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
-
It was a mix of both. There were some embedded keywords with nofollow links (which I thought were ok given that they were nofollowed). The keywords weren't forced in, just naturally present and then linked, doing so to have a nice balance between follow and nofollow links to the site.
-
Follow-up question on your links that were no followed.
- Were they links within the body of the release that were optimized with anchor text. e.g. Widget Industries Inc (Wii) is proud to announce the latest in wigitized technology, pink widgets! Joe Smith, president of Wii said that, "Our red widgets are a technology leader, we thought pink widgets would be a win win win!" and in your text "pink widgets" was linked to an optimized page for pink widgets on your site.
or
- Was it that you simply had a link under your contact info e.g.
Widget Industries Inc 124 Anyroad, Anytown, State, Zip, www.domain.ext, phone
Just curious the types of links you put into that release.
I have seen talk from various persons saying links in press releases are ok as long as you are not keyword embedding them. Seems silly that you would be penalized for linking to your company in the contact info, but I wanted to see.
Thx,
-
Upon further investigation, I traced back all inbound links created from PRWeb activities and found that most links created were correctly tagged as "nofollow" but it appears certain publishers removed the embedded nofollow tag when publishing. Specifically, pressreleasepoint.com and streetinsider.com are two examples where the same press release that was sent to and published by hundreds of other outlets as nofollow, were published by them with no such tag.
-
Thanks, Federico. I understand your logic. And I'm not arguing it - I just tend to try to "read between the lines" whenever Google makes a statement. I certainly can see the logic of nofollow on a link while a PR sits on PRWeb or another PR site. But if the NYT or Wash. Post decided to run that story (yeah, I know... pretty unlikely ) I have difficulty understanding how Google would hold it against a site if the paper left off the nofollow.
Thanks for the response!
-
They should be no-follow even on those sites that may pick the news up. Like the question says, the response from Google to the reconsideration request mentions links that were on syndicating sites, not on the actual PRWeb site.
And the statement I mentioned was a quote from PRWeb, and it says and I quote "all outgoing syndication" meaning that even those outside PRWeb site are being no-followed.
-
Federico, I'm familiar with the fairly recent statement from Google that links in press releases should be nofollow. In searching for it, I can't locate where it was, but I found this on the support blog: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
This only refers to anchor text rich links, however. Do you have a link that will clarify this?I ask because my impression is that they only need to be nofollow on the PR distribution site. If a journalist picks up the release and runs it, my impression was that it needn't be nofollow then, (unless, of course, we see it's on a low quality site).
Thanks!
-
Links coming from PRWeb and other Press Release websites should be no-follow and Google is quite finicky about this and do not allow anyone to build links through this press release related sites.
Hope this helps!
-
Yes. Links from PRWeb are considered unnatural if not no-followed. You must nofollow all the links in your releases, and in case other sites pickup your PRs, just make sure those links are no followed.
PRWeb claimed they made several changes to comply with Google guidelines, but given the amount of people that use their services only for the SEO effect, it would be hard to believe that they actually force the nofollow to all their releases and the sites that syndicates them.
From PRWeb:
"As far as changes in links and backlinking these changes come from google and apply to all press release distribution. We have been proactive in these changes and marking all outgoing syndication as ‘no-follow’ in accordance with Googles new rules."
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
-
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
Press Release Sites
I don't do that many press releases, but I need to do one soon. I had been using PRweb.com and I see they raised their prices. Are they considered the best online PR site or are there sites people have used that have gotten similar results for less money?? Thanks
Link Building | | ClickIt0 -
Attaining quality links from sites of a different language.
Working on a campaign for a Bed & Breakfast within non-english market. The possibilities of establishing quality links is very limited. However, as it is most of the time, there are plenty of english sites we can target. What is the latest news on achieving link presence on a site that does not match your own site's language? Given this campaign relates to travel; there shouldn't be an issue in achieving links on foreign sites, is there? Does the PR flow through just the same?
Link Building | | SpadaMan0 -
Buying Branded URL's
Hello A competitor of mine has a bunch of branded terms that they purchased, with backlinks point to their main site, is there a specific reason they do this? If I analyze the links on the "branded url" theres it has very little juice/authority? Is it worth it to do this? ex www.siteCOUPON.com. or www.mainsite.biz I have a .ca and something similar to our site re-directing through register.com in Iframe. But would they just be using those terms because it has high search volume? Would this help me in anyway? Thank you!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Link building / baiting in the Google zoo
I work for a consultancy, and in the past most of our links have been acquired by giving away privacy statements etc for websites, including a link back in the body of the document, and making it a licensing requirement that the link be kept. We're launchinga new site. We want this one to be whiter-than-white, and would appreciate some advice on the following options. Option 1: no links Remove the links from the documents, and don't require links for the use of the documents. Leave a non-linking credit in the documents. Perhaps ask nicely for links from other pages. Option 2: links on other pages Remove the links from the documents, but make it a licensing requirement that users will link to our site from another page on their site. I appreciate that most won't, but some will. Option 3: retain the links Keep the links in the document, using domain name (with and without http and www) and business name anchor text. Option 4: script the links Use scripts to generate randomized links in the documents, so that no two are the same, but with relevant linking text for the most part. We're risk-adverse with the new site, and it will pick up some links "naturally". We're therefore tending toward option 1, on the basis that it may well generate as many links as option 2. Which of these options would you choose? Are there any other options we should be considering?
Link Building | | seqal0 -
Outbound links and their pro's and con's
So I was wondering if there was a general consensis regarding the amount of outbound links you have coming from your domain to other domains and if there is a correlation between the more you have going out, the more (for want of a better word) damage you can do to your domain. EG: is a site with good domain authority better to keep the short leash on handing out links to external sites? Does this make the link juice from the site more valuable?
Link Building | | Daylan0 -
Google not providing all competitor site's external incoming links?
I heard Google is not providing all of a competitor's site's external links, speculated as protecting their privacy. But that Yaho still provides the complete list of their recognized links. (I assume they mean when using the term 'link:url') Has anyone else heard this claim? Is there a way around this check?What sources do you use at SEOMoz for your Pro reports? thanks, geo
Link Building | | rhawk0 -
Google dosent care that much about links lately?
Google dosent care that much about links lately or crawl started beeing more intelegent about it? Do you feel any changes?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0