Online Content Syndication

Currently Web Content Syndication is one among the online content marketing strategies present in the web world.

What is Content Syndication?

In current web circumstances, any established expert level website with high traffic has been forced on a constructive basis to provide high quality (strong and healthy) contents to satisfy their end users. At the same time there are people who write really valuable content in their websites but end of the day not able to generate traffic to their websites as they failed to meet factors like marketing, SEO ranking, elevating exposure level , appropriate advertisement etc. To conclude well-built websites are in need of contents and content writers are in need of viewers. Here comes the Content Syndication method in which the content writer send the contents to other websites with the help of intermediary named Content Syndication networks/Providers/Partners who distribute the content to members (highly trafficked website creators, bloggers, microbloggers) of the network with fee charged for service. PR Newswire is one of the world's largest content syndication provider.

The Content Syndication is done easily with RSS technology. Initially the publisher should look for an appropriate syndication partner. Then the publisher should set up some form of Content Syndication agreement with the syndication partner. The agreement should have some form of compensation to the author either to give monetary compensation or include author's name/web address in the content going to be circulated. The Syndication agreement can be categorised in three types.

• Licensed -  The syndication Partner pay some fee to the original author for distributing the content to it's members and also retains a backlink to the original content's website. This is the safest method for the author. Exemplar for Licensed content syndicate - http://www.newstex.com/

• Ad-supported - The publishers get share in the advertising revenues generated from the content circulated to the end users.

• Free - No payment is involved and the publisher is satisfied just with exposure got from the distributed content.

Benefits to the author:

Publicity, Money, Traffic to your website.

Benefit to the second level publisher:

Flow of consistent content i.e no shortage of contents to the websites.

Note for content writers:

One common talk is that writers who go for syndication find their content all over the internet (duplicate sources) and lose their rights on the article. And if a higher level website publishes your content, there are chances they will become the topmost source of the content in the web search like Google/Yahoo which may affect your SEO ranking. Each writer has their own goals. Some writers simply want their articles to be read by billions of people and some other want compulsory compensation for the work done by them. Hence whether to syndicate or not is purely based on the individual's goals. Syndication may not be appropriate for every writer. But the writers should carefully choose the syndication partner and review the syndication agreement thoroughly before proceeding to syndicate.

To finish off, we can say that inspite of a few downbeats, this Online Content Syndication is beneficial for content creators, distributors and consumers in some way or the other.