Does syndicated content affect organic search rankings?
In some cases, syndicated content is considered spam.
In other cases, it can go beyond the original content.
However, syndication is a widely accepted practice in fields like journalism and content marketing.
But is it a ranking factor in the search ranking algorithm?
In this chapter, we’ll determine whether syndicated content is a Google ranking factor.
Disclaimer: Syndicated content is a ranking factor
content syndication Happens in many ways.
Individual content authors may choose to syndicate their content in an attempt to reach a larger audience.
For example, a CEO might blog on his company website.
They might then syndicate the same blog post to LinkedIn, Medium, or elsewhere.
This allows them to tap into each network’s audience and possibly link back to the company’s main website.
Publications and blogs also have the option to syndicate content.
This happens when a publisher (content creator) agrees to share their content with a partner (syndrome) or even multiple partners, with the aim of further expanding the reach of that content and the brand behind its creation.
When a syndicated content snippet appears on a third-party website, it may end up as:
- exactly the same (Everything is the same except the URL where it is located).
- concentrated (For example, only the first paragraph or parts of the article may appear).
- Significant editing (For example, it has a different title, or parts have been edited, deleted, or rearranged).
If syndication takes place without the consent of the creator, this piracy can result in duplicate content rather than syndicated content.
Let’s call it what it really means: content theft.
Some websites use software to scrape content from other websites.
These sites may only crawl content on specific topics for syndication.
Others might scrape anything popular to drive search traffic.
Evidence against the use of syndicated content as a ranking factor
The Google Search Center has specific quality guidelines for webmasters.In the advanced SEO section, they specify Two situations are associated with syndicated content that constitutes web spam:
- publishing Auto-generated content created by scraping RSS feed or search results.
- publishing Content scraped using automated techniques that add no additional value or modify the original content.
In either case, your content is unlikely to rank in search results.
Authors of the original content can also sue for copyright infringement.
exist 2012the Google Search Center has released a video about spam violations.
This video reiterates the use of automation and scraping to create syndicated content as spam.
exist 2018Google search advocate John Mueller talks about how syndicated content has the potential to outperform original content.
This happens when syndicated sites have other valuable content around pirated content.
exist 2021in an article for developers published on Google Search Central, Google discusses how to handle duplicate content.
Regarding syndicated content, they made the following recommendations:
“If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is best for users on every given search, which may or may not be your preferred version.
However, it can be helpful to ensure that every site that syndicates your content includes a link to the original article. You can also ask those using your syndicated material to use the noindex tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content. “
Syndicated Content as a Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
If you use content syndication to reach new audiences on popular networks high-quality contentyou can increase your visibility in search by ranking on other networks.
But syndicated content alone doesn’t help original content rank in search results.
Therefore, we classified it as unlikely to be a ranking factor.
Featured image: Robin Biong/Search Engine Magazine
