Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Mat Release SEO Impact
-
How do Mat Releases affect SEO?
Does google recognize that your are syndicating duplicate content even if the content is being syndicated across top media outlets?
Do these back links still carry any authority or can we even be penalized for the duplicate content?
I came across mat releases here:
An example of article syndication outlets:
Guaranteed Placement on 800+ Media Sites. Generate guaranteed article placement on more than 800 respected online media outlets. Our digital distribution network includes: The LA Times; The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS Online); Las Vegas Review Journal; Hearst media sites for the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Connecticut Post and others; local TV news affiliate sites from ABC, CBS, FOX and others; and hundreds more trusted sites.
-
I think it depends a lot on quality, honestly - a "mat release" could just be glorified article marketing, if the sources are questionable. It's easy for someone to make big promises, but odds are you won't be on the LA Times, you'll be on the "hundreds more trusted sites", especially if the price-tag is too good to be true.
I disagree re: first-indexed always winning. Authority can overwhelm that, in some cases, and a major news outlet could get credit for your content. Google is still not great at this. Now, if it's linked back, as you said, that definitely helps a lot.
So, let's say you post something and it goes out to 800 sites. Typically, some of those sites will be flagged as duplicates and filtered out. Yours may not be, but if enough of them are, those links will lose value, too (a non-indexed page doesn't carry link equity). So, even if you get credit, the links could be of limited value.
Now, if you actually could get on 800 top media sites, that may be different, but if it's really syndicated it's not going to get top billing. So, it's not just a matter of the sites, but where on the sites you appear. Are you on CNN's home-page or buried on some citizen reporter opinion mini-blog?
I just tend to hear a lot of too-good-to-be-true in this, honestly.
-
A mat release is still going to get indexed and counted for. The first page it gets indexed on gets all the credit. Anything after that is duplicate if it does not trackback to the first piece of content.
Unless I am mistaken, I don't think the search engines are able to differentiate this type of content.
-
My understanding of a Mat Release is that it is an article (about our company) that we write and distribute to editors to release when they need a story to fill in the gaps. The story would include a link to our site, so there is no "original version". If this story is published by 100's of different media outlets, do we get the benefit of those 100s of back links? Or because they are all publishing the same story, do these back links not really count?
-
As long as the syndicated articles are tracking back (linking back) to the original version it will not count a duplicate.
The first page to get indexed will not suffer from syndication regardless of track backs. Only the site that syndicates needs to track back or it wil look like duplicate text.
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
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | | Andy-H0 -
Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency
Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
Link Building | | wonderd24
Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃
"1 -
Do links from such sites as TripAdvisor give any weight or support for SEO
And what about other sites like quora or other niche forums/blogs where one might leave answers, with a link to their profile, which has a link back to the owner's website? _Cindy
Link Building | | cceebar1 -
How relevant are citations to SEO?
'How much do citations help your seo in view of the direction that google seems to be headed where content is king? Should the citations not be relevant to your site?'.
Link Building | | arthureray0 -
Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link
Hello, I got an affiliate program on my website, that redirects the affiliate link to the main site like: site.com/ads/aff_code/ -> site.com/ (The redirect is done using a 301 status code.) On the redirect process the site stores a cookie to track the affiliate sale. Will Google and others SE follow this permanent redirect, transferring the relevance of this affiliate link to my main site? In other words, if an affiliate does something wrong (like spams), does the bad reputation will be transferred to my main site? Is there a better way to do that from a SEO standpoint? Thanks,
Link Building | | darkmediagroup0 -
Listly and SEO
We use listly quite a lot. A few of our lists get embedded in other sites. A lot of the embedded lists have links back to us. Is there any seo benefit on this, or will just one of the sites count ? Isn't this just duplicate content ? Wondering what your thoughts are.
Link Building | | MarkQJones0 -
Do inbound links to download .exe files improve SEO?
The site, (http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/) sells barcode software. They also provide free printer drivers on their site. During a recent domain change (before I started helping them), they began looking at their inbound links and found quite a few external sites linking to these download files. However, when someone clicks on the link on one of these sites (i.e. http://vvs-motor.com.ua/barcode-printer-drivers) it immediately begins downloading the file (i.e. http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/drivers/archive/7.2/7.2.4/Unimark_7.2.4.exe) without taking the visitor to the site. The owner would greatly prefer this traffic to engage with the site and is considering 301 redirecting those download links to an actual webpage. Question: Would this look suspicious to Google? Would this have a positive or negative effect on SEO? The last factor to consider is that many of these sites will likely just recreate the list based on the new links at some future point. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | motosantiago0 -
Does MerchantCircle.com have any SEO benefit?
We have created accounts for several of our clients at www.MerchantCircle.com directory and created blogs, coupons, etc for them but we did not get any single click or benefit from merchantcircle.com at all. We wasted a lot of time and also monthly membership fees. I really would like to hear your experiences. Did you have any positive results from merchantcircle.com ? Did they lose their importance after Panda update? Their MOZrank also shows ZERO and we are considering cancelling our accounts with them. Thanks for your advice and help, Lewis
Link Building | | CertifiedSEO0