Dofollow Links on Press Releases: Good or Bad?
-
Hello,
I know that Google says that you are supposed to make anchored text links nofollow on press releases, but what about just putting the site url itself (example.com) and making it dofollow?
Is that okay?
-
Well said as usual, Takeshi.
Hell I'm thinkin' about skipping the PR all together now and just sending this article out to some online publications instead... we'll see.
-
I've never heard of anyone getting penalized for a press release link. Ever.
That being said, Google has warned against dofollow links in press releases, and using anchor text links can put you at risk of Penguin. If you are just using your URL, you should be perfectly safe for now, but there is always the risk that Google may change things later.
The actual link juice that these links pass isn't very significant, so it may just be safest to nofollow the link, depending on your risk tolerance. If you want dofollow backlinks, there are much cheaper and effective ways of obtaining links that actually matter.
-
I appreciate what you are saying - so my gut feeling would be if you looked at it from the point of someone that never read this sort of thing then you would post it and not worry about no follow but your link would most likely be www.yourdomain.com, so I think this would be ok as it is more natural - though at the end of the day this is just my opinion and your choice as no one truly knows the impact. I would still think about looking outside the box and seeing how you can push the exposure of this article to gain you more authority online.
-
Excellent advice and I lean white-hat 99.9% of the time. I think this is a bit grey-hattish though.
The conspiracy theorist in me would say that Cutts would emphasize this even if it wasn't an actual target of their algorithm. I think at this point he has everyone scared and there's a chance that he could say this and not put anything into action. Maybe he'll come back and check it out again 3 months later and see if there has been progress made.. You know? Again, conspiracy at best.
The sites I'm referring to have incredibly thin content and a terrible link profile. Yet they're ranking on page 1 for pretty competitive keywords.. Best content I see on there is prweb or marketwire and it makes me go O_o
Thing is we do build links naturally and appreciate doing so. Our Press Release is actually news-worthy as far as our company goes (it's the release of a new service we've been developing) and if we never read any of this stuff we wouldn't think twice of just throwing a link to the relevant page discussing our new service offerings.. bah.
Nonetheless I think your points are sound and I'm leaning toward playing it safe as well.
-
"I see SO so many sites ranking with nothing but press releases and garbage article submissions... What does it all mean? I don't know. But I do know we are working on a press release to go out this week and I need to make a decision on this...hmmm"
Depends how safe you want to play it and how strong the content of your press release is! How many press releases have you done in the past with followed anchor text links? Do you have a strong well balanced link profile? I see sites that are still getting away with using this practice but they are in for pain when Google finalizes how it will deal with those abusing its latest guidelines - I don't think Matt Cutts and others at Google would empathize this if it wasn't worth taking note of! As with many manipulative practices those committing them don't suffer straight away but when they do get caught it is usually painful...
I would opt to play the long game and look at using your press releases as a way of attracting more attention that will lead to links and social shares rather than using them for direct followed links to increase authority..
-
"Remember the main aim of your press release is to gain your brand exposure"
WELL SAID SIR!
I really like this the most.
As for whether or not to nofollow, I'm entirely on the fence here. I know what Google says but I don't know what Google does. Tom Roberts, where are you? I saw your comment on the seland thread referenced here and am wondering if you went and built those thousand free PR links for your client??!
I see SO so many sites ranking with nothing but press releases and garbage article submissions... What does it all mean? I don't know. But I do know we are working on a press release to go out this week and I need to make a decision on this...hmmm..
-
I think that none keyword anchor text such as your websites URL is safer if you are going to have a followed link from a press release. Although I would be careful if you are creating a press release to gain authority from the link(s) in it with the recent changes by Google. Remember the main aim of your press release is to gain your brand exposure and even if the link from it are no followed if you do it well and what you have published is news worthy you are likely to pick up followed links and social shares from other sources indirectly anyway.
Always a good recap I think - http://searchengineland.com/google-links-in-a-press-release-should-be-nofollowed-like-advertisements-168339
-
I'd disagree. This is obvious depending on where you release it. The new guideline does state optimized anchor text and if you are just linking to your homepage, that is fine.
As long as you are not optimizing the anchor text, it would be alright if you just link to your homepage with just the URL.
-
Make it nofollow. They are pretty clear with their explanation
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do orphan pages take away link juice?
Hi, Just wondering about this whether the orphan pages take away any link juice? We been creating lot of them these days only to link from external sites as landing pages on our site. So, not linking from any part of our website; just linking from other websites. Also, will they get any link juice if they are linked from our own blog-post? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Seeing some really bad sites that ranked in my niche years ago reaching 1st page
It started after the update about 4 websites form the 1st page dropped to the 2nd and 4 of the other sites just popped back to the 1st page and the bad part is that the Da and inbound links of these sites are really bad, so my question is must we just wait this out till Google realises how bad these site are and some of them haven't been updated in years links broken i can go on and on. what these sites have is just the age of the domains, but can this really be the main focus of these results?
Algorithm Updates | | johan80 -
Footer menu links: Header tags or list items?
Hi, I would like to know header tags (h5 or h6) or list items ( ) works better for footer menu links for the best linking structure. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Link reclamation and many 301 redirect to one URL
We have many incoming links to a non existing pages of a sub-domain, which we are planning to take down or redirect to a sub-directory. But we are not ready to loose pagerank or link juice as many links of this sub-domain are referred from different external links. It's going to be double redirect obviously. What is the best thing we can go to reclaim these links without loss of link juice or PR? Can we redirect all these links to same sub-domain and redirect the same sub-domain to sub-directory? Will this double redirect works? Or Can we redirect all these links to same sub-domain and ask visitors to visit sub-directory, manual redirection? How fair to manually redirect visitors? Any other options? Thanks, Satish
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Parallax Scrolling when used with “hash bang” technique is good for SEO or not?
Hello friends, One of my client’s website http://chakracentral.com/ is using Parallax scrolling with most of the URLs containing hash “#” tag. Please see few sample URLs below: http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock4 (service page)
Algorithm Updates | | chakraseo
http://chakracentral.com/#panelBlock3 (about-us page) I am planning to use “hash bang” technique on this website so that Google can read all the internal pages (containing hash “#” tag) with the current site architecture as the client is not comfortable in changing it. Reference: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/getting-started#2-set-up-your-server-to-handle-requests-for-urls-that-contain-escaped_fragment But the problem that I am facing is that, lots of industry experts do not consider parallax websites (even with hash bang technique) good for SEO especially for mobile devices. See some references below: http://searchengineland.com/the-perils-of-parallax-design-for-seo-164919
https://moz.com/blog/parallax-scrolling-websites-and-seo-a-collection-of-solutions-and-examples So please find my queries below for which I need help: 1. Will it be good to use the “hash bang” technique on this website and perform SEO to improve the rankings on desktop as well as mobile devices?
2. Is using “hash bang” technique for a parallax scrolling website good for only desktop and not recommended for mobile devices and that we should have a separate mobile version (without parallax scrolling) of the website for mobile SEO?
3. Parallax scrolling technique (even with "hash bang") is not at all good for SEO for both desktop as well as mobile devices and should be avoided if we want to have a good SEO friendly website?
4. Any issue with Google Analytics tracking for the same website? Regards,
Sarmad Javed0 -
Links from high Domain authority sites
I have a relatively uncompetitive niche ranking around number 6 for my keywords. Would getting a few links from some Moz DA 80-90 and DA 90-100 sites help my rankings a lot? Some of the pages linking to me from these sites might be deep in the site pretty far away from the home page with pagerank of "unranked" or a grayed out bar and these pages linking to me might not have many links at all other than from the internal links of the site itself and would have a Moz PA of 10 or 20. Would these pass much pagerank or authority to my site or would they not be worth going after? These links to my site would be in context on a blog. Thanks mozzers!
Algorithm Updates | | Ron100 -
Considering the Panda algorithm updates, would you recommend reducing high amounts of inbound links from a single website?
My website has a significant number of inbound links (1,000+) from a single website, due to a sponsorship level contribution. Both my website and the other are authorities in the industry and in search results (PR of 5). Since even ethical websites can suffer a penalty from each iteration of Panda, I'm considering significantly removing the number of links from this website. Do you think that measurable change would be seen favorably by Google or would the drop in links be detrimental?
Algorithm Updates | | steelintheair0 -
How much posting product links to Social Media affect your ranking? Any use ?
Google has Google Plus. Facebook has partnership with Bing. How much social media affect your ranking ?
Algorithm Updates | | rahijain0