Are PR releases good for Link Building?
-
I'm having a bit of a conundrum with Press Releases:
I recently sent a press release on PRWeb (which I personally think is just "average" compared to others as it focuses mainly on the CBS network and is not focused at all unless you pay for an expensive release) and got over 100 incoming links from high PR news sites (according to Webmaster Tools) but these links had PRWeb in subtitle, so for all I know these were syndicated releases and not "Pick up By" as PRWeb reports.
- Will this affect Page Rank value or rankings for any keywords?
- Are these links treated only as temporary links or permanent back links? (I know sometimes they appear in Google News or Yahoo News, but disappear the next day)
Was it valuable to the company?
Our business is in health sector exclusively on East Coast U.S. and the release was seen all over the world and not one of the links coming back was from a health-related section. They were high rank online sites, but is there value in such links?
added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)
-
Do you have some reference?
Here's what I found out last night which is contradictory to what you said:
added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)
-
Nope, new landing page is not that much required. However, since it is a paid promotion kind of thing, you need to add no follow tag against the anchor text if you wish to be on the safe side.
-
That's a great point about anchor text. Would you recommend linking to a different/new landing page?
-
_I hate the idea of considering Press Release as another form of Link Building. It has a simple and straightforward purpose and that is – helping you promote a new service or product. So, when you are trying to promote your website via Press Release, you need to make sure that you are not making any kind of compromise on the quality front. And for God’s sake do not use exact matched anchor in the press releases as it may make your website more vulnerable to algorithmic updates. _
-
The backlinks from the duplicate content press releases that were reposted by a network of news sites will not help you. That is unnatural duplicate content with the lack of natural anchor text variances. The recent Penguin and Panda updates targeted this exact sort of thing.
Now, if you can get real editorial links from reporters that makes the whole thing worth while!
-
David, like I said though... we did get an additional 100+ link backs from high PR sites (6+7) that were in the PRweb network where the release was distributed to.
Yes, we did get interest from reporters and got interviewed but I was asking about those 100+ links from the PRweb network.
-
The short answer is those links are useless and will not benefit your company in any meaningful way.
Press releases by themselves should not be considered a good link building tactic. Press release ARE effective when you use them to promote something you have done that is newsworthy. In this case, the press release is a hook to catch a journalist and hopefully get positive PR and interviews that link back to you. It is not the link from the press release that helps you, but the editorial link from a highly authoritative site that helps. Unless you have something exciting enough to share with a friend at a bar, you probably should not be using a press release for it.
If you would like to read additionally on this, check out this article:
http://searchengineland.com/how-prweb-helps-distribute-crap-into-google-news-sites-140597
-
If they got picked up by media and reworded then that is great for seo if they just got picked up as is it doesn't help seo so much.
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
-
Link Building in Person
Someone answered me on Google plus but just to confirm. If I have a pet shop in one city and ranking well local. But want to rank even better in the surrounding cities. Is it a good idea to go to different pet shops in different cities and asked to trade links and help each other out . Will that be beneficial for my pet shop or not?
Link Building | | LittleDog0 -
DA vs PA when building links
When building links to your site from other sites, what is more important or what weights more heavily? Say a site has a DA of 20 and PA of 34 for that page I want a link from. Say another site has the revese, a DA of 34 and a PA of 20. All things being equal, which site's link to me would be better? The one with a higher DA or the one with a higher PA for the on the specific page I would get a link?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
HELP! New Link Building
Any recommendations on where to start with link building for an automotive dealer site? Our ultimate goal is to drive traffic to the inventory pages and increase lead submissions. Should we build links to new and used inventory? Also, any recommendations regarding anchor text would be extremely helpful! Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AMSI0 -
Link building for big webite. 2500+ posts.
We run a big kids website: http://mocomi.com/ and have over 2500+ posts. Its about 2 years old now. No SEO was done on this site until the last two months when I was hired for SEO. I divided the SEO into 2 parts - on-page and off-page SEO. For the last 1.5 months I did the on-page fixing - correcting URLs, optimizing posts with best keywords, adding meta titles and descriptions to each post, 301 redirects etc. Now that on-page optimization is over, I have to do the off-page thing - build links. But with so much content I'm confused on how should I go forward. Among the 2500 posts I have listed down 700 posts that have real traffic potential so I'm planning to build links to these. But 700 is a huge number which includes our home page, 50+ category pages and rest are posts. So the question is how should I build links to these? Should I pick up each page and build links to it and move to next or as some people suggested, build most links to home page and category pages and that'll pass pagerank to my posts and help them rank. What link building plan would you suggest? Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | Mocomi0 -
Link Building
Guest blogging, guest blogging, guest blogging. Since I started my career as a "brand manager" I've heard the term "guest blogging" at least a million times. So I've put a fair amount of energy into it and for a long time it worked beautifully, still is in many ways. However, in the last month or two nearly every blog I have contacted about guest blogging has said that "due to an increase in guest blogging request we are now charging a fee of x" so on and so forth. Doesn't paying for links put you at great risk for being deindexed? And can't bloggers get in trouble for this as well? Do they not know, not care or think it doesn't apply to them? And if it's a sponsored post, say I send them $100 of free product and pay them $100 to do it, isn't that just hiring someone to talk about my brand? Why would google punish me for that? Anyway around it? Thank you so much! I look forward to your suggestions/advice/criticism.
Link Building | | WNL0 -
What is the best white hat seo link building strategy?
My goal is to build links that comply with Google's Quality Guidelines. I am wondering what is the best way to approach webmasters or bloggers about submitting guest posts or writing content. I have done a competitive analysis, and have a list of potential link sources, but I am not sure what approach to take next. Any advice or strategy would be appreciated.
Link Building | | djlittman0 -
Please give me some ideas on my link building campaign
Hello everyone, My website is on Pharmacy schools. I just sell leads to universities. Well, I am unable to find sites which are related to my niche. Can i get links from Unrelated sites like Health? and other educational sites (other than pharmacy)? I can see all .edu and gov sites when i type in Google. Ofcourse, they wont sell any links to my low quality sites. Help me out in finding those sites which sells advertising spots and 100% related to my niche 🙂 thanks.
Link Building | | artemmin0 -
What are good sites to get no-follow links from?
Yahoo Answers is a good one. What other sites have you guys used to get no-follow links? Blog comments excluded from this.
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0