Content Syndication Strategy: How to Promote Your Content Like the Big Brands

Recently, I was researching how some of the biggest publishing sites online were getting links with content marketing and ranking high in SERPs. 

This started with Nerdwallet – one site that absolutely dominates the finance niche. 

Nerdwallet ranks for everything from credit cards to loans, driving over 21 million visitors per month with organic traffic and a reported over $100 Million a year in revenue.

One of the strategies that they reportedly use to drive such a huge amount of traffic is called content syndication. Syndicated content not only increases your brand awareness, but it helps with link building and can drive more organic traffic to your website. 

I’m about to share with you the content marketing secret that successful companies use to explode their traffic, sales, and succeed in thought leadership.

Ready to grow your business by implementing a strong content syndication strategy? Keep reading! 

What is Content Syndication?

Content syndication is an interesting tactic of republishing content on websites other than your own with the goal of reaching a larger audience. Syndicated posts use the “rel canonical” tag which prevents Google from seeing these posts as duplicate content. 

Let me just quickly mention that although content syndication sounds similar to guest posts, it’s totally not the same thing. A guest post is a new piece of content that is written for one publication. Content syndication is taking the same piece of content and republishing it on other platforms. 

Content syndication has become a popular content marketing strategy because it’s a quick way to earn lots of backlinks at once. 

Having a strong backlink profile can help boost your sales, improve conversion rates, and help with lead generation. 

Content Syndication Examples

Content syndication is one of the main strategies that I noticed was being used by Nerdwallet, and many other big-name companies such as TV Guide, Value Penguin, The Penny Hoarder, and other huge publishers. Even Moz has a whiteboard Friday about the positives of content syndication. 

After a bit of digging, I realized Nerdwallet was getting links from all sorts of news sites.

I found that information interesting because these weren’t normal news citations from a story, they almost always said they were already published. 

They essentially were just taking older content they already had published, and distributing it on tons of high authority news sites with links and CTAs back to their site which resulted in reaching a wider audience. 

Other times, they would distribute some original content such as infographics and just link it back to their site.

Here’s an example if you want to check it out.

Nerdwallet isn’t the only company doing this. In fact, 94% of marketers surveyed across 39 countries are investing in content marketing. And, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, 94% of those B2B marketers reported making some kind of adjustment to their strategy in 2021. 

How Do You Create a Content Syndication Strategy Campaign?

Now that you know what content syndication is and what the big brands are doing, here are a few ways you can create a great content syndication strategy: 

• Free
• Paid

Taking the free route means that you need to spend time and effort to find the right publications, pitch your awesome content, and build connections with syndication partners. These things are done without any real guarantees, including reaching your target audience.

To make your blog more visible, you may first want to create a landing page on your website to give other bloggers, guest blogging leads, or businesses in your niche a way to contact you regarding how they can syndicate your content. You could begin by titling this page, “please steal my content.” That will catch the eye of a potential syndicate network. 

You could also use other marketing tactics like participating in podcasts or webinars. It’s always best if you post in Facebook groups or subreddits to make sure you read the rules and also keep your posts natural and relevant. 

If you are having trouble finding the right content syndication partners, influencers, bloggers, or publications on Google search to pitch to, you could include Medium to grow your long-form content’s reach and boost your digital marketing. 

If you’ve chosen to go the free route, here are some other great ways you can create a free content syndication campaign:

• Republish your best content on a larger website
• Syndicate old content on sites that have the same niche audience
• Guest post on bigger websites and syndicate later

When you syndicate to a big publication, you increase your reach! However, since readers can read entire pieces of content directly on third-party websites, there’s not that much incentive for them to check out your website or the original post. 

With that being said, that isn’t really the point of content syndication. What your goal should be focused on is building backlinks and improving brand awareness. The more aware your audience is of your brand, the higher chance you have of gaining organic traffic and becoming a memorable name in your niche. 

If you’re more interested in gaining a wider audience, then you should consider syndicating content to smaller publications. It would be best to look for publications with authority and readers that are similar to your own. 

They may also have more contextual links that you can reference back to your own blog or website from the article. It’s a good way to give readers a way to discover more helpful information from your content and generate new, welcomed leads. 

The paid strategy may cost you a pretty penny (depending on the service), but you would receive professional assistance and have a better chance at content syndication success. The solution means that you can use tools that allow you to get your content recommended by major publications faster and with more guarantees. 

It’s a good thing The HOTH offers an awesome content syndication service called HOTH Syndication. Our service allows you to leave all of the hard stuff to professionals and focus your attention on other areas of your business. 

What are the Benefits of Content Syndication?

Content syndication isn’t just for the major players in business industries. Even small blogging websites can benefit from using this emerging strategy.

Here are some reasons why you should definitely add content syndication to your content marketing strategy: 

More High-Quality Backlinks

As mentioned earlier, getting high-quality backlinks is one of the biggest benefits of content syndication. Each website that syndicates your content should include a link back to the original piece. 

Remember, the more backlinks your webpages get, the more Google’s search engine will believe its reliability and will allow more users to see it. That makes your website more visible to your target audience which increases your organic traffic. 

A Boost in Organic Traffic

Increasing web traffic isn’t one of the main goals of content syndication, but traffic does increase when using this method. When people see your content syndicated on another website, they may decide to check out the original source to get more information. Eventually, these people may become regular visitors to your website. At some point, they might even turn into customers. 

Cost Effective

Content syndication is a super cost-effective way to generate more qualified leads because it allows you to get several backlinks at a time. In some cases, syndicating just one post from your blog can result in more than 100 links as opposed to paying for one link at a time.

Brand Awareness

One of the best reasons to use content syndication is brand building. Providing niche content on third-party sites increases Google’s perspective of credibility to your content or web page. 

There are three main pillars to brand awareness when using content syndication:

• Content topics
• Target audience
• The best syndication sites

It’s important to keep in mind that flooring third-party websites with too much useless content can lead to quality issues and disrupt the user experience and trust. 

You want to understand exactly what topics your audience wants to see. That means knowing which stage of the buyer’s journey your content should focus on. 

It would be best to know exactly who you are targeting with your content. Even though the main goal when using this method is awareness, you also want to make sure that you’re sharing the best content with the right people. You need detailed, good information about your target audience before producing any content syndication strategy. 

There are many places you can post your syndicated content like social media. Beyond social media platforms, you could also find partners just by using tools like BuzzSumo or SEMRush to analyze backlinks. The HOTH even offers a fancy backlink checker tool that you can use as well! 

Let’s Wrap it Up

Getting access to distribute your content is not easy, but it’s totally worth the time, money, and effort. 

It would be best to learn how to navigate the complicated world of PR and publishing. In doing so you’ll find it less complicated to get access, especially if you aren’t a big name brand. 

Don’t want to do the hard work? That’s why you have us.

You see for the last year we’ve been negotiating deals to make this happen for you.

HOTH Syndication allows you to syndicate your content on the same sites as the big players for a fraction of the price.

When you syndicate your content, you’ll get your content and links published to over 300+ real, high DA authority news sites. 

Sign up for free and schedule your call with one of our experts today!

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