Online press coverage: publications asking for fee to add backlink. Should I pay?
-
For the last few years I've been gaining steady backlinks for my clients by producing online press releases for them (e.g. publishing results of a survey they commissioned, or their expert opinion on recent news, etc). The online coverage included a backlink naturally or by me just asking the publication nicely. But recently I'm finding that publications are asking for a fee to publish the article (with a link) or they will publish the article for free, but will add a link for a fee. Note: these publications aren't link-building-sites, they're good DA sites such as https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/ and https://www.moneymagpie.com/ (MOZ DAs of 80 and 56 respectively). The fees are around $200 each.
The clients can afford to pay for this type of coverage, but is there a risk in these cases with Google?
-
Yep. Sounds about right to me. I'd also check the relationship of their content to your client's industry. The more relevant the better. If you're paying for it, I'd also request they use specific SEO-friendly anchor text.
_Ex: rather than hyperlinking the root domain (prisonconsultants.co.uk) would be better to hyperlink 'UK prison consultants' or something similar. _
-
It's for a followed link. If I don't pay, then they don't add any link at all (or simply don't publish the article at all).
-
Thanks Ryan. Yes, the impression I get is that they either add a do-follow link for a fee, or it's no link at all.
So I guess a sensible approach might be to simply look at each publication's domain score and the content they publish and make a judgement about whether they look/feel legitimate rather than them looking like they are just in it for selling links?
-
I don't see any 'nofollow' in their external links, which is a good thing.
_Ex: https://www.moneymagpie.com/make-money/how-to-make-money-as-a-prison-consultant - search for the prisonconsultants domain and use inspector to see the source code. _
Spam scores for this site is also low (1%) so I don't think you would be penalized.
From a tracking perspective, you will not see traffic attributed to the referrer because of the rel="noopener noreferrer" tag in the anchor ref, so source will show as 'direct'. I think it would be a good experiment. Let me know how it goes if you do end up doing this, may use for some of my clients as well.
- Ryan
-
Do you wanted to ping google? I mean .... I can read you ask if it is ok to spent 200$ for a followed link? Or is it nofollow, no problemo in this case.
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
-
My Backlinks are indexed in Ahrefs But Not Indexed in MOZ. Why?
I Create backlinks for my website to Increase DA But Backlinks are indexed and Ahrefs Show that backlinks but MOZ is showing backlinks. I am confuse Can you explain?
Link Building | | Seogamesokay1a1 -
Backlink getting from one website sidebar
hello, I am getting backlink from a website sidebar. That website owner add my website link as favourite link on his sidebar widget area. Thus, i am getting backlink from his every page, every post even every tags.(Almost 100 backlink from 1 website) That website has Similar category ِand Similar language my quastion : is it good or bad, is there any risk
Link Building | | cristophare790 -
How many backlinks on start up?
How many backlinks would you say is too many on a start up site. Assume about 300 visitors driven to the site via adwords.
Link Building | | JML11790 -
What is the best pinging service for my backlinks?
I am looking for a good pinging service that indexes my backlinks fast. After doing some research I found linklicious, backlinksindexer and pingfarm among others. My quesiton: do those services still work and if yes, which one is the best one out there at the moment. Thanks for the help.
Link Building | | Romaine0 -
Building backlinks
Hello all! We regularly create articles for clients and post them (along with links to their Websites) on their blogs. We then promote the blog article across social media and other networks to create backlinks / authority for the articles. My question is whether anyone has had any success with an automated submission tool for the articles that delivers good results to "many" directories, social Websites and so on. At the moment, we do everything manually. Thanks!
Link Building | | webindustry0 -
Which backlink will be more useful?
Which bacllink will be most useful and gives me most juice? -link from all pages on the website (in footer), such as menu
Link Building | | ATCnik
-link from all pages on the website (in footer, display:none;), such as menu
-link from home page (footer)
-link from the page which have highest PR (PA) (footer)
-contextual-link from most relevant page on the site0 -
Finding freshest backlinks
Hi everyone, Thanks in advance for your help, I am doing some competitor analysis and noticed that one of our competitors had a massive spike in the number of baclkinks it received in the past month. Is there a tool or a method I can use to determine what links they have picked up in the last few weeks, by filtering by age of link? Many thanks Al
Link Building | | -Al-0