Throughout my first two years as an online media journalist, one of my main responsibilities was to find inspired, relevant content across the web to republish on Lifehack. Also known as content syndication, this process can be very beneficial for both parties involved, but it’s crucial that you fully understand the procedure before agreeing to it.
What Is Content Syndication?
When writers use the terms ‘syndication’ and ‘republishing’, they tend to mean the same thing. Put simply, syndication refers to the process of republishing a site’s content on a new site. For example, my job at Lifehack required me to approach writers from relevant sites and ask if I can publish their articles on Lifehack. Usually, the new site it is published on will add an introduction that states that the piece is republished and provide a link to the original source.
What Are The Benefits For Big Sites?
There are very few disadvantages for sites that regularly syndicate other people’s content.
Andy Orin, a writer at Lifehacker, says there are two main reasons he believes syndication benefits sites: “When I see someone writing about something interesting that we haven’t covered before, or that our staff writers perhaps aren’t well-versed in, it’s cool to bring in an outside perspective to add some variety between our other posts. I don’t really care that it’s been seen elsewhere.
“The broader reason, though, is less interesting: I don’t always have enough writers of my own to fill the publishing schedule and need guest writers or republished posts to fill the gaps. I try to only use the best articles I can find, obviously, but it’s like running a daily newspaper; we’ve got to fill the page with something, and hopefully it’s something great.“
Of course, if you are interested in republishing someone else’s work, you must ask for permission. Make sure you contact the author or site and receive their full permission before you copy their work or there could be huge legal ramifications. You must also meet any conditions that the author makes, and if you can’t then you shouldn’t republish their article.
Other than that, your site benefits entirely.
What Are The Benefits Of Having Your Post Republished?
Exposure
The primary benefit of having your piece republished on a popular site is the exposure. As I’m sure many online writers know, it can take a massive amount of time to gain a dedicated audience, so having your piece syndicated will expose you to many more possible readers.
US Editor of The Next Web Natt Garun says that his site often gives writers a huge amount of exposure to their audience. “Our top readerships are in the US, Europe, and India and we promote the posts on our social networks which have a pretty strong following,” Natt told Ghost. “With readers round-the-clock, it’s a great way to showcase content to everyone around the world.”
Increase Your Site’s Traffic
With great exposure comes a great amount of traffic. If your site is filled with unique, engaging content then those who visit your site may even stick around.
More Mileage
Unlike writing commissioned pieces or guest posts, republishing the work you’ve already written enables you to reach more people with just one piece. Kevan Lee, of social media management tool Buffer, wrote: “It’s an incredible advantage to have content that drives traffic from multiple places—especially when you only have to write it once.”
Are There Any Disadvantages?
Although it may seem as though the exposure to new audiences and massive increase in traffic may have no drawbacks, this is simply not the case.
Joe Chernov, VP of Content at popular inbound marketing site HubSpot, is well aware of the drawbacks. “Letting others republish your content is tempting, though not necessarily for the right reasons,” he says. “It’s tempting because it appeals to your ego, and when ego is involved, it becomes easy to reverse engineer reasons to do it.”
SEO
One of the huge downsides of duplicating your content is that it can have a huge impact on your search engine rankings, especially if you syndicate on a popular site.
Senior manager of Moz and SEO Specialist Cyrus Shephard says: “You’ll see cases where the syndicatee—the person who publishes second—you’ll see cases where if they have enough domain authority, they will outrank the original publisher. That’s still a problem with Huffington Post and these people who just add a sentence or two to the story.”
Google is also quick to point out the SEO disadvantages of republishing your work. On their Webmaster Tools Duplicate Content section, they state: “If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.”
Exclusivity
Shepard continues: “I am a huge fan of original content, I think all the value is having something original.” Shepard believes that, in the future, search engines will place more restrictions on republished pieces that don’t add value, adding that this could cause major difficulties for sites that rely heavily on syndicated content. “Syndicated content is like giving popcorn to children. It will keep them busy for a while, but that’s it,” he said.
Traffic
Although syndication on popular sites will cause your traffic flow to spike, this often won’t last long. Regarding traffic, Joe Chernov says: “Generally speaking, syndication will cost you traffic—and not just any traffic, but high-value organic search traffic.” However, Chernov suggests that smaller sites that have been approached by big names should probably go for it anyway. “In this scenario, the loss of traffic may be worth the gain in meaningful exposure.”
How can you get your pieces republished?
Before you even consider having your content republished, it’s vital that your site meets certain criteria. Firstly, you should already have a steady audience that can attest to your content’s quality and popularity. Your audience doesn’t need to be huge, but editors and writers you contact will take a look at your blog and figure out how well your site is doing before they consider republishing. They will also base this assessment upon how regularly you post high-quality, original content on your site. I suggest you ensure at least two months of regular, valuable posts before you contact a site.
If you’ve managed to fulfill those two conditions, then it’s time to get working. First of all, you need to target sites that are relevant to the pieces you’d like to share.
If you happen to know someone who writes for a site that you would like to have your content republished on, you can simply ask him or her. As Paul Jarvis, founder of Creative Class, says: “It really is all about connections – just like any other aspect of business, it’s mostly who you know.” However, many people do not have these connections.
Of course, you can always simply contact an editor and ask them to republish your work but this is rarely successful. Editors and writers for big sites are extremely busy, and so are unlikely to notice emails from people they’ve never heard of. Andy Orin says: “I am also lucky to have a wide variety of people approaching me with articles they want to publish, but it’s rare that an unsolicited pitch bears any fruit.”
That said, if this is the route you’d like to take I suggest you keep the emails short, straight to the point and ensure you’ve done most of the work for your recipient. Make sure you include links to your relevant piece, as well as one or two alternative pieces. This means that if you do catch the attention of a writer or editor, they simply open the links and can reply with ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
If you receive the go-ahead, you will most probably be entitled to a one-off at first. Natt Garun claims that The Next Web often begins partnerships with one-off reposts: “If the partnership works out we can continue to republish on a normal basis given that the submitted content remains relevant for our readers.”
If you do not receive any replies to your original emails, then you may need to up your game. One way to begin a new relationship with a site is to offer to write free guest posts for them. Sites need content, so they will probably be more than happy to accept an offer of free articles.
Paul Jarvis began by offering to write guest posts for publications, and many of those sites now republish his content regularly. Jarvis does make it clear that you need to be tactful about building relationships with editors. “I wasn’t slimy or pitchy about it,” he says. “I just interacted with them because they were doing what I wanted to and writing about topics I was actually interested in.“
As your relationship with editors and sites grows, you will also be able to ask for feedback that will benefit your site and increase the amount of syndication. Courtney Seiter, also from Buffer, suggests that you “try to ask for feedback early”. This can relate to whether your pitches are relevant, if your editors want you to go in a particular direction and even how often they wish to be contacted.
How Can You Limit The Drawbacks?
Link Back
Although Google states that posts will be ranked depending on their popularity, they also suggest that you include links back to the original: “It is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article,” Google writes. “You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.”
Rel=Canonical Tag
Similar to a link back, rel=canonical tags aid search engines in figuring out which site posted the original content and will increase the initial posts search rankings. Not all sites that republish content will be willing to do this, but it’s always a smart request to make.
Inline Links
Arguably the most successful way to draw another sites audience to your site is to include links in the syndicated piece to relevant pieces you’ve written on your site. Simply placing a link back to the original piece that reader has just read will not attract an influx of new people, but giving them links so they can get more information on the topic will.
Keep Some Of Your Posts Exclusive
It may be tempting to show off all of your best pieces to larger audiences but it’s important that you don’t. If you manage to create a partnership with a site, it’s crucial that you don’t ask for every single one of your quality pieces to be shared, otherwise you’ll have no exclusive content to offer as an incentive for new audiences to stick around or return, and they’ll just leave.
Should You Allow Your Content To Be syndicated?
When done properly, syndication can benefit both the original writer and the republishers. You must apply your own critical thinking and understand what it means to be republished and the repercussions of doing so. If you’re looking to increase awareness about your site and gain brief spikes in traffic then allowing sites to republish your content may be a valuable move. However, if you do not have the means to retain an audience, you may want to wait.
