Content Syndication SEO: How to avoid ‘duplicate content’ penalties

July 24, 2014 - SEO

Content syndication will replicate your content on third-party sites, so that other sites can provide your valuable content to their readers, while also driving new visitors to your site.

Content syndication is a great way to get your blog posts and articles promoted on external sites. The problem is that content syndication creates a huge SEO problem, syndication creates duplicate content and duplicate content is a big no-no in the search engine world.

That said, content syndication can be done right if you cover your bases:

Here’s a few SEO tips to lessen the likelihood you get dinged for duplicate content:

Rel=Canonical: Tag all external, syndicated content with a ‘rel=canonical’. When done correctly, rel=canonical tags tell search engines who the original publisher of the content was.
Cite Original Publisher: Include a link in the post that points back to the original content. For example: “originally published by”
Generic Title Tags: Require the syndication partner to use generic title tags so that the duplicated content is not optimized for SEO

If you’re establishing your relationship with the syndication partner, you can also explore whether they would be open to the following options:

Syndication Delay: Ensure your content is indexed by search engines before allowing partners to syndicate. Give Google a few days (2-3 days depending on how often Google visits your site) to index our site first, then syndicate out.
Teaser: If your partners are open, provide only teaser content that pushes the user back to your site for the full article.

Unfortunately, we can’t control the search engines. Even if you take precautions, it’s not entirely foolproof. That said, if you’re syndicating content and not taking the right precautions, not only can a syndication partners outrank your original content, but in the worst case, Google will see your site as not providing unique content and devalue your site as a whole.