Synnd Best Practices

I figured I’d write a Synnd Best Practices post since it’s been one of my favorite (reliable and effective) services for a while now but is getting a bum rap due to several things within and beyond their control.

Yes, the interface stinks still…but when I did my first reviews I saw that the interface was confusing and therefore there would be a high tendency for people like myself to under-utilize it, or use it the wrong way.  So I removed myself from the equation by joining at the Enterprise Level and a few things happen when you join at this level.

#1- You don’t need to bother with the interface too much, just setting up new urls and campaigns

#2- You don’t need to bother writing the spun content blurbs and tags and keywords for the campaigns

#3- You don’t need to do trial and error to figure out what the best mix of Tweets/Likes/social mentions is..

Billing stuff..  I can’t speak to what’s happened to people with the billing/re-billing of cancelled accounts.  All I know is, at one point I had my account cancelled due to non-payment ( I lost my credit card, had to cancel it, therefore nothing could get charged to it) and it looked like Synnd sent me an invoice email stating I just paid xyz dollars when in fact I did not pay them anything as it was impossible, so point here is, I see and experience the confusion and at some point is gets cleared up.  Dan’s been very patient and responsive, I enjoy chatting with Tom and wish I had time to pick his brain more often… but damn guys, fix the interface!

OK enuff of that, how to get max results from using Synnd…(my version of Synnd best practices)

Join at the Enterprise Level-

For reasons mentioned above, join Synnd via permanent discount at the Enterprise level and let them set up your credits distribution on campaign-by-campaign basis.  This reduces interface and credits allocation confusion greatly, and also frees up your time, time that could be spent creating content worth of being leveraged by Synnd.

Build and Promote sticky links-

We can build all the Banzai Wiki links in the world, but nowadays automated link building tends to be a link velocity/numbers game, whereby the massive link generation leads to some link loss due to the lower quality of the links being built, by their very nature..getting deleted or de-indexed.

Types of sticky links:

• Generic trusted article directories
• YouTube videos, and other video sites
• Web 2.0 entities like Hubs, flicker, even Squidoo and sites built on wordpress.com
• Guest articles written on other related sites (If I accepted guest author posts on my websites I wouldn’t want the guest writers link-spamming my site so they could rank for the keywords in their guest posts unless safe inbound link juice was being sent in to the site)

Most importantly, to get max benefits from using Synnd:

Do NOT promote 20 sites at once with minimal credits allocation used for each one.

Focus the firepower on your “sticky tiers” and create a more diversified, wide-spread content leveraging strategy by using Synnd as it was intended; to leverage your content and get it seen in more places by having more juice sent to tiers, entities more deserving on Synnd-love.

Synnd is a content-leveraging system requiring good content to leverage and syndicate…and that’s on YOU to create/generate.  Now, I’m not saying you need PH D level material, but what I AM saying is.. good sites respond better to off-site SEO stuff and while site design and architecture and flow are important..it’s really the content that makes a site into a good site.

Why are you here now, reading this post?  Is it because I regurgitated copy from vendors’ websites, rewrote it a little bit to seem unique, then offered you a crappy PLR product as a bonus for joining via my affiliate link?  Probably not…  you’re here because I ” seem” to care and it appears that I know what I’m talking about to some degree, and that’s not the kind of content that craps sites are comprised of eh?

Point being, a good site gets good results with good linking strategies and sometimes even minimal to non-existent off-site SEO work done to it, and if you want to use Synnd effectively then you need to control everything within your power to see positive results.

Tell me what to do and stop pontificating! (right?.. I hear ya there)

So we build a fake, made up site called usemewell.com

I researched my niche doing old-school effective methods… I searched forums, I saw the questions people were asking, the problems they want solved, the issues they’re experiencing, and I write TO that, and for THEM.

I write some long tail content to get the site going.  I write and write until my flow is on the go…While doing my “what problems are people having in this niche” research, I’m getting well-stepped in niche knowledge whilst also getting great ideas on exactly what kind of useful content I could be creating.

I create content that helps, AKA valuable content, and once I’ve built the beginnings of a somewhat-decent website, I want to promote this baby… I want traffic, readers, comments and new ideas for new content and then I will expand upon the “reach” of the website by going social with my linking and starting off with a Web 2.0 (Squidoo, HubPages, and mass video distribution) entity-creating campaign.

My vids are short and sweet, maybe some fiverr gigs to get them done quickly and to establish a dedicated YT (and other vid submission sites channels), and I use Synnd to link up the YT vids, and the higher-quality videos get embedded and integrated on my somewhat-decent usemewell.com website.

My Web 2.0s, they love it when we add true value by adding content and videos, so think of videos as a re-usable content pieces that are more valuable than we would intially think due to the very fact that they can be used and used again in so many ways without the whole “decreased value over time: thing, as is evident when trying to take written content and using it repeatedly, spun or un-spun.

Use Synnd to link up the Web 2.0s, to get them some attention, link love, social presence, and of course.. to send high-quality signals to your main websites via sticky links link juice.

My guest posts are minimal because the easy acceptance of guest article usually comes from “lesser” sites so what you’re doing there is just adding a smidgen of traffic and higher value is gained via trust association ( association with other related sites via the guest posts).  As you rinse and repeat what’s being depicted here, you can go after bigger game with guest posting because you’ll be able to show prospects for your guest articles that you’re a player in the niche, via having good content on the main site of yours.   Again, content does a TON for you long-term, not just for traffic generation but for “JVs” such as guest article swaps and what-not.

If you do some guest posts, link them up via Synnd to leverage your content more, and to provide some value to the people who hosted your articles… When they see 15 likes and 20 tweets on your article, and their stuff only gets 5-10 max each… they’re gonna love that.

Bookmarks, Tweets, ReTweets, FB likes, Google Plus 1s…spread them out to your newly created sticky links, but remember.. at some point you have to realize that the Web 2.0s won’t need constant major upkeep, you won’t be doing a ton of video creation and submissions, so now we’re back to the focal point of all of this… your main website…

At this point in the scenario I’m depicting… The main website has good valuable content which should be giving visitor value…

The whitehat signals are all there, which starts building the trust needed for long-term stable rankings and traffic…

In Summary, Best Practices for using Synnd:

Focus on your best site(s), expand your whitehat and social presence..get those entities built and link them us same as you would the main site and its inner urls, just remember to spread out the Synnd-juice to as many urls and entities that you built that are link-worthy and worthy of being leveraged.

If/when have a good site with good content, over time it gets easier to get what you want out of the whole enchilada.

 

If you haven’t tried Synnd yet, or want to try it again, please use this affiliate link to save 30 DOLLARS off any Synnd paid level by applying > DISCOUNT_30

Some other notes related to SEO today:

Google is a mess, their product isn’t as good as it used to be, and they’re trying valiantly to take SEO out of the equation via truly weird algorithm effects and changes… but… if you want to play in their backyard then you have to play by house rules, therefore, if you’re going more white-hat than ever before, then get going with your G plus account, flesh out your Google profiles, rel=author your content to protect it from content thieves, and focus on your content more than your promotion OF content.

What normally happens with webmasters is they’ve built sites and consider that as a one-and-done deal because they hit all their keywords being targeted via content published, so now it’s time to link and rank, and if that doesn’t work, then link some more, or just get more aggressive with link building, to the point where there’s less attention being paid towards sticky-links generation, which leads to link velocity campaigns that maintain SERPs, or increase them for the time being.  This also causes un-natural anchor text in links generated and the aggressive link builder can sometimes be digging a hole their websites might not recover from due to being impatient…

So what’s a site-builder supposed to do when their 50-page website HAS covered all the bases content-wise on their websites..?

Let’s take a roofing contractor for example..  exactly how much effort is supposed to be put into writing about roofing nails and shingles and doing pictures of jobs completed and what-not…?  Well, that’s a local SEO business that requires a different set of tactics, but even in this poorly chosen example, there’s room for improvement and added exposure to the target market, and added signals..whether they be social, professional or otherwise will help even a static website rank.  The point here is, if you have a static website that’s OK and it’s even better in a way because your traffic potential is more limited, but the sources for traffic generation and added exposure TO that static website are NOT limited..   There’s other related websites, business directories, citation websites, BetterBusinessBureau, article in local newspaper with online edition, getting links from local institutions like Chamber of Commerce, and so on..

But more likely than not… you are not limited to a Finite number of searches a month with your websites and niches, therefore each new piece of content published is cause for adding to the ever-growing ring of entities and sticky links that can be created…

What about Bing, though..?

OK, forget Google for a minute, let’s work on Bing…  If your focus is here, or if you just don’t want to totally ignore this other search engine, then all the more reason to get a Facebook Page set up…  If you get your readers over to Bing and/or Facebook, Facebook in return will send its users to the Bing search, therefore it’s pretty obvious that a FB page is another entity worth creating, having and maintaining, right?  Just try to remember that an added entity spread gives you the ability to send off more signals to readers and search engines alike…

OK, wrapping this up with a final note that just occurred to me, regarding content..

People who say Content is NOT King..they’re skewing the whole maxim there..  Content converts readers, good content, or BEST content doesn’t always get the rankings it deserves, yes..I get that part..but…

If your website content stinks I’m not linking to you, and I’m not going to accept your guest articles..

Good content leads to happier visitors, better time on site,  and it also has a longer-term effect when it comes to link references, too.  If someone does recommend your website via Twitter or Facebook, or on-site link… and your content stinks and proves displeasing to the referred visitor, that leads to less trust form the referrer site, and the effect sort of spirals out from there after a point.

To write truly valuable content, you sort of have to care, or at least know the subject matter, and while the roofing contractor with a static website might have his SEO company ranking the site with links alone, the roofing contractor with non-static content is generating long-tail content that is “unseen” by the competitors in that niche because they focused on the top 10 major keywords and are/were happy with that and are probably failing to realize that this non-ranked competitor of theirs is acquiring new clients via ranking for keywords over-looked by them.