Before you can finish your content plan, or really even before you write a word, you need to work out where to post your content.
Most of the time content should be on your own site but sometimes you’re going to want to put content on other sites too.
Why? Because posting content on other sites can help you become more well-known, build your audience, and help establish your expertise.
Content marketing can be full of all sorts of jargon and acronyms, from repurposing to syndication and CTAs to SEO, so before we go any further, let’s define a few terms we’ll need today.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO is the process by which you optimise the content you publish to ensure the most targeted website visitors and traffic are going to see your offers.
There are two types of SEO – On Page SEO and Off Page SEO:
On Page SEO:
Anything you do on your website or blog to improve search engine results. That includes all the content you put on your site including blog posts, articles, images, keywords, titles, subheadings, and more.
If it’s an adjustment to your property (your website) that is designed to get more visitors then it’s on page SEO.
Off Page SEO:
Anything you do to improve your content in all its forms on third party websites, including social media, is considered off-page SEO. For example, if you improve your LinkedIn profile so that it better describes you and links you back to your website, it’s off page SEO.
Likewise, publishing your website on other sites is considered off-page SEO.
Both types of SEO are important to ensure that you maximise the traffic that comes to your site, spread brand awareness, and build relationships with your audience.
There are a few different thoughts about how to do this most productively:
One school of thought states that you should publish everything on your website first. Then either link back to it or rework it for other sites.
The other says that it’s okay to push out content to other sites once you’ve published it on your website as is, otherwise called content syndication (see below).
The truth is both ways work. The idea of duplicate content penalties has frightened people away from repurposing content, using Private Label Rights content (PLR) to its full potential, and getting the most out of all their content in general.
But of course, there is a right way to republish content so be careful:
If you rewrite or rework your content before publishing on other sites, then you don’t need to do this step.
If you want to avoid the extra work of rewriting, then you do have to ensure other sites use the right source code. This tells Google that your site deserves credit for your content and not to index their version of the article. It also prevents you from getting a duplicate content penalty.
Not a clue what I’m talking about? Yoast has a great article explaining what a canonical URL is and how it works.
Your Site First
Your focus should always be on putting content on your own website first. But, publishing content on other platforms helps with SEO too, as it can help establish you as an authority.
Whether it’s publishing on LinkedIn, guest blogging for someone, using a platform like Medium, or syndicating your content via a syndication system like Outbrain.com, it’s important to understand the effects on search.
Publishing content onto other platforms can help with SEO by providing backlinks to your site while tapping into an entirely new audience.
But make sure that you understand the ramifications of how to do it before you get started.
Not sure what backlinks are and why you want them? Here’s an explanation from ALG Websites: https://www.algwebsites.co.uk/build-high-quality-backlinks/.
Content Syndication
If you want to ensure that the content you’re creating is getting maximum exposure, a great way to do that is to syndicate your content.
When you syndicate your content, you push your content out onto third-party sites. Your content can appear in full, as a snippet or even just as a link.
Content syndication, when done right, can boost views, increase your audience and increase your revenues.
Creating Your Syndication Plan
To get results from content syndication you need a thorough understanding of the goals you have for your content.
For example, if you’re trying to get more leads, you really want your audience to come back to your website to sign up for your mailing list, so you might not want to syndicate your whole article. Instead, you might want to syndicate the headline and a short blurb from the content, then link directly to the content on your website.
If your goal is to spread awareness, you may have great results syndicating entire articles to publications that are a step above yours so that you can attract new audience members. This works well if you’re allowed to have an author bio box. In that case, link to a landing page specific to that audience – preferably with a lead magnet just for them, which will also allow you to grow your email list!
That brings us to ensuring that you pick the right syndication partner because each one requires different types of feeds. Some will require RSS feeds, custom URLs, thumbnails, titles, snippets or excerpts. So know your goals before you look for a partner:
Picking the Right Syndication Partner
There are free syndication services as well as paid services. Some of the more well-known paid versions are Outbrain.com and Taboola.com. On these, you’ll pay per click anywhere from 20 cents and up.
You can find free syndication options too in various industries so research your industry to find those opportunities.
Choosing the right partner requires that you know your goals, understand how the technology works, and have enough content to make it worth it.
Whether you want to manually syndicate content via sites like Reddit, or Medium, or you want to use one of the paid options, is completely informed by your goals, your budget, and the content you publish.
But whichever way you choose to go be sure to understand about canonical URLs and how they work, because you want to ensure that you don’t do anything to cause a duplicate content penalty.
You want your work to be credited to you in every way that it can be because you create valuable content, designed for your target market. Your efforts in choosing where to post your content should help you meet all your content marketing goals.
Action Point!
Lots to think about today. Try to decide what the best mix is for your business. Will you post most of your content on your own site, but look into content syndication to expand your reach?
Getting stuck or roaring ahead? Let me know in the comments!
Day 8 is all done. Tomorrow, we’re looking at scheduling your content.
Don’t want to wait? Prefer to get all of the 30-Day Content Marketing Challenge posts in one place, so you can work through at your own pace? Here’s a link to all of the challenge lessons: https://creativeblueberry.com/30-day-content-marketing-challenge-catch-up/
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