Syndication is one of those tactics that works brilliantly when done right and quietly destroys your rankings when done wrong. The difference is mostly canonical-tag mechanics and timing. Every platform handles canonical tags differently. Medium honors them, LinkedIn doesn't, Substack needs a hidden setting, dev.to wants front-matter. And the timing matters: if you cross-post to LinkedIn on the same day your original publishes, Google sometimes indexes LinkedIn first and your domain gets buried.
The Syndication Planner builds a per-article plan that handles both problems. Paste the canonical URL, pick your platforms, get a stagger schedule with canonical setup for each.
What you actually get
For each platform you select:
- Canonical strategy. The specific UI path or front-matter syntax to set the canonical tag back to your domain. Medium wants you to use Import Story; LinkedIn doesn't honor canonical at all (so you wait); Substack hides it under Settings → Advanced; dev.to is front-matter only.
- Rewrite brief. Every platform has its own voice register. LinkedIn wants professional + first-person. Medium wants a curiosity hook. Dev.to wants TL;DR + code examples. The brief is the three-line brief you'd give an editor.
- Stagger day. Substack and dev.to can publish same-day (they honor canonical). LinkedIn waits 5-7 days minimum. That's how long Google needs to cement the original as the authoritative copy. Reddit waits 3 days. Hacker News is an opportunistic submission, not a canonical syndication.
- Tracking URL. UTM-tagged so you can attribute which platform drove which click back to the original.
The rewrite prompt
The tool also emits an LLM prompt that takes your canonical URL, the platforms you picked, and the rewrite briefs. And asks Claude to write the per-platform versions. Headline variants, a ≤ 60-word dek, the first three sentences of the body, the one-line CTA back to canonical. Same content, platform-native voice, honored canonicals.
Why the stagger is non-negotiable
The cannibalization case: you publish at yourdomain.com on Monday morning. You cross-post to LinkedIn at Monday noon. LinkedIn has massive indexing priority; Google sometimes picks its version as canonical within hours. Your domain now looks like the duplicate. If you'd waited a week. Or better, two. Google's already indexed the original, and the LinkedIn repost gets treated as a syndication instead of a competing source.
Where this fits with the other tools
If you're running distribution at scale. One article hitting eight platforms across a week. Pair this with the Newsletter Swap Matchmaker for the email side and the Mega Analyzer to verify the canonical stayed intact after your CMS rendered the post.
Chapter 12 of The $20 Dollar Agency. Content Syndication. Is the reference for the canonical mechanics. Chapter 50 of The $100 Network. Social Distribution and Content Repurposing. Covers how to run the stagger across a network of sites.