Contrary to popular belief duplicate content is not always a bad thing when it comes to SEO. Getting past the the stigma of duplicate content is the first step to understanding the differences between Syndication and Submission.

Submission

Let’s first get into Submission. Most of you probably are familiar with the process of submitting articles to directory sites like ezine, articlealley and the thousands of other article directory sites out there. For those of you who aren’t. It is a common SEO and Link Building strategy to write articles about the keywords you want to be found for on search engines like Google. For example if you wanted to be found for the phrase “San Diego SEO Company” you would write an article about Search Engine Optimization and submit it to a site like ezinearticles.com. You would include a link in the author bio section of the article and make the link look like this San Diego SEO Company. If ezinearticles.com accepts your article you now have a link from your article on ezine pointed to your site.

Contrary to popular belief duplicate content is not always a bad thing when it comes to SEO

MASS Submission

Article Submission is extremely popular. So popular that now there are countless Automatic Mass Submitters out there. These Mass Submitters take one article you write and spin it into 100’s of different articles using spin syntax which replaces the words in your article with synonyms and then it auto submits your “spun” articles to 100 or so different article directories. Sounds freakin’ awesome right?

The problem is the spin syntax turns your lovely little article into complete gibberish. If you’ve ever actually seen an over spun article it’s a mess. Nobody’s going to read that and be enticed to click on the link to your site. Google is certainly smarter than that. Google did some tests and focus groups and launched the Panda/Farmer Updates that essentially make mass submitted and spun article links worthless.

I’ve sort of gone of topic but I can’t stress enough how Auto Mass Submitters do not live up to the hype.

So back to submission. So you’ve submitted your article(not spun) with your link and it’s been accepted. You now have a link pointed at your site from a page with relevant content(your article). The problem here is that these article sites are now so saturated with spun and even poorly written original content that Google has marked many of them as non-authority sites. What this means to you is that what was once considered a good link from a relevant page, is now a link from an essentially not trusted source of information on your topic. Even though your article is relevant to your keywords or industry ,because you wrote it that way. The main or root domain of the article site is not. Now don’t get me wrong here it’s still good to post to article sites just do your research on them first and remember those links just don’t matter AS MUCH anymore.

Syndication

Now for the good, no, the great stuff. Syndication is similar to submission in the fact that both require you to write articles that are posted on websites other than yours with links pointed to your website. The difference with syndication is that you actually write the article on your site first and you keep it there. With submission you would never even consider having the same article you post to article sites also on your main site. It’s called duplicate content. However with syndication you don’t post your article on article directories which we know are non-authority sites.

So how do I get my articles syndicated?

With syndication it’s all about writing the best, most informative and readable articles you possibly can. You then spread the word about your content to authority sites in your niche or industry. An authority site is a site that is recognized as a trusted source of accurate information on a certain topic. If you get your article picked up by an authority site, it gets linked to the original article on your site. This is the main difference between submission and syndication. With syndication the process of keeping the original article on your site and pointing the link in the syndicated article to the original tell Google that this authority site, who we already know Google trusts found your article so relevant and informative that they risked their reputation by posting it on their site and giving you an author credit link.

If you don’t already get enough exposure to be on an authority sites radar. Most authority sites even accept article submissions.  They do have a strict screening process though because they have a reputation to uphold. Authority sites make their living by being a trusted source of accurate information so they only take the cream of the crop.

Authority sites actively seek out great content, so building a relationship with them is key. Don’t just submit your article on the site. Find out more about them. Take note of the layout and writing styles they favor and then emulate those traits in your own article.

For more on Submission Vs. Syndication and how to get your articles syndicated check out our blog.

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