This is probably the last thing bloggers such as myself EVER want to hear. That Everything that we’re doing now CAN be done by Robots! and All the Hours We Spend Blogging EACH DAY can be Done By Them in a Matter of Minutes…
It’s scary but it is TRUE – By using an online tool called RSS Content Syndication we can set up and automatically post new content on our blogs several times a day without even lifting a finger!
Like literally, set this up just once and then leave it there to do all the rest.
I mean seriously. This is a thing…
And actually, I know as I have used this tool myself before on some of my old websites.
It’s not really a new thing either (this technology). It has been around for a good few years now and many people are using it to increase the frequency that they publish new content.
But admittedly it does have one major flaw – AND this is duplicate content!
Something that every website should be careful to avoid. This can cause a whole lot of problems but then don’t stop reading yet. There is definitely a lot more to tell.
So, when I used RSS Content Syndication before it was already set up on my websites before I had bought them. I used to buy websites as domain real estate on Flippa.com. That is a story in itself but anyway I never really understood it all at the time. It was just there really and I never really understood how it all worked.
It has made me think a fair bit about it since. I mean as much as I enjoy writing articles like this one based purely on my own creativity – I still wonder about the unused domains I have that are just sitting dormant.
Like you can only write for so many websites at a time I think (and even one really is plenty).
I mean 4 websites I am publishing new content for at the moment and only 2 of these really get any attention.
So I have thought about this and this really is kind of the inspiration for today’s post…
What is RSS Content Syndication?
Table of Contents
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Now, so the first thing to understand is that an RSS feed is something that can be utilized on a website to carry out automatic functions. You can use this for many useful things such as notifying your email list when you publish a new post and auto-sharing your content on your Social Media channels.
It has many other functions as well and it is something that every blogger should eventually learn about.
Even if it is just so that every time you publish a new post it’s posted on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels.
If you don’t do this already check out a free tool called IF THIS THEN THAT (https://ifttt.com)
I am definitely a fan but What is RSS Content Syndication?
If you don’t know already this is an AI technology that acts on your behalf to complete certain actions such as reposting content from other blogs on your own blogs and adding the necessary tags.
Which is amazing right? You can literally set up a website that does everything itself.
So, RSS is an abbreviation of Really Simple Syndication or RDF Site Summary.
Whether it can be a profitable tool though – is the question. I’m still kind of on the fence about this myself but I think it has the potential to be something very powerful.
I mean there are a few things to think about and I will explore this further in the next section.
Is RSS Content Syndication Good For SEO?
The trouble I found when I used to run websites that used RSS Content Syndication was that AdSense would not show any ads on my pages with duplicate content. It was quite a dodgy thing to do I know but I used to edit the pages with tools such as article spinners, and I used to find that after I edited these posts enough they would then show ads.
I’m not sure if this still would work now but there was one big issue – my old Adsense account I lost ?
I’ve since luckily found a way to sort this out but I do wonder if going back in time this might have been the issue. It could have been something else I do have my suspicions but honestly, now I know their policies a bit better I really don’t think I would ever let this happen again.
*Adsense policy states any websites that post scraped or copyrighted content with no value to the original owner are risking having their Adsense account restricted. Be sure to bear this in mind ?
Once Adsense restricts your account good luck getting it back. If you thought Facebook Ads were bad Adsense is on a whole different level of awkwardness and difficulty.
Many people will know exactly what I’m talking about but regarding RSS content syndication and SEO…
So, Adsense is a branch of Google and their algorithms regarding duplicate content are basically one and the same. You don’t want to fall foul of these rules BUT there is a catch – if you syndicate content properly by adding the right HTML codes you can actually help boost SEO by making your website appear MORE active.
Like, for instance, if you can use this as a means of driving more traffic through your Social Media pages the extra traffic will help boost your impressions and this itself is good for SEO.
So, it’s a kind of Yes and No answer. It really depends on how you display your duplicated content. There are a few things to consider but once you understand what these are this is how RSS Content Syndication supposedly works.
How RSS Content Syndication Works
The first thing you need to find is a free or paid plugin that will set up things like feeds, API connections and canonical links. From here look for websites where you can share content from.
HubSpot.com shares a good technique to find websites from which you can share content. Simply just search for terms such as; ‘Article Originally Published in”, “republished with permission” and “originally appeared on” etc. [R]
Follow this by inurl:[YOUR NICHE TOPIC] to google followed by one of the above;
See example:
So if you click on one of these links find the website that is the original source of the article. Then ask them if they would also be fine with you republishing their content on your own website.
It’s really this simple but also take care – if the website looks spammy or has a low domain authority (DA) maybe give this a miss. Content is content but DA and PA {page authority} definitely matter.
To check for domain authority use smallseotools.com for free.
The score will be anything from 1-100 – and the higher the better.
You should find though if you have a good piece of software this should help do all of this for you. There are products out there that have all this set up already. With these, you just need to do your research first and check out things like reviews.
Personally, I haven’t done a whole lot of research into this as of yet but I was actually inspired to write this article because of a new product that has recently been launched called Smart Content Profits By Paul O’Keefe.
This is not the only RSS Content Syndication software you can find online – I haven’t honestly tried many of these but I do find them to be very appealing for how they work.
Although there is definitely an elephant in the room here…
THIS is Google’s policy on Duplicate Content
It is very important you cover all your bases here. You can not simply just post whatever duplicate content you like on your website without completing certain actions.
In terms of RSS Content Syndication, it’s very complicated to automatically post syndicated (duplicate) content. You either need to add a NoIndex or rel=canonical tag to every one of these posts you use.
Here is the best way I think maybe to try and do this…
How To Auto Post Content With rel=cannonical tags To Avoid Plagiarism and SEO Issues
The first thing that will need to be set up is something that will help identify each post that is not your original content. So basically an algorithm that will identify which posts are the syndicated content.
This can be done through your robots.txt, and by using an extension to this code you can also add either the ‘noindex’ or rel=canonical tag to your newly published syndicated content.
The process I am going to struggle a bit with here but here goes… So
1.) Set up an RSS to RSS auto post direction using IFTTT.com
2.) Add code to robots.txt instructing that each post received from the syndicated posts’ original location is automatically added with a NoIndex or Rel=canonical tag.
You can set it to ‘noindex’ and change it to rel=canonical after if you wish.
*Note: I will need to update this post with clearer instructions on how to do this but still not quite here yet.
So yes this definitely can be done but just a quick warning – if you are planning to allow another website to publish your content in exchange for publishing there’s BEWARE –
If they have a website with higher domain authority than yours there is the possibility that your original content could get indexed on their website instead of your own. It is imperative that they use rel=canonical tags or ‘noindex’ so make sure they either know what they are doing or that their intentions are genuine.
~ I mean I think this covers most of it in this respect about RSS Content Syndication but whilst you are here still there is something else to share I think is quite relevant to this topic.
Other Ideas To Boost Online Presence With Content Syndication
I have mentioned IFTTT.com in this post already but you can use this to auto-post to all the main social media sites.
- Tumblr
You get 5 applets with each free account and these can definitely be very convenient. You can do all sorts here and this definitely the first tip. This is my first idea but otherwise, there are a few other suggestions I have.
1.) Syndicate Your New Content To LinkedIn
After doing a bit of digging I see that LinkedIn can be a tool to use for syndicating content. I pretty much am sharing the information from a blog post on blogpros.com here, but what it says is this…
That Google will choose the original content over LinkedIn if it detects duplicate content. It doesn’t penalize for duplicate content found on LinkedIn and this is very interesting – as apparently anything posted on LinkedIn will be automatically given canonical tags.
Their source you can find here [R] and further to this it says that although LinkedIn has one major flaw – it doesn’t index your content (something about ‘nofollow’, ‘noindex’ tags I think) its network alone is large enough for your content to be found there just by its community alone.
This is apparently a great place to garner further readership of your blogs and every like your content gets will help boost the algorithm further in your favour. Although what the ‘blogpros’ article also states is that you should add some sort of original introduction before sharing your content piece (whether the full piece or just a snippet) and also you should add a CTA.
Something like read more at [YOUR WEBSITE HERE]
2.) Syndicate Your New Content To Quora
Quora is another Social Network and if you haven’t somehow heard of this very popular website this is the top place to ask and answer questions online. You can even earn money here just by answering people’s questions but besides this, it’s also a great resource for syndicating your blog posts to be read by the quora network.
So what you should know is that there are 2 ways to syndicate content through Quora. Each can definitely help you to reach a new audience but be sure that the content you share is really worth people’s time.
Quora is a website that is quite similar to Reddit – it is very community-based and its users do not appreciate it when there is no value to what is being shared. You can get upvotes and downvotes on Quora that help to get your content out there to more or fewer people. You obviously want to reach more.
So the first way any Quora user can do this is. This is finding questions that your content helps to answer and adding a detailed comment that includes relevant portions of your original content.
I do this by writing a unique introduction and then copying and pasting (syndicating my content) into the answer.
Then the other way which can really get people’s attention is through Quora blogs. [R]
You will first need to get 100 followers by answering questions, and following other people but once you do all your good content you can syndicate to Quora blogs – very much like this next idea…
3.) Syndicate Your New Content To Medium
Medium is probably the go-to place for cross-posting or syndicating content online. They have a few rules about what you can post – no sex, violence, hate speech etc. but everything else is pretty much fine. Their actually really good just for blogging and many actually prefer using Medium instead of a website because it’s a very low investment but still at the same time its reach is very powerful because of Medium’s very high DA (Domain Authority).
Basically, it’s very easy to get your content found with Medium. Both through Google and actually via the Medium network itself.
In terms of syndication, Medium doesn’t actually allow duplicate content BUT they do allow cross-posting. As long as you actually add the rel=canonical tag (This article was originally published here option) you can add all your blog posts to Medium just as long as they don’t break their rules/community standards.
Plus what’s more Medium actually makes this very easy because not only do they have an import feature but once you have imported your content and made the necessary changes to make your post look good on the page you can go to advanced settings and set up your rel=canonical tag with a link back to your original post.
It is a great website to use but for best results try to mix it up with a blend of original content as well to help build your Medium followers.
Final Word
Well, what else can I say blogging is a lot of fun for me personally. Especially when I can write cool, entertaining and informative posts but what definitely sucks is not having your content found. Like this post for example I have definitely struggled with – not going to lie. So I would hope this does get out to people.
I know though being realistic that SEO is not always my friend in this respect and actually getting my content out to others can take a lot more than it being indexed by Google. Social sharing is one way but definitely, I do really like the idea of having my content found in other places.
Exactly why I think content syndication is a logical way to reach a wider audience.
Plus I also like the idea of publishing syndicated content on my website. Of course, I would only do this with the right permissions but I hear a lot of very famous websites do this. Just search for “article originally published…” on Google and see what results from this you get.
There are loads but yes just remember if you do try content syndication always take the greatest care.
Peace Out x
To Your Future Success xx
Alex B. Chivers
iBusinessToday.com
Contact us at chivs86@ibusinesstoday.com
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