How To Get Featured on Large Publications (Without Guest Posting) (1)
How to republish content on larger publications for traffic, subscribers and backlinks - without having to guest post.
I took the screenshot below of my Aweber dashboard on Saturday at 9:30 AM:
By the end of the day on Saturday, I had accumulated another 355 subscribers just from the one republished post. It's noon on Sunday as I write this and today alone has brought in over 125. Cumulatively, over the past 60 hours, one republished article brought in well over 1,000 new subscribers.
That's the power of what you're about to learn. You've heard it over and over again… "Guest posting is a great strategy for getting traffic to your website and increasing your email subscribers”. And maybe you've tried it before. Maybe you've even seen some traffic and conversions from guest posting. But there's one hitch holding you - and most people - back from guest posting more often: It's time consuming. So what if I told you there was a way to increase your traffic and conversions through being a guest on another publication…
But without having to create, write, and pitch a whole new article?
James Clear used this tactic to build his blog up from 0 to 250,000 unique visitors per month in two years. He did it without having to write anything new.
What's the tactic? Republishing.
Specifically, taking those articles you've worked so hard to write and republishing them on platforms far larger than yours. If it sounds out of your league, don't worry. I'll take you through a step-by-step process to pitch and republish your content, including: Finding publications to republish your content on Pitching those publications Optimizing your republished content for conversions or traffic How to make every piece of republished content work even harder for you. But first, let's talk about why you should definitely republish your content for traffic and subscribers. Why Republishing Needs to be Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy
Republishing is, without a doubt, an extremely effective way of generating traffic for your website.
But why is it effective? And, more importantly, how effective is it?
Let's start with why: Every piece of content you create takes a certain amount of time. If you're truly committed to creating the best content out there on your topic (and you should be), content creation takes a lot of time. Think about the last article you wrote. How long did it take?
5 hours? 10? 20?
For us, one of our Sumo-Sized guides (like our guide on the 130 ways of getting more traffic) takes well over 20 hours to put together - and that's not even counting the spreadsheets we're notorious for. Our expanded list guides, like our Content Upgrades and Headline Formulas posts take anywhere from 5-15 hours to write, not including research, upgrades, or extras.
Even if you only take a fraction of the amount of time we take to write a killer guide,you're still spending hours putting together content that might be consumed by no more than a few thousand people - if you're lucky. Since you're working so hard to create awesome content for your audience, why not make it work harder for you? That's where republishing comes in. When you republish your content, you're taking that content you worked so hard to create, and getting it in front of the eyes of another platform's audience. Often, the publications that republish content are gigantic media companies that have equally gigantic audiences - and therefore, gigantic content needs with hundreds or even thousands of pieces published daily.
Because of the reach of these huge media platforms, republishing can be extremelylucrative when you boil it down to return on time investment.
On Lesson 4 of Email1K, James Clear explains how he landed 600 email subscribers from one piece of republished content.
I've had republished content drive hundreds (sometimes thousands) of visitors to my personal blog, exposing it to an entirely new audience base, and rapidly building my email list from simply putting the content that I'd already worked so hard to produce in front of new eyes. For example, every Monday I publish an article on my personal blog, Unsettle. After publishing this article:
I republished it on Elite Daily, which garnered over 10,000 social shares:
As you can imagine, Elite Daily's audience is much larger than mine, so I was able to get that already-written content in front of tens of thousands of eyes I wouldn't have been able to reach otherwise. Because I had a few key elements in place (which I'll go over in a minute), that article that took me just a few minutes to republish gathered over 230 new email subscribers from Elite Daily the day it went live. There are also fringe benefits to republishing your content. For example, you're building relationships with the editors and sometimes owners of these larger publications. You're also building backlinks from large, high authority websites. Sounds pretty great, right?
But you may have heard a nasty rumour about republishing. One that scares people away from even trying it to begin with...
The idea that Google penalizes for duplicate content.
Why It's Actually a Myth That Republishing Will Negatively Impact Your SEO Some misinformed people say that republishing your content on other websites hurts your SEO.
I get the logic behind it. We've been taught that republishing means duplicating content, and duplicating content is not only spammy, but confusing. But unless you're out there spamming the web by ripping off other people's content and posting it on your own website - and unless your website is already looking pretty spammy - you're good to go. In fact, Matt Cutts, Google's “head of webspam” said so himself. The only real hitch you may experience is tripping Google up with which piece of content to show in search results.
As Dan Shure generously answered in a recent comment on our guide 130 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Website:
“The potential issue with duplicate content is only that Google might not know which one to rank, or they might choose to rank someone else's site over yours. So - if you want to re-publish something on Medium, that was on your blog, do this just with the assumption Google may rank and give traffic to the Medium.com version since they have the higher domain authority.”
Luckily, there's a fix for that: Use the canonical tag.
This is an html tag that communicates with the search engines to let them know which content to use in results.
Paste this in the republished version of the content, replacing the link with the original URL:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://yoururl.com/original”> Here are a few more things you can do to make sure the original version of the content is ranked rather than the republished version:
Wait before republishing to ensure search engines have indexed your content. Usually a few weeks will be more than enough. After a few weeks have passed, pitch or republish your content on other websites (we'll get to how to do that in a minute). Change 20% - 25% of the content. This is not a proven practice by any means, but many publications request this to be done anyway. Choose a different headline. This may not have a huge impact on your rankings, but it's a unique opportunity to test different headlines to see what works with your audience and your target audience. If nothing else, republishing provides a link building opportunity to your content, which is good for search engine rankings.
So now that I've convinced you that it's a good strategy, and that Google won't give you the smackdown for doing it, you might wonder exactly how to do it. Don't worry, I won't leave you hanging.The Step-by-Step Guide To Republishing Your Content on Other Sites You may have heard the stories… Blogger writes an awesome article, and goes viral when their post is picked up by Lifehacker or some other gigantic website.
That's the dream, right? But instead of sitting back and waiting to win the republishing lottery, make your own luck.
First, we'll go over where to find places to republish your content. Then we'll talk a bit about how to approach them about republishing, followed by best practices and how to make the content super effective. Step 1: Find Publications in Your Industry that Republish Content
One of the first questions people tend to ask when they hear about the benefits of republishing content is how they can find publications that actually do the republishing.
There isn't an exact science to finding the websites that take republished content, and often you find these websites as you go along. But if you're chomping at the bit to start republishing your content, click the button below to get the free spreadsheet with 46 of the top publishers that republish content (complete with contact info): Search Popular Publications in Your Industry
Start by listing out all the publications in your industry (and even some more general ones that hit a variety of topics, like Huffington Post).
Remember: the larger the publication, the greater their content needs; the greater the content needs of the publication, the more likely they republish.
Once you have a solid list of publications, you can start by visiting their “contribute”, “write for us” or “guest posting” guidelines page. If you can't find that page, Google search “inurl:http://website.com “keywords”” to pull up results. le, if The Good Men Project were on your list, a quick search of their website for “Contribute” brought up their Project Submission and Style Guidelines:
When you've found that page, press control + f (command + f for Mac users) to quickly search the page for “published” “republish”, “syndicate” or “repost”. A quick search of The Good Men Project brought me to the section where they claim to take previously published content:
The same search of Elite Daily brings me to the section where they claim they no longer do:
Contributor guidelines usually address this, but if not, you can always email the editor to find out.
Search for Influencers in Your Industry Influencers recognize the opportunities provided by republishing your content, and have used this method to grow their own audiences.
After a certain point, you'll be approached by publishers looking to republish your work - you'll no longer have to pitch. Influencers are often approached, so a great place to find publications that republish is find out where those influencers republish their own work.
Do this by searching the influencer's name plus phrases that indicate the piece was republished - for example “originally published on”. For example, if you were to do this with my name, you'd find the work I've republished on Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Elite Daily and Fear Average (plus several results entirely unrelated to me, which you come to expect when you have the world's most generic name). If a publication has published in the past, chances are they'll republish in the future. After you find these publications, check their guidelines to see if they still republish content.
As you compile this list, use Google Sheets or another way of tracking the results so you don't waste time in the future relying on just your memory. Cross out any that don't republish and flag any you'd like to pursue first. Checklist
Did you search for popular publications in your industry and make a list? Did you find the publication's contribution guidelines to find out whether the republish? Did you brainstorm influencers in your industry who republish? Did you do a Google search for the websites the influencers republished on? If you checked off all of the boxes, you can move onto the next step...
Step 2: Find the Perfect Content For Each Publication
Whether you're republishing, guest posting, or even just being interviewed on another platform, it's crucial to match the style, tone, and type of content their audience has come to expect from that blog. So now that you have a list of target publications, identify your first target, openBuzzSumo, and get ready to do some research.
