Duplicate Content and Boiler Plates in Press Releases - Does it Matter?
-
Hi All,
We are in process of syndicating a few press releases on company news over the next few months. These aren't fluff PRs, they are actual news and can provide some value for linking opportunities (woohoo).
Anyway, we are a public company, so there are some relatively strict guidelines as to what content we publish. A great place to place some flexible links is in the boilerplate of a release. However, we can't change that content around too much on each PR.
So, question is, are there any negative implications on pushing out that kind of duplicate content on the web. Clearly, it's not our intention to spam whatsoever. But, I can see how the same type of content going out on the web multiple times in coming months good send off a negative signal.
Takes/thoughts?
-
Why the thumbs down when I said the same as Kate?:
"Ensure you have it on your site first"
-
Doubt it. Google has most syndicated press release services on a list of "don't allow these links to pass PageRank." I imagine for this very reason.
Being a big public company you don't really need to worry about penalties. Just ask yourself, "would I feel comfortable telling a search engine engineer what I'm doing to market my website." If you answered yes, don't worry about it. You're one reconsideration request away from getting out of the penalty if one were to ever arise.
-
Well, the information publicized is the kind of stuff that we have to disseminate to follow Wall Street regulation. Naturally, these things get picked up and placed on sites such as Yahoo Finance, CNN Money etc.
To my knowledge, we do syndicate through Business Wire but only after it is put on the company website first.
From an SEO standpoint, we are in need of quality links routing back to us. We have a plethora of inbound links. I am of course worried about any Panda penalties that could arise, but we aren't doing anything deliberately black hat. Our links that have been in these releases historically (prior to my arrival here in January), have all been links to social media or branded in the form of www.example.com. We also haven't seen any non-season changes in traffic.
So, lets say without syndication, reputable sites still pick up the release. In that case, should we still use proper linking?
-
I honestly think that "company news" has very tiny value compared with information about how to select products, how to use them, what can be done with them.
Nobody gives much of a crap about numbers, staff changes, store openings.... yawn... . Focus on evergreen content.
-
In my experience there are two kinds of public company news: either real-time "material information" (i.e. potentially market moving, monitored by regulators) or basically PR stuff that can be planned in advance. I'd deal with the two types differently. Wouldn't worry about widely disseminating the former in just about any manner, standard operating procedure, but would treat the latter differently as described above: establish on company website first, then press release, don't syndicate.
-
The point of press releases is to get the idea and news in front of writers to entice stories. They have since been bastardized into syndicated content on the web that does little for the end use or the company. I am with EGOL, don't syndicate releases like this. Use the stories to get the attention of journalists and writers.
If you must send them out, don't do so with the intention to link build. They are going to be copied over and over. Ensure you have it on your site first and try to get stories out of it, not just "coverage."
This is a longer and more involved process but it's the best one for everyone involved.
-
These aren't fluff PRs, they are actual news and can provide some value for linking opportunities (woohoo).
If I had content that is this good I would not be syndicating it. I would want it exclusive on my own site.
Links in press releases are a good way to get Penguin problems.
-
I would make sure if you also have the press release on your website that you have it on your site before you send it out to others. This makes you the source of the news.
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
-
Domain Transition: Leaving low quality content behind
We're in the initial stages of planning a domain transition / rebrand. We're considering 301'ing our low and high(er) quality content split to two different domains. One for the low quality, one for our high. Best practices normally tell you to not split your content between between multiple domains. However, what if the majority of pages on your site are thin/outdated, and attract low volume/long tail? Does it make sense to bring that low quality/volume content over the new domain, when you know you'll never have the resources (nor would it make sense to) mass improve the quality of these pages? I'm concerned the quality of these pages are affecting our overall domain authority. Some background on our site/business: Current site has 15,000+ pages. 98% of our site is a product directory of professional/enterprise business management software. While a small handful of our product pages have quality original long form content (maybe 50-100), most of the product pages are a combination of: thin, outdated, overly sales-y content provided directly from product developers, and/or catch only very low-volume/long tail organic traffic. 95% of our pages attract fewer than 20 visits/mo, 90% of our pages attract fewer than 10 visits/mo. We have a small business of about 10 employees. Most of which don't maintain our site. It's unrealistic for us to genuinely improve the quality of that many pages. Nor does it make sense to improve most of these pages, as they'll attract only very low volume keywords. Individually these low quality pages don't bring in many customers, but on aggregate they do. 70% of our organic conversions come from pages with less than 20 visits/mo. A few questions: Is this content negatively affecting our domain authority in any way? While I don't believe we've been hit with a penalty, Google knows that on average our pages aren't very helpful to many users, and I'm concerned that affects our ability to rank with pages that matter. None of the content was mass produced in any form of scraping efforts or anything nefarious like that. Would there be any negative/positive affect to offloading these low quality/volume pages to a different domain during the rebrand?
Branding | | dsbud0 -
Looking to create a Press Release - Any decent sites out there?
Hey guys, I'm wondering whether you could point me in the right direction of a reputable PR site to use? I realise that many of these sites have been devalued over recent years but I wanted to produce something for a client after they struck-up a fairly notable connection with another company in their industry. Or should I just avoid PR sites altogether? Oh, and I'd prefer them to be free if possible 🙂
Branding | | Webrevolve0 -
No Domain Link In Press Release, What About Yelp?
Hi Moz, I understand that using a PR for SEO benefit is old-school, black hat, and largely outlawed by Google. We are simply trying to get our name pushed further into the local market, i.e., using a press release for it's natural intention. Our company offers free quotes through our site and the scheduling of jobs with new clients is largely done online. I think it seems silly NOT to have a link to our URL in the press release, but rather than poke Google, we're fine omitting it. However, would linking our Yelp near the end be a big deal? Yelp no-follows their URLs back to the company site so there isn't a risk with pumping up a support link through PR and we can provide SOME clickable link to our information. Thoughts?
Branding | | kirmeliux0 -
Advice on Content Publishing
Hi, I was rather hoping for a little advice on how to best get my content out there. I made a simple, and pretty poor quality (though funny I hope), guide on making homemade slippers for Father's Day - you can find it here http://appointedd.com/blog/homemade-slippers-for-fathers-day/ I guess my question would be, where would you put it up? Being fairly new to this kind of content creation (and this was only something I did in my spare time), I'm still trying to get my head around some of it. thanks!
Branding | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Making the most from a Press Release being featured on news websites
We have recently sent out a press release to targeted publications and have been lucky enough to be featured on a hand full of quality news websites which all feature links to our main URL. A minor draw back is some of the sites have just used the press release with minimal changes so we are a tiny bit worried about duplicate content issues but the sites are all high quality with a Domain Authority of 65+. Anyway I am wondering how best to capitalise on these. A few ideas I have:- 1. Go to our Company Google Plus page and +1 them. 2. Go to our Twitter profile and favourite the "tweets" that have been sent out mentioning each article. 3. Go to our Facebook page and "Like" the articles on each of the sites. 4. Setup a Squidoo page called "My Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. 5. Setup a Tumblr page called " MY Company featured around the internet" and link to the news pages. We are not sure if featured the links/urls on our "Press" section will undermine any benefit of link juice - we were thinking of doing a PDF of the pages and hosting the PDF on our site.
Branding | | JohnW-UK0 -
Duplicate Content and Indexing issues
Hey guys, I have a client whom has an existing site www.currentdomain.ie and we have created a new site with a new domain name www.newdomain.ie. They do not wish for it to be redirected. They wish for two sites to have the exact same content just with different logos. So for example if you search for current domain the search results present to you www.currentdomain.ie as the number 1 search listing and the same if you searched for their new domain. I'm trying to understand how google might index the two sites if side wide canonical tag were implemented on either of the sites to get over the duplicate content issue. How would google index the brand name of each site if one site canocilised? I don't want to encourage this client with this idea as it appears to be nonsensical but I thought I should first understand fully what the SEO implications might be. Thanks Rob
Branding | | daracreative0 -
Is duplicating video across several sites a bad thing?
Hi, We have a fairly successful YouTube Channel where we create unique and helpful videos that are related to our core business activity. When we create these videos would you consider it a bad thing to not only post them on YouTube but also a couple of the smaller sites such as Metacafe and Dailymotion? Sending to multiple sites would possibly achieve more total views but would this kind of duplication potentially be harmful to the overall success of the video and have a knock on effect when it comes to how it ranks in Google? Thanks for your help.
Branding | | ChrisHolgate0 -
How to capitalize from a press release?
My largest client, a financial services outfit are about to launch a major new service. As part of this, their PR agency is about to issue a press release that will go to financial journalists and the whole stock exchange. Is there some way, as their SEO advisor, that I can increase the impact of this and help them to further benefit? Thanks in advance...
Branding | | generalzod0