Thinking about using a Public Relations firm to post articles
-
How much value is there in links from articles sent to places like Yahoo and Topix. Various news sources. I have about 20 related topics we can publish articles on in order to try and get some higher rankings from a few key word phrases. Is 4 a month okay? Would 1 a day be okay. Just looking to help to compete with the big guys in my industry.
Any past experience or advice is appreciated.
Boo
-
Definitely a great long term strategy! Both velocity and acceleration will be a welcome addition to our new site! Being new I wanted to get a few quick links out there. The domain authority for the PR company is in the 90"s and mine is only in the 20's...right now. I was thinking it might help in the short run a little. My blog is not going to be in place for another 4-6 months so maybe I can do this as a precursor just one time, although after reading your comments I am inclined to do much more research and am leaning towards not doing it.
Thanks for your feedback!
-
My approach to this is very different. Instead of writing articles and distributing them out to get links, I publish all of my content on my own site. This makes my site the link magnet instead of creating other sites that will compete with me.
If your method of getting links is to publish content on other sites then you must sustain that effort perpetually to keep your link count growing. However, if you publish all of the content on your site then your site grows and grows in mass and as it grows there are more link targets and the velocity of your link acquisition grows over time with the same level of effort from you.
There are two risks with this method. 1) it has a very slow start, and 2) you must be able to produce linkworthy content. If you can't you will fail, but the better you are at producing that type of content you will have velocity and something more important... acceleration.
Finally, although there are some good PR firms out there, many of them are nothing more than spammers who wear suits to work. Be careful if you go that route.
-
You are correct. They are way ahead in the broader categories but we will be at different starting points and heading to pristine waters. By they time they realize what happened hopefully we will have outdistanced them by a long ways and they will have to do the catching up.
We will be using some of the same mediums but will control for different keywords in a more verticle market. We will go deeper and hit more long tail. By the time they see they are behind in these areas we will hopefully be the one that is far ahead.
-
I have about 20 related topics we can publish articles on in order to try and get some higher rankings from a few key word phrases. Is 4 a month okay?
Who are you trying to defeat?
Let's say that your competitor is moving at 200 miles per hour and you set out in chase going 10 miles per hour. Will that be effective?
If you chase at 202 miles per hour can you sustain a 100 hour attack?
The above were very simple. You say that you are out to get the "big guys" in your industry. That statement communicates that they also have a head start.
You see, the answer to your question is not one of "how many"..... Instead it is one of different starting points and relative velocities.
-
I'm not certain I know the answer to the variety of questions you're asking - but I know content is king! So whether there's value "in links from articles sent to places like Yahoo and Topix" the answer is yes if there is value in your articles submitted.
I'm familiar with the idea behind long-tail keywords. If your industry is like mine there are words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs within concepts that will resonate with readers looking for information specific to their needs whenever they're ready to do a search.
I know for example that when we publish articles written by us or about us we get more impressions and click-throughs. And I believe if the reader gets the idea you're just offering pablum to fill pages and attract eyeballs you run the risk of offending and/or alienating them...in which case they might abandon your site with a bad taste in their mouth and never return.
-
There is great benefit to doing this! You would be putting your content in front of more people while increasing your changes of them sharing it. I think 4 per month would be as much as you would want to do. You will want to think about value to the readers most of all, and think about news broadcasters and how they might respond or take action to your press releases. If you publish a great story every week vs so so stories every day, they would take you more seriously if you did the 4 per month route.
My past boss who is very good at creating controversy in the sugar daddy dating niche via seeking arrangement, was really good at this. He always tried to provide site data about the users and presented it in a controversial way to make other writers react.
His press schedule depends on what is going on, and usually tries to push something out every week or so. Sometimes he would post anything for a month.
The best way to approach this is to make a plan of when and where you will be publishing these stories. Be consistent and do research on the art of press releases! This post should help a bit.
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
-
Image Sitemap - Are You Using One?
We have a lot of nice images and I have been thinking about uploading an image sitemap. If you would care to share your experience with the questions below, I would appreciate hearing what you have learned. Thank you. Have you been using an image sitemap? Do you think that it has brought some benefits to your domain's presence in image search? Did you include thumbnail - size images or only the full size images?
Image & Video Optimization | | EGOL1 -
Apparently now OK to use PO boxes to optimize local search?
I've always stood behind what I thought was Google's policy of not recognizing PO boxes. But it seems like all you have to do now is create one and take 2 seconds to create a low-quality G+ page. The below link is to a screenshot that shows my guy (yay new, high quality site with growing, relevant, authoritative content!) just out of the local results. He's not technically in Athens, so we knew it was an uphill battle. What's annoying though is the low-quality G+ PO box result above him. https://www.diigo.com/item/image/4bxh7/yi1x I know the PO Box result is not great in a vacuum in terms of conversion, but fact is if it's just phone numbers you're after they're at a distinct advantage, with no effort. For my client, we've indicated in G+ that he has a service area that extends into Athens. If Google is now favoring G+ results, I'm wondering if my guy should get a PO box instead? yi1x
Image & Video Optimization | | PerfectPitchConcepts0 -
Posting a video on your site and also on youtube
Hi, Quick question. I have a content page which contains a youtube embedded video. I want to rank that page for a specific keyword phrases on google. I also want to rank the video youtube url aswell for the exact same specific keywords. Does anyone from experience know if this would be considered duplicate content (same video) or work? Same video on both URLs but the video on my site has additional valuable content surrounding the video. Regards, Jerry
Image & Video Optimization | | MBASydney1 -
Using Facebook for Places page
I have been using Facebook for my website for some of my client, Previously it use to get ranked fast and I have one of my client of the very top for one of my clinets main keyword. I took another the same Nitch but in a different location, but they don't seem to be getting ranked.
Image & Video Optimization | | joeuglyhat0 -
Best practice using Video to increase website pagerank?
Goal: Leverage videos to get links and traffic back to website not video hosting platform site (e.g. YouTube) to generate website leads **Issue: ** If we place a video on a website using video YouTube embed code and video sitemap for the crawlers to index our video DOES show up in search results BUT that link goes back to YouTube. Great for increasing views on YouTube but not increasing link popularity for client website. Question: What are recommendations / best practice for SEO (such as using another player like Viddler, etc.) that will get video results from search engines back to the website? We want to leverage videos to build links and generate leads to client site.
Image & Video Optimization | | jfeitlinger0 -
Can or should you use a residential address for Google places?
My first thought is no. But I am definitely looking for some loopholes. If there is any way to make this work, please share your thoughts.
Image & Video Optimization | | itrogers0 -
Local SEO... use 800 # or local, use full-street name or abbreviation?
Couple local SEO questions... Do you feel it’s better to submit a listing with the full type of street rather than an abbreviation? Google Places sometimes disassociates data because of small differences like this. Below is an example: Full Name: 123 Broadway Street
Image & Video Optimization | | qlkasdjfw
Abbreviation: 123 Broadway St. Also, I’m wondering if you feel it’s better to submit a local number versus an 800 number. I've modified many local listings for clients manually with an 800 number, but then there are other data sources for these same businesses that are displaying the local number. I am starting to use UBL/LocalEZE and are wondering what people have seen working best... local number or 800 number. Thanks!0 -
Using 1 main site for many branch office locations
I have 1 main site with many many city/state pages within the site. I would like to use this site as the 'website' on the google local places pages for all my branch office locations, however I am worried that if my domain authority isn't high enough for the site, google will think I am spamming 'google places'. Are there any best practices I can follow to do this? Ideally I would like my blended search to show www.site.com/boston not as www.site.com
Image & Video Optimization | | ilyaelbert0