Keeping fresh content posted on your site is important for generating new leads, improving your overall site SEO, and offering more value to current customers. But keeping that content engine going can be a challenge.
Some IT business owners will use syndicated content to copy/paste on their blogs. This can seem like an easy fix, especially if you get it for free from a marketing company you may be working with.
However, using syndicated content can do the opposite of what you’re hoping for. It can tank your SEO and be less effective at lead generation than personalized content. We’ll explore the problems with copy/paste blog content below.
What Is Syndicated Content?
Syndicated content is content that is written to be widely distributed for others to use. It’s meant as a quick fix to feed the marketing engine and keep new blog posts going up regularly.
This type of content is typically written generically because it is not created for one specific business or website. It will include general descriptions without reference to a particular product or service being offered by a company.
These generic blog articles are designed to be distributed widely for multiple business owners to copy and post on their own websites.
Why Could Syndicated Content Hurt My Marketing Efforts?
At first, using syndicated content might sound like a good idea. I mean, you save all that work from having to write the content yourself. Or you might save a few bucks if you copy/paste rather than work with an MSP marketing provider that writes personalized content for you.
But… there are some major drawbacks to this approach that can negate the whole purpose of having an active IT business blog in the first place.
Why do MSPs and just about every other industry on the planet use blogs? Here are a few statistics:
- Posting blog articles can increase conversion rates by 6x
- Seven out of 10 consumers prefer getting product/service information via articles over ads
- Blogs can increase a site’s indexed pages by 434%
- Companies with blogs produce an average of 67% more leads per month than those without blogs.
So, the main goals of regularly posting blog articles on your site are:
- Improve SEO to generate leads
- Promote products and services in a non-salesy way
- Give customers a reason to keep coming back
If you use syndicated content that many other websites are also using, it can be akin to going through the motions of content marketing, but not getting the results you hoped for.
Here is why using syndicated content for your IT business can hurt your marketing efforts.
It’s Bad for SEO
Google warns website owners about posting duplicate content. When large blocks of identical information are posted across multiple website domains, it creates a problem with SEO rankings.
Google is not going to rank five versions of the same syndicated content on page one of a search result, no matter how good the back-end SEO has been done. Its algorithm recognizes duplicate posts, and it will choose the best one that it believes to be the most authoritative to rank.
What happens to the others? They languish somewhere in the results where no one ever goes (page 10, 50, etc.) if they even show up at all.
When you use syndicated content, you can pretty much guarantee that the exact blog post text will be posted on multiple other websites. This is going to make it very difficult for it to provide you with any SEO value.
So, you’re essentially missing out on the most important benefit of posting blog articles regularly, which is to help your website rank well in search results for IT-related keywords to drive leads.
There Is No Personalized CTA at the End of the Post
Because syndicated content isn’t written for any specific company, it is not going to include a personalized call-to-action (CTA), such as “Call Us for a Cybersecurity Assessment at…” or “Click Here to Book a Free Consultation Today!”
Studies show that putting at call-to-action at the end of a page can increase conversions by 220%.
If you want to convert leads that have discovered your article, you need to tell them what to do next when they finish reading your post. That’s what the call to action is all about.
Even if a syndicated article has a generic call-to-action, that’s not going to be as effective as having YOUR phone number and YOUR contact page link. People want things to be easy, and if they can’t just click to call you from your blog post while reading it on a mobile device, they could easily move on and never reach out.
The Content May Not Speak Directly to Your Audience
One of the goals of using a blog for content marketing is to provide helpful information to both leads and current customers. You give them a reason to visit your site and read about a subject that’s pertinent to them.
For example, if a large part of your clientele (or desired clientele) is accounting firms. Then you would want to post articles like, “Top Security Risks for Accounting Firms.” If you service residential customers, then you’ll be gravitating towards blog posts on things like improving your home Wi-Fi or security for smart home gadgets.
The more applicable your content is to your audience, the more chance that you’ll get both new and repeat customer sales.
However, when syndicated content is written, it’s not written for any particular audience specifically. It must be as general as possible so multiple companies can use the content.
This means that the posts you are copy/pasting to your site, might not really be relevant to your target audiences, and thus may be less effective at generating sales.
Content Can Be Too Technical for Prospects
Another specific about audiences is how they understand technology. If you work with small businesses and residential customers, you may find that the content in the syndicated blog posts is too technical for them to understand.
This will cause them to quickly tune out your blog posts, and emails (if you’re promoting blog articles in those), and you miss out on potential sales, and could possibly lose customers who might not feel you fully understand their needs.
Your blog post content is part of your business reputation and how your brand is perceived. Even though your website content may comprehensively speak to your audience, if the content you’re putting out regularly doesn’t, then it will change customers’ perception of your brand.
You Don’t Have Control Over Blog Post Topics
When you’re working with a company, such as Tech Blog Builder, that writes MSP blogs posts specifically for your company, you have control over the topics you’d like to highlight.
For example, if you have a new partnership with a password management vendor, you can have an article written about the benefits of using a password manager. At TBB we both make suggestions for topics based on the audience of the MSP and current technology events, and allow customers to choose their own topics they’d like written. They have complete control over what types of posts go up on their site.
However, that control goes away when you’re using syndicated content. You have to take what you get, which may or may not be what you’d like to post on your site that month.
This loss of control over the types of topics you use for your content marketing means your marketing is less targeted and won’t tie in as well with any specific strategies you have for sales and lead generation.
No Interlinking to Your Site
One aspect of SEO that helps boost your entire site’s page rankings is when you use interlinking between your site pages. Google likes blog posts that are helpful to readers, thus it rewards sites that provide pertinent links to more information so a site visitor can drill down into the topic further.
For example, if you’re interested in the ways you can turn a single blog post into other types of marketing (videos, infographics, emails, etc.) you can click the text that I just hyperlinked. This is considered interlinking, and it’s helpful if you link text that would be considered “keyword” related.
When your blog posts are written only for your website, you can have interlinking done to boost your overall SEO as well as invite people to read more details on a topic.
This is another important SEO feature you miss out on when using syndicated content. Because that content is written to be posted on many different sites, it is not going to include any interlinking to your site’s other pages (like service pages or blog posts).
Be Original & Gain the Benefits
Keeping your content marketing engine going doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming. Working with a partner like Tech Blog Builder can give you great, original posts that keep new leads and sales coming in the door.
What’s your biggest challenge with your business blog? Share your feedback in the comments!
