Are backlinks from syndicated articles worth anything for SEO?

8 replies
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It has been stated by Alexa Smith and others that there is no need to "spin" an article you plan to syndicate, because search engines understand syndication and will just rank copies below the original version. I can buy that, but I'm not sure I understand what this principle means for duplicate content and SEO.

Let's take a for-instance. I write a fabulous article and publish it on my site. Reuters picks it up and, buy the re-print rights from me, and posts the article on their mildly ;-) trafficked website, with a byline linking back to me. Obviously, the immediate benefit here is a server-melting stream of Reuters readers. What I am wondering about, however, is the effect of this backlink on SEO.

On the one hand, I can't imagine that a backlink from Reuters would be discounted by search engines just because it was in a syndicated article. On the other hand - if re-printed content can content can contain effective backlinks for SEO purposes - then we could all build our own sites for backlink purposes using freely available content like syndicated articles and Wikipedia. Maybe the idea here is that the backlink does pass value, but the site won't have any authority to pass if all it does is churn out rehashed articles.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
#articles #backlinks #seo #syndicated #worth
  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by anonymoose View Post

    Are backlinks from syndicated articles worth anything for SEO?
    Yes - they're typically enormously valuable.

    The value of the backlink to your site is determined primarily by the relevance to your own site of the site (i.e. not just the page) on which it appears.

    Articles tend to be syndicated mostly to pretty relevant sites, for all the obvious reasons. Even very low page rank links from relevant sites are typically worth incomparably more than higher PR links from irrelevant sites.

    The SEO advantages are those explained in the last paragraph of this post: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5035794
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  • Profile picture of the author Joseph Robinson
    Banned
    Originally Posted by anonymoose View Post

    Any thoughts would be appreciated.
    I don't think backlinks are discounted because they came from a Syndicated Article. If that's been stated by anyone I've definitely missed it.

    Now, I think you're asking this in regards to outranking a site that publishes your article? It's been widely debated. Here's what I've seen though: in most cases, one website is going to rank that article well, the other ends up in what I guess it a supplemental index? You get the SEO benefits, but still get the traffic from the website because you targeted those that already have an audience. The syndicator is happy that they got a great piece to give to their readers.

    Everybody wins.

    There have been a few cases though where a syndicated site outranks me for the article (bigger, better, sexier women on the homepage), and then I can't find my article copy. I don't mind too much when this happens, I'm still getting traffic from the syndicated copy. The syndicator is still happy that they got a great piece to give to their readers, and they get the SEO benefits.

    Everybody wins.

    The point? It's never really cut and dry when it comes to syndication and Google. You aren't putting duplicate content out there, whoever says that doesn't understand what duplicate content is. You are putting syndicated content that Google will recognize though, and in an attempt to prevent repetitive results they usually pick one copy and roll with it.

    You publish to your site first to give you the best chance of being that one copy (you prove original indexation). It usually works; but as I've personally seen it is not always the case. You still get what you were seeking either way though (sweet, succulent traffic), so it's not really worth losing sleep over.
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  • Profile picture of the author mukluknation
    There is a reason why PR submissions lately have been popular amongst internet marketers. Sometimes paying those $3-$10 per submission on multiple sites (you can also get them for free), even though the content is the same is worth it. The reasons for submitting have been stated by the posters above, but I just wanted to reiterate that it can be effective in practice, as I've been doing so since the beginning of the year rather successfully.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr Lim
    Did you mean pingback backlinks AKA syndicated articles?
    I heard that they are well worth, prepare and test it our with some new websites and test to know the result.
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  • Profile picture of the author anonymoose
    Thanks all for the replies. Alexa, I read that thread but my eyes must have glazed over by the last paragraph :-)

    I want to extrapolate this principle out a bit more. Suppose I have a site that sells cauliflower soup mix (somehow that just seems like a great example). I also have six friends, suppliers of the raw ingredients that go into the soup, who all have relevant websites and are willing to post my articles with backlinks to me. If I make just one article and they all publish it, will the backlinks be worth as much as if I had made six different articles?
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
      Banned
      Originally Posted by anonymoose View Post

      Thanks all for the replies. Alexa, I read that thread but my eyes must have glazed over by the last paragraph :-)
      And who can blame you? Such long-winded posts, there are in that thread ...

      Originally Posted by anonymoose View Post

      Suppose I have a site that sells cauliflower soup mix (somehow that just seems like a great example). I also have six friends, suppliers of the raw ingredients that go into the soup, who all have relevant websites and are willing to post my articles with backlinks to me. If I make just one article and they all publish it, will the backlinks be worth as much as if I had made six different articles?
      Yes, definitely.

      The value of any given backlink on any given page of any given site on the web is not varied according to whether the content to which it's attached has previously been published somewhere else. This is simply factual.

      There are things that do vary its linkjuice to you, of course (such as the number of other backlinks on its page), but "whether the content it follows is unique" isn't one of them, and given Google's painstaking and repeated assurances about the differences between syndicated content (which they like) and duplicate content (on which they're less keen), it isn't going to be, either - they probably wouldn't be able to do that, and have certainly made it very clear indeed that they wouldn't want to, anyway!
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  • Profile picture of the author TDogger
    What would kill your article is if a major site like Reuters took your article and did not give you a link back to your site. The problem with any syndicated articles is that most people take the articles and do not link back to your site. Google determines which page is the original through the number of backlinks to the original article as well as the authority level of the site.

    I had a guy come to me a while ago with a camping article that always ranked well, but suddenly dropped out of Google. We found a Boy Scout site that had taken the original content from the guy's site and published it on their site. The Boy Scout site was popular and had a higher trust level, so Google's algorithm thought it was the original and filtered the actual original from search results. The guy's rank position came back a few weeks after the Boy Scout site removed the article.
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  • Profile picture of the author anonymoose
    Thanks a bunch. You've saved me from giving out some very poor recommendations :-)
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