How to Repurpose and Syndicate Your Blog Posts for More Exposure

Need more exposure for your blog content? Wondering what your options are?

In this article, you’ll learn how to republish your blog posts on social networks and other platforms while protecting your original content’s search rank.

Why Repurpose Your Blog Posts?

Repurposing blog content can be a confusing task for even seasoned content creators. On the one hand, the benefits are clear: your content has a better chance of being found when it appears in numerous places online, and as such, so does your business. On top of that, getting your content published in several locations can be a powerful way to drive traffic back to your website.

But repurposing content also brings up a lot of questions and concerns. For instance, will publishing your blog posts on other platforms negatively impact your website’s SEO? The same question arises when someone asks to syndicate one of your posts on their site.

Then there’s guest blogging. You might be wondering why you would spend your precious time and energy writing for another site. Furthermore, because you wrote the content in the first place, shouldn’t you be able to feature it on your blog as well?

While these are all valid concerns, taking a few simple steps can help ensure you’re getting as much value from your blog posts as possible while safeguarding your SEO.

#1: Repurpose Your Blog Posts on Medium

Publishing content to Medium is fast and easy. Most importantly, though, the platform provides you with a way to repurpose your own content and potentially reach hundreds, if not thousands, of new readers. The only thing you need to do to get started is to create a free account. Once you’ve signed in, click on your profile image or icon and select Stories.

Because you want to repurpose content you’ve already published on your blog, select the Import Story option.

From here, all you need to do is enter the URL that points to the blog post you want to repurpose. Medium will import all of your content, including images and formatting like subheadings, bolded text, links, and so on. If any of the formatting is lost or not to your liking, you can edit the post before publishing it on Medium.

Protect Your SEO

For many bloggers, the idea of cross-posting their blog content raises red flags. The main concern is that doing so will hurt their blog’s SEO. Luckily, the use of a “canonical tag” in republished content can help circumvent such issues. In simple terms, the canonical tag appears in a line of code and marks republished posts as duplicate content, therefore identifying the post on your blog as original content and preserving its SEO.

If that sounds too complicated, there’s good news. When using the Import feature on Medium, the canonical tag is automatically added to your content.

Link Back to Your Website

While third-party platforms like Medium are great for expanding your reach and increasing your visibility, the goal should always be to lead people back to your own domain. Make sure your story on Medium features links throughout that point back to your blog.

When you import a post into Medium, the platform generates a blurb at the end of the story stating that the content originally appeared at [your domain]. Leave that in place as another backlink measure.

As you can see, Medium is a user-friendly platform and quite intuitive to use. The only thing left to do is hit Publish!

#2: Repurpose Your Blog Posts on LinkedIn

Like Medium, repurposing your blog posts on LinkedIn provides another avenue for reaching new readers and growing your online presence. Unlike Medium, however, repurposing blog posts on LinkedIn isn’t as straightforward.

After you log into LinkedIn, click the Home tab, and head to the top of the news feed where you’ll see the option to create a LinkedIn post. Instead of sharing an update, click Write an Article. This will open the publishing tool in a new tab.

Again, repurposing content on LinkedIn isn’t as automatic as it is on Medium where it just takes a few clicks. You need to manually copy and paste your blog content into the LinkedIn publishing tool and format appropriately as you go.

Safeguard Your Blog’s SEO

Here’s where repurposing on LinkedIn might be riskier than it is on Medium. Because you aren’t technically importing content into LinkedIn, the platform doesn’t add a canonical tag to its articles, nor is there a way for you to do so. However, many bloggers do cross-post their blog posts to LinkedIn and have reported that original content still appears first in search engine results.

To increase the likelihood that your blog content will outrank repurposed content on LinkedIn, don’t immediately repurpose your blog post. It typically takes anywhere from 24 hours to a week for search engines to index your blog posts, so wait at least a couple of days (if not a couple of weeks) before republishing your article on LinkedIn.

Link Back to Your Blog

Like you do for stories on Medium, make sure you provide several backlinks to your blog in your LinkedIn article. As an additional step, you should add a note stating where the article originally appeared. Don’t forget to include your URL! This is especially important on LinkedIn, given that canonical tags aren’t used.

#3: Syndicate Your Blog Posts

Blog syndication simply means having your content republished by another website. Sites that syndicate content typically receive a high volume of traffic and post numerous articles every day. Examples of sites that syndicate content from other bloggers include HuffPost, Slate, Inc., and Thrive Global.

Identify Syndication Opportunities

Because your content will appear on popular websites, syndication can give your blog and reputation a serious boost. To find syndication opportunities, you’ll need to spend a bit of time exploring major media sites where you want to see your blog content appear.

One tactic is to do an Internet search for the phrase “originally appeared on.” This will reveal articles that were republished from one website to another and can be a great starting point for finding syndication opportunities.

If you already have some sites in mind, also search for “originally appeared on” + “[name of publication]”. For instance, if you’d like to see whether Inc. syndicates content, plug “originally appeared in” + “Inc.com” in the search bar. The results confirm that Inc. does in fact syndicate content.

Some sites allow you to submit posts for syndication. On Thrive Global, you can create a profile and submit your posts through their dedicated portal.

Prepare for Syndication

Big websites that syndicate content are often on the hunt for great content. The best thing you can do to attract such opportunities is to continue writing strong content on your blog and stay consistent. On top of keeping your blog active, also have a bio ready, along with your website and social media links, to provide upon request.

Regardless of the path to syndication, once your post is republished, you should start seeing more traffic to your blog thanks to the obligatory backlinks in the syndicated post. To illustrate, this blog post from First Round Capital was syndicated on Inc. with a backlink to the original post:

As such, you should be prepared to convert new visitors into subscribers. Ensure your website and the blog post being syndicated have at least one opt-in form to capture email addresses.

The First Round Capital blog includes an opt-in at the top of the original post, syndicated by Inc.

Finally, check with the syndicating site to see if it will use the canonical tag mentioned earlier. If they don’t use it, you must decide whether access to a wider audience is worth the potential negative impact on your original blog post’s SEO.

#4: Write for Other Blogs

Guest blogging differs from syndication in that you write original content for another blog or website. You might be wondering why you’d write content for another site when you could spend that time writing for your own blog. Like content syndication, guest blogging gives you access to a large audience.

Even better than syndication, you can choose from tens to hundreds of blogs that share your target audience. This lets you get in front of readers who are primed for your content and offerings.

Find Blogs to Write For

It’s not as difficult to find blogs that accept guest posts as it might sound. The first place to check for guest blogging opportunities is with blogs and sites you already read.

On sites that accept guest posts, look for links like “Write for Us,” “Become a Contributor,” “Writer’s Guidelines,” “Guest Blogging,” or something similar. You can usually find this information in the main menu, at the bottom of the site, or on the contact page.

Perhaps the blogs you read don’t accept guest posts. That’s okay. A simple online search can help you locate blogs in your niche. This tactic is similar to the search used to look for syndication opportunities. In this case, however, you’ll want to use a formula that includes [your niche] + [one of the example phrases above].

Your search might look something like “travel + write for us” or “beauty + writer’s guidelines.”

Once you’ve made a list of potential sites, it’s time to narrow down your options.

Choose the Right Blogs

Because you want to get the most out of your blog post efforts, you need to carefully consider what blogs and sites to pitch. The first consideration is whether the blog allows backlinks to your website or blog content. If not, you don’t want to spend time writing for them. The point of guest blogging is to expand your reach and drive traffic back to your site.

A quick evaluation of other guest posts on your target blogs will tell you if backlinks are allowed. Examine a few posts on the blog by different authors and look for links in the article content itself or in the author bio. If links appear in one or both places, the site clearly allows backlinks.

Next, check their writer’s guidelines or publication terms to see if they allow you to republish the article on your blog. This information may not be available until after you’ve been approved to write for the site. While it shouldn’t be a deal-breaker if they don’t allow syndication, those that do allow it should be placed at the top of your list.

Finally, you can use the same search techniques illustrated earlier to determine whether your target blogs syndicate their content with other networks. As you know, syndication gives you additional exposure without doing any extra work. Again, whether they syndicate shouldn’t be your only determining factor, but it should be taken into consideration.

Avoid This Oversight

The biggest mistake inexperienced guest bloggers make is pitching already-published content to other blogs. Most editors don’t accept previously published work, so if you have a great idea for a guest post, don’t publish it anywhere else until you hear back from the sites you’ve reached out to. If your post isn’t accepted anywhere, then you can move forward with publishing it on your own blog.

#5: Republish Guest Posts on Your Blog

If granted permission to republish your guest post on your own blog, take advantage of the opportunity, given it fits your editorial strategy. You’ve spent all that time writing a valuable guest post, so why not get a little more use out of it? Assuming your blog readers didn’t see the guest post, this will give your writing more reach and save you time.

Publish Your Post

Republishing an article written for another blog is simply a matter of adding content to your own blog platform as you would if creating a new post. There’s no reason to worry about adding a canonical tag because you want to drive traffic to your blog.

However, you may want to add a note stating where your post originally appeared. In this case, the purpose isn’t for SEO, but rather to highlight your experience as a published writer. The blog post below first appeared on Forbes, and then was syndicated on meQuilibrium’s website. The site links to the original content on Forbes.

Conclusion

With all the time and effort that goes into writing blog content, it only makes sense to get more mileage out of the posts you’ve already written. By repurposing content on social media platforms like Medium and LinkedIn, syndicating on popular websites, and guest posting on other blogs, you can significantly increase your visibility and audience reach, not to mention save a ton of time.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these tactics to repurpose your blog posts? Do you have any tips to add? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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