Requesting a Link from a major newspaper
-
Hi,
One of my clients was interviewed by LA Times for an article that came out yesterday. The article is online with the company name but no link. Does anybody have any advice on the best way to get a major newspaper like that to add a follow link? I appreciate any advice!
Thanks,
Clay
-
Everyone has great suggestions!
It's also important to look at how that publication does links and make sure that you aren't pushing them to do something they won't do for anyone. Recently, I was working with a publication that was happy to link to how-to or further information articles, but did not want to link directly to any brand mentions.
-
Definitely agree with Ryan - relationships are key!
Beyond that, you can start building those relationships on a small scale by finding the journalist and/or company in question, following them on twitter or linkedin, sharing their content, etc. then continue by providing comments / feedback or engaging in conversations. You never know, they might start remembering you after a while.
Overall, though, working with PR is definitely a win/win in any situation to fostering a natural link earning campaign.
-
A big part of PR is the relationship--heck that's half of it.. ;^)--so reaching out to the reporter with an email like, "Thanks so much about your great story on Company B. I'm working with them in a PR capacity (ONLY IF TRUE) and am happy to help with any other inquires. Here's the company website (URL) and press kit page (page with photos, contact info, basic stats, approved quotes, etc.) which you can use at any time. If you see anything missing that you'd like on there just let me know. For example, if there's a certain company boilerplate that the LA Times likes to add to these articles, [Company Name, Employee Count, Website, Founded Date,] I can be sure to get you that. Thanks again!"
You get the idea. You're not even asking for the link directly but instead building your relationship with them as a contact. The more you make it as a way to make their job easier, the better.
Again though, only do this in your capacity of PR relationship with the company. If it's beyond your scope and they have a PR person, forward along the article to them and say, "It'd be great if they linked to the company's website! (URL)" That person should already have the relationship in place.
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
-
Promoting A Guide for links
Hi everyone, I'm formulating a content idea to provide the Internet's most comprehensive guide for our related field and wanted to know how people would promote a guide if they were producing one. Really the topic of choice doesn't need to be mentioned, so I'll leave that out so answers are open and can help a range of people attempting to do a similar thing. One of the goals is to of course produce more unique and useful content for our site (helping our ranking), which will help people out who have an interest or question related to our topic, but once the content is on the site, how would you go about getting links towards to guide? Would you contact websites that have written about similar content in the past and ask if they would add a link to the guide in their already existing content? Or would you ask them to bear it in mind for reference purposes in future content? Would you visit guest posting? Obviously one of the goals of the content is for links, and that will be the driver behind whether or not the content is produced. I firstly need to show that there are potential links we can gain almost immediately after the content is ready. From there, I'm hoping the content will promote itself, with people referencing the content on forums and articles when questions are raised. However, for the content to get in front of the influencers (those who would answers the questions on forums or write articles about the subject) the content needs to be visible - i.e rank or be mentioned from a highly visible source. Any ideas or comments from people who have promoted guides successfully before will be extremely welcome. Note: This is more the promoting of content and not really related to the research to find out which content to produce. Thanks.
Link Building | | purpleindigo0 -
Footer Links when is it to much?
Hi, so iv been searching around the internet, and I have come up with the general consensus that footer links that link to external sites are bad? Can anyone verify this statement? Also when do Footer links become spammy, and what is your opinion on site wide footer links? I have also read that if you are a bigger brand, that you most likely would be able to get away with some more things(such as, linking to external sites) thanks for your help. Peter
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
Buy links
I know that many of you are against the whole thing with buying links. Your feelings put aside. Will it be better for my site to buy links or even do link exchange? Haven´t the crawlers been thought by now how to find these untrue links? I have read somewhere that the stop after 100 links, aren´t they smarter than that?
Link Building | | mato0 -
Changing links
Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.
Link Building | | pauledwards0 -
Should I link to my Press Releases?
I just created my first press release at prlog.org using the free account, which lets you have one outgoing followed link. Question: Should I link to my press releases from my web site? I made the mistake of doing link exchanges in the past, and worried Google would detect it as a link exchange. It would be nice to link to the press releases on my site while still getting the benefits of having an incoming link from a site with PR 6. Is prlog.org a good site for press releases? Is there another one you recommend that is free or inexpensive? Is there any benefits to using multiple press release sites, with different content on each site? Thanks!!!
Link Building | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
Best way to create deep links - Building links to inner pages
I am looking for a cost effective way to rank 30 inner pages, which are all low competition, long tail keywords. What type of links are the best for this type of project, social bookmarks, article marketing, high pr links, etc.... Also who would be good to hire for this type of project?
Link Building | | newcitymoving0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2 -
.edu links
Hi mozzers, I've had some great success reaching out to many .edu webmasters. Often they are professors and such. My question is, i'm guessing during the summer holiday period, reaching out to these webmasters won't be so fruitful. I'm not in the US and was wondering when the US Summer holidays are for universities over there? Also, does anyone have experience outreaching to these webmasters over the holidays? Peter
Link Building | | PeterM221