach me, want to prioritize getting traffic from search engines over writing content that would help their own customers and clients. Somehow, they believe that if they get people to their websites, they will magically convert.

The problem with this approach is two-pronged: by the time you realize there’s a problem it’s often too late, and it’s a self-defeating exercise.

You are achieving nothing when you are completely focusing on the keywords. The keywords are not some magical enchantments that will open the floodgates of riches and affluence. They are simply queries that people use to find information they are looking for.

Am I saying that you should completely ignore keywords? I’m not saying that you should completely ignore them but let them be an integral part of your content. For example, if you select the right topic and then you focus on the topic and you focus on delivering the value, you are automatically going to cover the main keyword associated with the topic.

The problem arises when in order to cover as many keywords as possible in a single blog post or web page, we end up cramming too much content and needless actions.

Content publishing on an ongoing basis is simply unavoidable. Whether you realize it or not, or you realize it when it’s too late, or maybe you never realize it, there is no escape from regular content publishing.

The simple logic behind this is, just like you want to increase your visibility and draw people to your website, there are hundreds of other businesses having the same objective, or nearly about the same objective (if they don’t provide exactly the same business as yours, but more or less the same).

This means they are constantly pumping new content into the web. Whether your prospective customers and clients are trying to find you on Google or on social media, your content is going to have to compete with thousands of other web pages and blog posts. Thousands of pieces of content are constantly being added on a daily basis. Hence, if you don’t update your website or blog with new content, with fresh content, your website is going to get buried under a ton of new content.

Therefore, don’t worry much about creating and writing content around keywords. Let keywords be covered automatically when you write lots of content to help your visitors. Write and publish lots of valuable content. Your keywords are taken care of automatically.

Google is rewriting website titles – can you stop?

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Lots of people on the Internet are complaining that Google is randomly changing their website titles. This Moz blog post has just published a complete analysis on how Google seems to be changing titles of various websites and web pages.

A few days ago, I published a blog post titled Why is the title tag so important when writing content? and in that blog post, with a screenshot I had explained what a title tag is and how it is different from a web page or blog post headline:

Screenshot of the title tag
Screenshot of the title tag.

Various SEO experts (people who are constantly observing what is Google doing with their content) began to notice this peculiarity in search results on August 16. Everyone is speculating that the update was introduced on August 15, 2021.

The author of this Search Engine Journal post quotes some website owners who say that the text for the titles is being picked from the page’s <h1> tag, but many have reported that their text was being picked from the anchor text of some randomly chosen internal link.

So much noise was generated on the Internet that Google published an update explaining how and why they are changing the titles randomly.

They have first explained how the titles are generated:

We are making use of text that humans can visually see when they arrive at a web page. We consider the main visual title or headline shown on a page, content that site owners often place within <H1> tags or other header tags, and content that’s large and prominent through the use of style treatments.

Then they go on to explain why they are changing the titles. They have mentioned three reasons:

  1. The title is a very long, needlessly long (Google can display only title characters up to a certain point).
  2. The titles are stuffed with keywords.
  3. The title seems to use “boilerplate” language. For example, a homepage may have just “Home” as title.

Personally, I think this makes sense. If they leave it on people, they are certainly going to use titles that they think are going to improve their search engine rankings and this sometimes triumphs over creating meaningful titles that actually represent what the web page or the blog post contains.

What can you do to stop Google from rewriting your web page titles?

Well, you can avoid doing things that makes Google rewrite your title. Here are a few things I would suggest:

  • Don’t go beyond the recommended title length – 60-70 characters including spaces.
  • Create meaningful titles that represent the body text of your web page or blog post. Don’t create titles just to improve your search engine rankings or to misrepresent the information.
  • Don’t repeat keywords in the title. Keep it to one keyword and one long tail keyword.
  • In the <h1> tag, use a headline or use the text that would also look good, relevant and meaningful as title text when it appears in search results.

These are just suggestions, and everybody is coming up with his or her own set of suggestions. It seems Google is still playing with this new change, and it will take some time before things settle down. Many people are complaining that weird titles are being created by Google. One person said that Google randomly picked a date from the web page and decided to include it in the title text.

My advice would be, create meaningful titles and stick to quality and relevance.

Do I sometimes refuse to work with certain content writing clients?

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Is it fine to turn away certain content writing clients?
Is it fine to turn away certain content writing clients?

Just now came across this interesting post on Copyblogger – Is It Time to Say Goodbye to Your Current Client? – that says that it isn’t always prudent to cling to a client, especially when he or she is creating a toxic environment.

How do I decide whether I want to work with a client or not? To be frank, it is often difficult to let go of a client with whom I have been working for a few months. There was some initial spark and that’s why we could survive beyond the initial documents.

It’s like a messy relationship – you feel committed, and you feel that it would be a failure on your part if you let things fall apart easily. Besides, it is difficult to see a source of money going away – one bird in your hand is better than two birds in the bush.

The post on Copyblogger rightly says that if you are providing a service like content writing or copywriting, you are constantly improving. Which means that a year ago if you were accepting clients matching your expertise back then, right now you need to accept clients that match your expertise now.

This is also important because if you’re still working with clients who hired you last year based on your expertise back then, they are still going to treat you like a less experienced content writer. Even if they grudgingly admit that you’re much better than you were last year, it will be difficult to make them pay you more.

According to the author, here are some reasons why you should stop working with a particular client:

  • He or she doesn’t respect your time.
  • He or she doesn’t recognise the extra effort you are putting to give your best.
  • He or she is paying far less than what you deserve.

Coming back to my own question: do I sometimes refuse to work with certain clients?

Yes, I definitely do, just as some clients decide not to work with me.

I like to work on projects where my work is appreciated not for the heck of satisfying my ego, but where I really contribute. Even if I contribute and my client does not realize that I’m contributing, this is not a good situation to be in, and I politely bow out.

As far as I can control, I never sully my relationships with people, because you never know the situation on the other side. I remember there was a client last year who talked very gruffly when I presented a counterargument. I was wary of moving forward but we were amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was taking many decisions that I wouldn’t take in normal times. I continued communicating with him and stuck to my argument. I told him that I would take full advance before committing. He paid double the amount I was asking for, giving me double the work we had initially talked about.

I have an hourly target. Whether I’m charging an hourly rate, per document, or per word, by the end of the project, I must reach my hourly target. If I exceed my hourly target, well and good, but if I don’t, it no longer remains an attractive proposition for me, and I refuse to work. I don’t hide this fact. I let it be known to the client that although I’m interested in the project, remuneration -wise, it is not feasible for me. Some understand, some don’t.