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 -
Can affiliate links benefit or hurt my seo?
I have just signed up with a company to do affiliate marketing for my site. I am now in the process of reaching out to publishers and seeing who will publish my link on their site. Is there any benefit in terms of seo for having these links, and can there be any potential downside to these links as well?
Link Building | | whiteonlySEO0 -
What are the SEO implications of high quality backlinks from US-based websites to UK-based websites?
Hi everyone, quick question I hope someone could help me with: We're representing a client based in the UK. As part of their overall strategy we've been linkbuilding. At the moment, about 80/90% of the links we've gained come from UK-based sites, with 10/20% coming from US-based websites. The US based websites are very good (think New York Times and genuine, relevant blogs with good readerships). An external search analyst/consultant has contacted the client to say that the US links will be harming the site, because the links are from websites in the US and not the UK. We believe that if 80/90% of the links were from the US this could indeed cause harm as it could indicate to search engines that our client is in the US when it's not (which might compromise their chance of ranking in .co.uk versions of search engines) however because it's only 10/20%, and because the linking sites are very good, we believe that they will getting all of the benefits of the positive metrics without any meaningful negatives. We just wanted to get a few opinions on this to see if people think that we're mistaken, and would be glad to hear any opinions contrary to our own.
Link Building | | GoUp0 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
Toxic Link Removal-Better to Pay an SEO Firm or Can I Do It Myself?
Hi Jen: Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains. The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request. Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest software of tools for doing so? Thanks so much.
Link Building | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Links from PRWeb press release violate Google's quality guidelines?
My site has had a manual action performed on it by Google indicating that I have inbound links that fall outside of their quality guidelines. I did my own research, found what I thought was the issue, had the links removed and requested reconsideration. Google's response surprised me in that they highlighted two specific pages with links that were the direct result of valid press releases and a publisher picking up our release off a wire service. Has anyone else seen this occur? Anyone had a case successfully reconsidered? I realize that I don't need to do anything at all as the manual action is in effect and will stay that way, discounting those links, but I would rather a) not have any manual action against my site and b) know for the future so this doesn't happen again. Also, is this applicable for guest blog posts, which effectively create the same type of backlinks? Thanks
Link Building | | barberm1 -
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 -
Creating A Scholarship For SEO
My client is a Law Firm just outside of Tampa, and I am trying to get her keyword phrase: "Tampa Car Accident Attorney" in the top 3. One of the strategies I want to use is to create a scholarship for "Tampa Area Students and how a car accident impacted their life" or "Tampa Area Students and how they think they can decrease car accidents." (that's still be worked on). Once the scholarship is created, I want to put it on our Tampa Car Accident Attorney page, and get other companies to link to that page. My question is what links should we go after? Because that will tailor it to who we give the scholarship to. We could give it to a University of South Florida student, and get one .edu link. We could do the same thing for the University of Tampa, or Stetson Law School, but we'd only be getting one link from each of them. If we set it up for high schoolers, we can get more links from the community and schools, but I'm not sure high school .edu links matter all that much. Is 10 high school .edu links as important as 1 college .edu link? I don't know. If anyone has had an experience with this or any insights, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Link Building | | KempRugeLawGroup1