New Penguins and Panda's coming, fasten your seatbelt...

Interesting. What's your view on article syndication? We've had a few requests to do it when we write articles for other sites' blogs.

Most seem to think that if you indicate that the article is syndicated, it won't be a problem.

At the moment, I'm trying to figure out the value of putting blogs on our site compared to writing for other people's sites and backlinking in the author statement.

I guess a lot depends on the value of the site you're blogging on. Ezine doesn't seem too specialist so why try to target ones that are more relevant to our line of work like manufacturing and small business sites.

Hmmm, I've never been sure about this. As I'm a naturally crap blogger/article writer, it's never been an issue, but the whole duplicate penalty thing would worry me, regardless of any syndication clause.

But I guess using the rel=author tag could be a way of safeguarding yourself, if any syndicated articles carries this.

Guest blogging on the other-hand sounds more viable, if you are targeting authoritive sites, with relevant content. This seems to be the natural route now for link building. Researched and well thought out, rather than blasting out syndicated content, but thats just me, and I'm no expert in syndincation

Thanks for advice.

This is what my marketing consultant had to say about it:

With anchor text links, you need to make sure that you get a really good spread of keywords. Too many inbound links (or even on your site) on the same keyword phrases e.g. "stock control software" is bad for SEO.

Anchor text with branded terms are often safest - but ultimately let others choose for you. Don't ask, let them decide.

A website would definitely benefit from more generic articles too, that aren't just about your product or service. You should just make 1 in 3 or 4 an exclusive for another site and not publish it on your own blog.

Yep anchor text is a big Penguin target. It's a shame as this used to work well, but it's abused, and is unnatural, which is what Googles point is. Links pointing to you should be natural, and people naturally tend to add a brand term as the anchor text, which is why this is safe.

Disagree about internal links though, based on past and current experience, but always receptive to evidence