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Stephanie Morillo
Stephanie Morillo

Posted on • Originally published at stephaniemorillo.co

How Blog Post Syndication Can Help You Reach More Readers

I'm Stephanie, a Content Strategist and Technical PM. Visit developersguidetocontent.com to learn more about my work!

This post originally appeared on my personal blog.

During my time in developer relations, the topic of blog post syndication came up frequently. The question that drives syndication discussions is, "How do I get my post in front of more people?" While it's tempting to syndicate a blog post across multiple places, there's a way of doing this strategically without harming your SEO (search engine optimization).

In this short blog post, I'll explain what blog post syndication is and will provide a few tips for syndicating your content without messing up your SEO.

What is blog post syndication?

Blog post syndication is essentially republishing blog content on another platform. Developers syndicate in order to increase the visibility of their content and to bring new visitors back to their blog. When you syndicate content, you first publish it in one platform (like your personal blog) and later republish the same content on a different platform (like DEV Community). You can also syndicate video and audio content.

Syndication tips:

  1. Publish the content on your personal blog first. Owning your content is absolutely critical; even if you publish across a number of platforms, you want to house your content on a blog that you own and operate. (For example, stephaniemorillo.co/blog is my personal blog and I keep smaller blogs on platforms including Medium and DEV Community.)

  2. Don’t syndicate immediately. Wait for a period of time to pass before republishing. This will give you time to promote your post and attract more visitors to your site, which helps your search rankings. (There is no science to this: major announcements and time-sensitive posts can be republished within 24 hours, and other types of blog posts can be syndicated after at least two weeks have passed.) Syndication is also a good way to promote older “evergreen content”, or content that is always relevant.

  3. Choose a platform to syndicate to that has higher “authority” or visibility than your own. Medium and dev.to are two viable choices for developers who want to get their content in front of a wider audience. The publication DZone also allows developers to syndicate content. (Note: Medium sometimes adds a metered paywall or gate in front of select content. If you don't want a paywall to appear in front of your story, read this article first.)

  4. Add canonical link elements to your syndicated blog post. Canonical link elements tell search engines which version (original or syndicated) you want to be considered as the “canonical”, or “original” version. This is important because dev.to, Medium, and other channels have a lot of SEO authority. If someone finds your blog post on those sites, but never sees your original post, you lose out on SEO that will help you build your own SEO authority. Both Medium and dev.to have capabilities for adding canonical links to content (“Import a post” on Medium and canonical_url tag in dev.to posts). If you’re using a different platform, add the rel=canonical tag or ask the publisher to add it in for you. (Here's a guide to using canonical link elements.)

  5. Provide a link to the original at the top or bottom of the syndicated post. It can be something like “This blog post was originally published on Stephanie’s awesome blog.” This is a great way of getting people who want to see more of your work back to your site!

Happy syndicating!

Top comments (8)

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jvretamero profile image
João Vitor Retamero

I already have a blog, but I didn't treat it like a business or a personal brand. After reading The Developer's Guide to Content Creation I now have more tools to ignite it! This was another awesome post! Thanks for sharing this kind of content.

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radiomorillo profile image
Stephanie Morillo

Thank you for reading, João!

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windos profile image
Josh (Windos) King

Hey @radiomorillo , with dev.to surfacing the canonical link on the byline how important would you suggest including you own in addition is (specifically here on dev.to)?

byline example

I'm considering just moving mine down to the bottom of my posts 🤔

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radiomorillo profile image
Stephanie Morillo

Hi Josh— I've already started placing them at the bottom of the last few posts I've published and will continue to do so. :)

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hamstu profile image
Hamish Macpherson

Thanks Stephanie! Love how this article models exactly what it teaches. 💯

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binyamin profile image
Binyamin Green

Thanks for the tips!

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radiomorillo profile image
Stephanie Morillo

You’re welcome!

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zwacky profile image
Simon Wicki

I was wondering if you have any idea or tools that helps with getting stats—like views, likes—extracted from these syndicated blog posts? Cheers!