What is the best way to allow content to be used on other sites for syndication without taking the chance of duplicate content filters

[irvingw]

Cookstr appears to be syndicating content to shape.com and mensfitness.com

a) They integrate their data into partner sites with an attribution back to their site and skinned it with the partners look.

b) they link the image back to their image hosted on cookstr

c) The page does not have microformats or as much data as their own page does so their own page is better SEO.

Is this the best strategy or is there something better they could be doing to safely allow others to use our content, we don't want to share the content if we're going to get hit for a duplicate content filter or have another site out rank us with our own data. Thanks for your help in advance!

their original content page:

http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta

their syndicated content pages:

http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta

[irvingw]

thanks for taking the time, excellent response.

what we are hoping to do is to provide a SEO lite version of our content out for syndication that has the ability to rank but not out rank us.

the partners we are speaking with only want to do business with us if these pages can be indexed in Google and have the chance of ranking. cookstr seems to be accomplishing this with stronger SEO on their page and weaker syndicated content on partner sites ensuring that cookstr comes up first in searches.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

So you want to create duplicate content on the web?

If you're syndicating content, the reason you're doing it is to provide this content to the readership of these other sites. If someone searches, and discovers this content in the search engines, you want the attribution of that content to come from the original source, you guys. Why would you want some other website to be discovered as a result of content you created and syndicated to them? If you want the credit to go to them, and the engines to bring visitors to their site for content you created, that's why you should write a guest post or column and put it on their site. But if you're syndicating content and want it to show up on other sites, I think it makes sense to actually have the canonical tag pointing to your site, indicating to the search engines that you are the authentic source of that piece of content. The other site's readers will still enjoy the content on that site, you'll just be credited for it in the search engines. To me, this is a win win situation where everyone benefits. The other site benefits because it gets free content to give to their readership, and you get attribution for it in the engines and the additional exposure to the other sites visitors.

[irvingw]

but that would result in the partner site not being indexed i believe, we want the partner sites to rank or at be indexed and have the possibility of ranking. if we were to add the canonical to our site we might as well just noindex their pages i think

[Mark_Ginsberg]

One thing I would add is see if you can get the sites taking the content to implement a cross domain canonical tag. Meaning, have them point to your original page of the content in the canonical tag. This will indicate to the search engines that they are attributing the content to you. This should serve as the clearest signal to the engines who to attribute the content to - it's great that there is attribution in the text itself, but the best method of giving the correct attribution would be with the canonical tag.

Hope this helps