by admin
Bloggers be cautious syndicating your content
10:15 am in Travel Blogging Tips by admin
Finding your content and name on a high profile site is something that a lot of bloggers want to see, and some travel networks and publishers want free content so they take advantage of this need for “fame”. The problem is that you are duplicating your content and what you might find is that your post disappears from Google; your content on the authority site receives your traffic, and generates revenue for them.
Syndicate your content carefully
Here’s what Google says about syndicating duplicate content on it’s Webmaster Help section:
Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to block the version on their sites with robots.txt.
So, if the authority site links back to you then Google can work out who initially wrote the post, and will not filter your post from the search results. If you are thinking about syndicating your RSS feed, bear this in mind when speaking with the site concerned.
My advice would be, if they do not want to link back, don’t give them your content.
To add; if they do link, make sure that the link is not a “nofollow” – basically you can add a tag rel=”nofollow” in the HTML and it means that the search engines do not follow this link. You want the link to be followed so that they give you the credit as the writer of the original post. I use a SEO for Firefox plugin to find links that are nofollow.
There’s more information on ‘nofollow’ on Wikipedia.
Other syndication solutions
Another option is to make your RSS feed as an extract, that way they only get part of the content, but I suspect your readers might not be too pleased, or the publisher might want a full feed. It is worth asking. Of course, if you write your blog to get the attention of these big travel publishers, then, go for it.
I am sure many of you will have people using your RSS feed to steal your content, and the best way to deal with this, if your using WordPress, is to use the RSS footer plugin. You can add text (and links) in the footer of your RSS feed so that it forces the sites syndicating your content to link back to you.
The best solution would be to contact the publisher and ask them if they would like you to write a guest post for the site, unique content for the publisher, and a nice link back to your blog in return.
Be responsible with your content
While it looks great to be featured on these types of sites, how serious are you about making revenue or getting traffic to your blog. That’s what you have to ask yourself. I hope you find this article useful, please leave your opinions and questions on this discussion.
Darren to sustain your advice:
I went against your advice and syndicated with backlink.
I took your advice and added the RSS Footer plugin of Yoast.
Experimented with putting the Footer referral as a header referral. Didn’t help.
Even if there is a backlink I’ve seen the other site taking the credits.
cheers!
Could you give us an example Guido, not quite sure what you mean by taking credit. There’s a chance that both posts will appear in the search results, but, at least your content is not filtered out.
That’s the danger.
The example is the Tips of the T-list site.
Not sure that I was filtered out, completely, but some search results I saw indicated that from the moment they got momentum my syndicated posts there ended way above my own posts.
Ah, now I understand. Sorry Guido, I’m a little slow today
Yes, while Tips for the T-list site is a great idea, and I like syndicated content sites, I just felt as more people linked to it, they would be a time where it became an authority site. Once that happened, those blogs that aren’t as authoritive to the search engines, would have problems.
An idea to list syndication sites that are “safe”?
I for instance like the WiWih one
@ Guido
In principle any syndication is safe, providing that they link back to you, but like we’ve discussed once the site get’s some authority in the search engines, this is when you could start to see your posts rank below the syndication site.
To be honest, I would write a few guest posts and contact high-profile blogs to see if they are interested in posting and linking back.
That would be better, in my opinion.