Value of Content
Increasing the lifetime value of your content is a tried and true online marketing technique.
But it is a little counterintuitive at first.
You might be wondering: why would I repost the same content on a different site if I already said what I wanted to say the first time on my own site?
It’s a valid concern, as no one wants to garner a reputation for spinning old content. In this era of personalisation, user experience, and searcher intent, the content you publish needs to be special. Re-publishing it across other sites takes away from this uniqueness, right?
Benefits of Guest Blogging
Actually no. A considered strategy for syndicating guest blog posts can yield some considerable benefits, including:
Access to new audiences. Content marketing often takes aim at early stage customers – the kind of people who are just looking around for knowledge. If these people are not reading your blog already, they are probably reading blogs posted to popular third-party sites in your niche. Getting your name in front of these audiences is excellent for brand recognition and lead generation.
Backlinks. Getting backlinks is a huge part of SEO, whether it’s of the follow or nofollow variety. Posting a blog on a third-party site gives you the opportunity to put a link in your bio leading back to your site. Some of these will be follow links, and others will be nofollow.
By now you have probably noticed that the quality of the third-party site you work with matters a great deal. If you just sign-up with whatever free and easy guest posting site you find and start posting your blogs, you are wasting your time. Google is not going to like it, and chances are your high-value customers are not perusing spamming guest posting networks anyways.
“In order to find the best-syndicating partners for your content, you need to do some research.”
So how do I land a guest blogging spot on a relevant and reliable third-party site?
In order to find the best-syndicating partners for your content, you need to do some research. I like to run through a three-stage process in my syndication partner research.
Discovery. Start by researching potential sites to collaborate with. I like to search in Google for “guest posting guidelines (my industry)” and collect anywhere from 10-30 potential sites. Not all of them will be high-quality, but I usually sort out the wheat from the chaff after collecting them all. Remember to collect only sites that allow for re-publishing (some have a “unique content only” policy).
Application. Then send out application emails to the most relevant sites you want to publish on. Keep in mind that you won’t land your top priority collaborations right away.
Submission. Once approved (good job!) you can start submitting articles in accordance with the platforms submission guidelines. Some ask for pictures, others don’t. Some give you admin access, others don’t. You’ve got to stay on top of these requirements for each platform otherwise you risk expulsion (gulp!).
Now that you have the outreach process down, I want to finish with three tips I’ve picked up from my own experience.
Tip #1. Pick articles that have solid traffic and are on topics relevant to the audience on the platform.
Tip #2. Don’t publish too many articles, too frequently, on the same platform. Ideally you have numerous platforms you guest post on regularly.
Tip #3. Ask for a re:canonical or nofollow tag to be added – whenever possible – to ensure you get all the link benefits that might come from posting on a third-party site.
Conclusion
Syndicating blogs will extend the lifetime value of your content by building your audience size and improving domain authority. It is part and parcel of a considered online marketing strategy that draws consistent results overtime by increasing the lifetime value of your awesome content!
Written by Alex, Founder