Syndicating content to other platforms can generate more impressions and increase brand visibility.
Popular syndication platforms include Medium, Substack, and LinkedIn. Many established media outlets allow quality and relevant content to be placed on their websites.
Publishers who syndicate content have two ways to direct it to their site as a feed:
- Link to their original article. This is a weak signal to Google (plus links are usually nofollow), but may drive some traffic from syndicated content back to your site.
- And rel=”canonical” a link element pointing to the source is a stronger signal and can send an external link back to your article. However, not all sites offer this option. For example, LinkedIn and Substack do not allow canonical data.
I prefer links and canonical where possible for search engines and referral traffic. However, even if both options are available, Google may choose to index and rank the syndicated content over the original article.
Google’s decision
We’ve known that for a long time rel=”canonical” not a directive. Even to remove duplicate internal content, Google decides which page to index and rank based on internal links and other signals (such as content depth and relevance).
The same goes for canonical tags across sites. Based on domain authority and external links, Google may rank non-original version of syndicated content. Google’s John Mueller confirmed this. When asked why Google often ranks syndicated content over original content, Mueller said:
In general, when you syndicate or republish your content on different platforms, you trade extra visibility within that platform for the possibility of the other platform appearing in search results above your website…
…rel=canonical is not a directive, even within the same site. And if the pages are different, it doesn’t make sense for search engines to treat the pages as equivalent. If you want to make sure that “your” version is the one that shows up in the search, you need to use “noindex” on the alternate versions.
Unfortunately I am he didn’t know of any syndication platforms that would do that noindex page on their website.
In the same thread, Mueller supported website owners against noindexing their own content for fear of being penalized for duplicate content, stating that if you can’t noindex syndicated content, let Google decide, adding that there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.
SEO implications
Content syndication is not a search engine optimization tactic, but it could benefit your content and brand exposure.
There is no reliable way to ensure that Google sees your website as the original source and ranks the content accordingly.
Still, there are a few ways to make content syndication SEO friendly:
- Choose syndication partners that make it possible rel=”canonical” tags that link back to your site (which Google may or may not follow)
- To preserve the original content of your site, create different versions of the article when syndicating. This is time consuming and only possible if you syndicate your content manually. It does not guarantee that your article will rank higher than syndicated versions. yet many search engine optimizers (myself included) still recommend it.
In short, syndicated content can reach a much wider audience and is thus a useful marketing tactic. However, it does little for search engine optimization.