Web content syndication is a process in which materials of the transmitting website are distributed around various receiving sites. In most cases, Web syndication means making Web feeds available from a source site to other sites with an update or summary of the website’s freshly added content, for instance, forum posts or the latest news regarding the site.
In addition, the term is also used to describe licensing of other types of website content for use by other websites. In this case, syndicating the content means publishing it on another site. It is absolutely essential that content syndicated to other websites is linked back to its original version. This provides proper attribution as well as a trail for search engines (namely Google) to the content’s origin.
In Web content syndication, the receiving site gains immediacy and greater depth of information to its Web pages; this makes it more appealing to visitors.
On the other hand, the transmitting site gets good exposure, which in turn results in more back links and traffic. In this way, Web content syndication can act as an easy, cost-effective, or even free form of Internet marketing.
Because search engine optimization (SEO) plays an important role in Internet marketing, content syndication has become an impressive way for link building. The syndicated content includes embedded links optimized with anchor terms, which would point an optimized link straight back to the website’s original content. Just like syndicating proprietary content, Web content syndication can be used to propagate product content, such as product images, feature descriptions and product specifications.