Content Syndication is the process of republishing your content on third-party sites. Content syndication is a useful tool to generate tangible Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) results for your business.

Step 1: Guest Posting

Big name blogs won’t have interest in new bloggers, even if they come up with great content. How to get around this? Start by doing guest posts. Guest posting is where a writer who owns his or her own blog creates a unique and original post on another blog or site with a mention of the author (usually himself) and their blog at the bottom of the article. Guest posting can help build brand awareness with a different audience and help drive new traffic to your site.

Digital Marketing Superhero Tip: Take note that there are sites that do not accept guest posting since they believe it becomes spammy. Try to look for blogs that will belong to the same niche as you, and add the following strings to your search:

• niche + guest post
• niche + contributor
• post suggestions + niche
• writers wanted + niche
• guest post + niche

A good example will be to search for “Event Marketing contributor”, if you’re looking for sites that allows guest posts on topics relating to event marketing.

Step 2: Find the right syndication partners.

After looking for blogs related to your niche, select the best blogs that matches your content. Remember, the bigger and the more popular the blog, the higher the quality standard.

Step 3: Make sure that the list of blog sites you selected are really open to content syndication.

Like what we’ve told you in step 1, not all sites are open to content syndication. For example, if your target blog is Lifehacker, all that you need to do is to open a few posts and find if any of them are syndicated. Syndicated posts have an attribution message, which may look like “this was originally posted in”, “this post originally appeared in”, or “the post originally appeared on”. After confirming that the target site syndicates content, select a few of your best written and most shared posts and write a short email to the target blog’s editor. Most big publications make the contact information of the editor easily available.

Digital Marketing Superhero Tip: Try to follow the KISS principle when you contact publishers. Keep It Short & Simple. Publishers love a direct approach and do not want to beat around the bush.  Bonus tip: Don’t discount the power of Twitter, it provides an easy way to contact journos with a click of a mouse button.

Step 4: SEO Proofing

Always make sure that the content you create has SEO in mind. In line with this, there goes the concern about content duplication. While the possibility of being out-ranked by the syndication partners can occur, there are ways around it.

First, ask the publishers to include the “rel=canonical” tag. This tells search bots where the original content is. Second is to ask the publishers if they can use the “NoIndex” tag for the republished content. This means that the search engines won’t index the republished content, and only the original content will be shown on search results.

Step 5: Syndicating content on an ongoing basis

To use content syndication more effectively, you need to have a process in place for measurement.  That’s how you maximize content syndication – by becoming regular syndication partners with the BIG publishers. Once a publisher accepts your syndication request, try to setup a regular arrangement. A successful guest provides authority and brand awareness. Always remember, consistency is key.

Julia Taine is a digital marketing superhero at Vent2Me.com.au. You can connect with her on Twitter.