As more and more marketplaces come online, content syndication has become increasingly prevalent, and as an online seller it may be tempting to utilize it as a way of reaching more buyers.
Some studies estimate that up to 29% of all online content is duplicate content, with a significant portion being intentionally syndicated across major platforms. For online retailers, this number is even more striking – approximately 67% of product descriptions appear verbatim across at least three different marketplaces.
Is this the right way to expand your brand’s reach? Does content syndication work?
What Is Content Syndication?
In e-commerce, “content syndication” is the practice of using identical product content – descriptions, features, specifications, and images – across multiple retail platforms. This “create once, publish everywhere” approach seems attractive on the surface, promising consistent brand messaging and efficient content management. But the result is not ideal.
The Platform Paradox
Each online marketplace serves a distinct audience with unique expectations and behaviors. Rachel Johnson Greer, founder of Troveres, says: “There’s this idea that people who shop on one channel are the same as people who shop on other channels, but that’s true at all. Your customer on Walmart is a very different person from your customer on Amazon, who’s also a different person from your customer on your own website. So that’s the most important thing to me about syndication … it ignores the fact that different customers use different channels.”
“One of our biggest clients,” she continues, “like a lot of online sellers, sells on Walmart, Amazon, and on their own website too. We use different words and different commentary for their content across all platforms, not just for SEO purposes, but because we want to emphasize certain things to the person reading it.
For Walmart customers, we emphasize the value of the product, the fact that it’s high quality at a reasonable price. Customers who shop at Walmart care a lot about these things. But, the average income for this client’s website customers is over $150,000 a year, so price and quality are not top concerns for them. If they like it, they’re buying it. So we’re speaking to a whole different audience on their own website.”
The Technical Challenges and SEO Implications Of Syndication
The Canonicalization Conundrum
Canonicalization is a particularly thorny challenge for digital marketers, especially when dealing with powerful platforms like Amazon and Walmart. Even when brands meticulously implement canonical tags pointing to their original content, search engines might independently decide that a syndicated version on a major marketplace deserves higher priority – a scenario that’s becoming increasingly common as these platforms gain more search authority. For instance, a brand’s carefully crafted product page on their own website might be overshadowed by its Amazon listing in search results, despite being the original source, simply because Amazon’s domain authority is so strong.
This power dynamic becomes even more complicated when considering that major marketplaces rarely implement reciprocal canonical tags or acknowledge original sources.
They’re essentially creating their own parallel SEO universe where they control how content is indexed and prioritized. Making matters worse, each platform’s unique HTML structure and content presentation can make it technically challenging to maintain consistent canonical references across all syndicated versions.
This can result in a situation where brands lose control over their content’s search engine visibility, potentially driving organic traffic to platforms where they have less control over the customer experience and face higher fees or competition.
A Brave New SEO
Search algorithms are continuously evolving to handle syndicated content. Amazon, for instance, is implementing dynamic title optimization: they’re changing the way titles show up on your device, reworking the title based on the search term you enter.
For example, if a shopper searches “pink aviator glasses”, and your product happens to be pink aviator glasses, but you have the words “pink” and “aviator” toward the end of the title, Amazon will reorder the title for that searcher to make “pink aviator glasses” come first. This is fantastic for a host of reasons, not the least of which is that mobile phones truncate long titles, so even if the searcher does end up on your pink aviator glasses listing, they may not know it and skip over your offering because they don’t see their search term in the truncated title.
So, when considering your different customer avatars, you would want to put all the top keywords from all of your avatars into the title. Your lower budget Walmart shopper would search for a different term than your “price is no object” customer, but with this new feature, you can capture them both if you’re savvy enough.
Syndication’s Impact on Brand Authority and Customer Experience
Content Fatigue
When consumers encounter identical product descriptions across multiple platforms, it can create a glazing-over effect. This repetition not only breeds indifference but can actively disengage potential customers who are seeking fresh perspectives and insights.
Platform-Specific Requirements
Each marketplace has unique technical specifications and limitations. For example, Amazon’s 200-character title limit might not align with other platforms’ requirements, leading to truncated or awkward-looking listings when content is blindly syndicated. This does nothing for a brand’s reputation. It can make you look unprofessional and untrustworthy, and a poorly done listing is surely not going to increase sales because shoppers can’t see what they need to make an informed decision.
Demographic Considerations
Different platforms attract varying age groups and demographics, each with their own vernacular and shopping behaviors. Content that resonates with one platform’s audience might fall flat or even appear tone-deaf on another.
This is another way to not only speak to the shoppers who matter to you, but work with these brave new SEO changes coming down the pike. Make sure your content speaks to the right demographic via the words that you use and how you describe things. Not everyone will know what “skibidi” is, but if your customer would, use it. And if they wouldn’t, don’t alienate them by using words they wouldn’t know.
Best Practices For Multi-Platform Success
Instead of wholesale syndication, consider these four approaches:
Tailored Content Strategy: Create platform-specific versions of your content that maintain core product information while speaking to each channel’s unique audience.
Audience Analysis: Understand the demographic differences between platforms and adjust your language and emphasis accordingly.
Technical Optimization: Pay attention to each platform’s specific requirements for character limits, formatting, and content guidelines.
Value Proposition Alignment: Adjust how you present your product’s benefits based on each platform’s typical customer priorities.
While content syndication seems to offer efficiency, its one-size-fits-all approach often undermines the very goals it aims to achieve. Real success in today’s e-commerce world needs a more nuanced approach – one that recognizes and respects the unique characteristics of each platform and its users. The extra effort required to create platform-specific content can lead to stronger engagement and loyalty, better search visibility, and ultimately, higher conversion rates.
Learn from the best in the business – FREE!
At Troveres we help brands articulate their story in unique and beautiful ways that utilize strategic, data-informed steps that drive engagement and increase conversion rates. Our content strategy was developed by former Amazonian of eight years Rachel Johnson Greer, who was part of Amazon’s private label team for more than two years, developing and maintaining brands with hundreds of products across dozens of product lines. Click here to download Rachel’s guide to Content Marketing That Converts for free.
