Syndicated Links: What is the SEO value of Content Syndication?
In 30 seconds:
Syndicated links naturally occur in Digital PR - it's part of how online PR coverage spreads
Understanding syndicated links can help Digital PR agencies manage client expectations better and help brands understand their true value
Syndicated links come from unique sites - so context is key when reporting Digital PR results
Syndicated links: you'd be surprised how much SEOs and Digital PRs debate them.
Any good Digital PR professional should ensure their strategic approach and tactics evolve to match the changing state of the industry. Naturally, we've been keeping abreast of the debate on syndicated links and the SEO effect of syndication partners republishing content.
So, if you're unsure of the value of syndicated links and you want up-to-date insights, or if you're wondering how to score syndicated content links against content links from other domains, you're in the right place. Here's a guide to help.
Let's start with some of the basics.
What exactly is the meaning of content syndication?
"Content syndication" refers to content that's republished across a network of sister sites, usually owned by the same publishing house. It's a way of distributing content - such as articles, blog posts, videos or other forms of media - to gain more visibility.
In Digital PR, content syndication refers to when you pitch a journalist a story for one publication and they decide to publish the story across more - or all - of their news network sites. It means that one PR story will take you from one piece of coverage to potentially dozens.
But what does the content syndication process look like?
It helps if you know which sites are related to one another (side note, you can expect lots of 'family' terms in this article). You may have some inkling of some of these sister site relationships already, as sister sites with a similar target audience often pick up similar topics.
Here's an example syndication family tree:
As you can see, syndication is especially common across regional and national news media. Manchester Evening News and Birmingham Mail, for instance, are syndication partners. It means their stories with a regional interest can reach a wider audience.
Some more names you might recognise: Mirror, OK! and even titles like Variety. Some have a broader audience, but will repurpose stories for sister sites with a more niche audience, meaning they can share digital PR stories across titles to maximise views.
The benefits of content syndication
Tapping this network of content syndication partners can lead to a gold mine of coverage for a PR. Why? You’re maximising the reach of your story, of course! In fact, Reach PLC alone owns over 120 media titles, showing the scope of opportunity if you land your story with mass appeal.
An example of this would be a PR gaining a story coverage from the Express, which then gets published (usually by the same journalist) across Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Derby Telegraph, Nottingham Post, and more.
There are huge potential SEO benefits of syndicated content too. Content syndication has the potential to significantly increase backlinks to your website - often from highly reputable publishers - which signals that you're authoritative and relevant to Google, and helps you to rank higher in search.
However, you really want to avoid duplicate content issues when syndicating content. Otherwise, you can run into trouble - and this isn't always avoidable.
Is syndicated content duplicate content?
Is your SEO hat on? It's time to talk about how Google interprets non-original content.
Technically, syndicated content is considered duplicate content. This is because it's the same content regurgitated on multiple websites.
Most people think that duplicate content just refers to sections of text that are lifted word-for-word from one place to another - and yes, this is an obvious form of duplication. But it's not the only one. Increasingly, copy doesn't need to be verbatim for search engines to work out that it's the same. And metadata can also be duplicate content, too.
The issue? In the eyes of Google and other search engines, this regurgitation looks spammy. In fact, it can negatively affect the original source website of the content, too. This is because Google doesn’t always know which version of the duplicated content is the original article, so may penalise all versions - original and copies - by default.
Consider this: when Google creates a list of search results, the goal is to offer something that answers your query in a relevant, authoritative way, but there's also a reason you get 10 results on a page, not just one. The content needs to feel diverse - but just diverse enough. If you get identical content in every search result, there's no point in the list. It's not adding any value for the reader. So search engine bots have worked out a way to spot overly similar content and hide the offenders.
So, how can you stop Google from penalising you?
How to make content syndication work for SEO
The trick for making sure your syndicated content doesn't get labelled as 'spammy' is fairly simple: use a canonical tag.
When done correctly with proper attribution and canonical tags, content syndication isn't seen as a negative issue by search engines. Properly syndicated content is still content that's replicated across different sites, but it contains this form of attribution to reference the original source.
That's all well and good if you're a publisher, but as a marketer at a brand, you need to keep a beady eye out. If your link building content gets syndicated, head to the original article URL, then right-click anywhere on the page and select "View page source" to check the HTML of the web page. Then press ctrl + F and type rel=canonical to double check if the URL is the canonical link.
If there's no 'rel=canonical', ask the publisher of the original article to use the 'rel=canonical tag'.
And here's another Big SEO Question... Do these multiple secondary links carry the same weight as getting the same number of links from unique domains?
Are properly syndicated links good for SEO?
Let's assume that there IS a correctly applied canonical tag. This is the page that the owner has identified as the original article, before it got syndicated. This tells search engines to attribute value and ranking power to this article.
This canonical page's links do carry 'link juice' - i.e. they transfer authority to your site, especially if using a DoFollow link. If the original article is published by an authoritative website, this is great for SEO equity.
The question is more murky when it comes to the other sites that feature syndicated content. Here's the debate broken down:
Google prioritises valuable content. What's a greater marker of high quality content than if an authoritative, trusted publishing house chooses to replicate the content across multiple sites?
This gives additional indicators that the canonical article is authoritative. There is a theory that this could facilitate the transfer of additional link equity. But if this is the case, wouldn't the non-canonical pages transfer less link equity, by the same token?
Alternatively, if the publisher has gone to the trouble of clarifying the canonical source, the potential for penalisation for 'spammy' activity should be off the table. No duplicate content penalty here. So, why "punish" the linked domain featured in these later articles by deprioritising their backlink value?
The wizards at Google know which sites are content syndication partners, so if a story is deemed to have enough value to warrant multiple publications picking it up, the alternate school of thought is that it generates the same amount of link equity as normal.
The discussion around whether syndicated links are good for SEO has been a contentious debate over the years. (Actually, it’s still going on). Some marketers are staunch in their defence of syndicated links, whilst others refuse to count them in their backlink reports as they believe they carry no value.
Where there is less debate is paid syndication. This is when you pay to have your content placed on high-traffic websites through the syndication network. These are generally considered not good for SEO as they are seen as a form of link manipulation. Avoid these. Link building efforts should focus on building high-quality, organic backlinks through great content creation and effective outreach.
The truth is that properly syndicated organic links DO hold SEO value for websites. The question is only really how much.
What does the SEO industry say?
There can be a difference of opinion in the SEO industry, depending who you ask, on whether syndicated links should be counted separately as unique links or not. A good digital agency will advise you based on your individual goals.
Syndicated links definitely do hold more value versus just gaining one backlink, that's for sure. And this expands beyond just SEO. Metrics like impressions, reach, and engagement from relevant audiences all play a part in measuring this success.
What it boils down to is trustworthy sources, real-life experience and up-to-date SEOs who you know can steer you in the right direction when it comes to advice.
Of course, the best way to assess the value of syndicated links is to go ahead and measure them.
How can you measure the impact of syndicated links?
This is where Digital PR becomes more expansive than pure play SEO. Sorry not sorry.
As long as the PR campaign your syndicated content features is contextually relevant, the audience reading will be in the right sphere of interest. This builds your brand visibility - but it's also useful for SEO in the long-run, too.
Consider the different forms of traffic and awareness you'll generate. Building your brand in this way can affect your search rankings down the line too - not least because the Google leak confirmed that brand recognition is a factor when ranking websites.
It's not just about quality backlinks. Syndication can meet more marketing objectives - and help towards the same SEO goal in the end, too.
Metrics content marketers should consider
1. Traffic and page views from referrals
Using Google Analytics (or Adobe Analytics), you can track the number of visitors and page views generated from syndicated content. Web analytic tools allow you to monitor traffic which has been referred from third party sites, additionally allowing you to drill down into what the source website was and where users can click onto site from, which page they landed on and exited. Analytics can also inform brand’s of how much time users spend per page when they do visit.
This data helps brand’s build a picture of user behaviour and illustrates how engaging content is. For syndicated content, you may see traffic coming from multiple domains within the publisher’s network, proving the value these different links have.
2. Backlink value
Backlinks can be quantified, however, don't just look at Domain Authority in isolation, as it does not provide the full picture of the value of a link. DA will tell you a loose estimation of how authoritative a site is, based on traffic, users and links to the site. What DA can’t provide is the contextual relevance of a link.
Say you’re a builder’s merchant and you get links from independent trade magazines. These may be low in DA but high in relevance, as they have a small but active audience in your sphere of interests. This all counts for how valuable a link can be.
3. Lead generation and sales
Not every PR campaign will drive sales, in fact many will not. If your PR campaign is related to a product launch or event, however, you can measure the more direct impact of this activity on the bottom line conversions.
Using Google Analytics, or your preferred web analytics tool, you can see how traffic being driven from different sources might go on to result in a sale. Use CRM systems and marketing automation tools to track lead generation and conversion rates, you can set up goals such as form completes or basket checkouts to directly link activity to revenue or goal results.
4. Organic visibility and awareness
One of the key areas to monitor when undertaking digital PR is the impact this has on your organic visibility. Tools like Sistrix can help you track awareness to see if there are correlations between this and backlinks gained to the site. Google Search Console allows you to see uptick in keywords compared against rankings, impressions and click through, meaning you can check if sections of your site or pages are increasing in visibility as your campaigns take off and gain more links. A/B testing syndicated campaigns versus non-syndicated ones will provide a benchmark to show the extra value syndicated links can offer.
If you’re looking for help with gaining more insights from your digital marketing reporting,get in touch and we can help.
How common is content syndication in 2025?
Widespread content syndication is actually becoming less common over time, as major publishers such as Reach PLC and National World have changed their business strategies for editorial content.
The changing media landscape is placing more pressure than ever on journalists to deliver quality and engaging content. As a result, it is becoming much less common to see PR campaigns be syndicated across 100+ sites.
The norm has now become 4 or 5 sites featuring content as syndication. This, in line with the increase in AI usage is changing the game when it comes to syndicated links.
Jem Leslie, Digital Marketing Manager at Bottle explains: “Publishers like Reach PLC now have ‘content hub’ writers, whose job it is to produce unique content per site, with the help of AI.
"Whereas in the past you would send a press release, and it would be covered across all titles using the exact verbatim content, this is not always the case now. Because AI allows speedier editing, it means these journalists can now take the same syndicated press release and produce unique content for each sister site it chooses to publish on.
"This is mainly positive news for PRs, as the content being unique offers more user value and can lead to each syndicated variation performing better in search engines. The only concern is on the publisher’s side to ensure content is still written from a human voice and doesn’t lean too into AI for production as this in itself can lead to inadvertent content duplication, as AI is known for copying content from other sources across the web.”
Recap: best practices for syndication partners
To avoid issues with duplicate content while engaging in content syndication, publishers should ensure to:
Use canonical tags: apply canonical tags to syndicated content to indicate the original source to search engines. If you can’t do this you should at least link back to the original source within the syndicated content.
Use reputable partners: syndicate content on reputable platforms that value proper attribution. This is relevant for publishers who partner with third-party syndicators.
Monitor performance: regularly monitor the performance of your syndicated content to ensure it’s driving positive results and not causing SEO issues. Having a proper SEO strategy in place, with regular auditing, will mitigate this risk.
By extension, as link-building Digi PRs, optimising for a content syndication strategy requires outreach towards reputable sites, vigilance for canonical tag use, and monitoring our clients' own site performance.
And - of course - a delightful email manner, so the journos are keen to open your emails - even if it’s one asking them to add a canonical tag.
Making your content syndication strategy work in 2025
When using digital PR as part of your marketing strategy, it is important to look at the bigger picture beyond just SEO metrics. Syndicated links can have an impact on SEO performance, depending on how they are structured and implemented, but there is additional value to be gained from the brand awareness and referral traffic potential from gaining links from these websites.
If you're looking to increase the authority of your company website, generate some great PR stories, or discuss your own content distribution strategy, get in touch. We'll talk you through how to create high quality content that makes your customers - and journalists - fall in love with you.
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