What is a good "white hat" content distribution network for link building?
-
I am helping a client with Local SEO efforts who has hundreds of blog posts (they have been doing 5 a week for the last 3 years) that contain full length articles about their industry. The client's website itself has been very well optimized for all regards (CRO, Mobile, download speed, citations). However they have very weak domain authority compared to their competitors.
I am looking for a bona fide content distribution network I could use to promote my client's blog posts/articles. I have used Linkvana in the past but I have become wary of them after the penguin update. I also had functionality problems using their interface.
Are their any bona fide content/article distribution networks out there?
Thanks
-
John Mueller of Google Search recently shared quite a bit on the topic of links and website ranking factors in a Google Webmasters Hangout.
Naturally gaining affirmative incoming links pointing to those blog posts will substantially help. Creating the post is only a first step, I find that marketing the post afterwards takes longer - but also is what really gets the content used.
How I understood the conversation with John Mueller about on-page linking.
When a link is no followed, Google doesn’t pass link juice.
When a link is followed but is no indexed, in this case, Google does pass page rank because they are aware of the page.
When a page is no indexed and the link is nofollow, Google essentially sees it similar to a 404 page and skips it will flag to the spiders that this page is now relevant and to re-crawl the page.
CONCLUSION: When conducting a link audit, reviewing the link risk and considering factors currently ranking sites, the need for SEOs to understand NoFollow links is still necessary. This goes beyond the scope of the content distribution networks that we've tried.
When something is this central to building your domain authority, I agree with Egol that a more hands-on approach has it benefits.
Strong social signals also help a lot: each platform is unique from Google+, to Facebook and LinkedIn for lead generation.
-
I don't use a content distribution service for any of my sites. We simply post content and our visitors do the sharing for us.
The most instructive thing that you can do, since you have a nice body of content already on the site, is to look at that content to identify patterns of the types of articles and topics of articles that pull the most traffic, generate the most shares, accumulat the most links. This information is extremely valuable for informing future content development.
If this company is posting five blog posts per week they are either posting "quick stuff" or they have a lot of people writing for them. If they have a lot of people writing then look at which of those people are producing the valuable work. Give them a raise, have them work more hours. Those that are not producing valuable content can be given different work or not engaged in the future.
My "quick stuff" usually doesn't go anywhere. "Quick stuff" might not be substantive enough, compelling enough or valuable enough or whatever enough to be shared or linked or liked by visitors. Out of all of the content on my site a small number of things are rocket fuel, most is pedestrian and some is simply dead wood. None of that was quick stuff, it is all substantive stuff that we produce and learn from. Learn what the rocket fuel is made of and make more. Or, improve the pedestrian to make it stronger.
If you make rocket fuel you generally don't need a content distribution service.... and if you are making quick stuff or dead wood you don't need a content distribution service for that either... instead you need a magician.
-
Thanks Andy
We are trying to find a method to better utilize the library of content we created. I was hoping to find a content distribution service that assist with this process. -
Hi Rosemary,
I'm not too sure you can use 'bone fide' and 'distribution networks' in the same sentence
Quite seriously, I would be looking to make some headway in their market niche rather than trying to make use of networks. I am sure that between your client and yourself, you can find top industry influencers to engage with and start to build their brand a bit more.
I would be trying to take a more natural approach to this and find forums, discussions, questions (Quora?) and Social Media to make a start with this. Perhaps some of the older articles can be checked to see if they are still relevant and if not, update them with something more current.
I hope this helps.
-Andy
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
-
I have followed all the steps in google speed ranking on how to increase my website http://briefwatch.com/ speed but no good result
My website http://briefwatch.com/ has a very low-speed score on google page speed and I followed all the steps given to me still my website speed doesn't increase
Local Website Optimization | | Briefwatch0 -
Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?
We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas. We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it. Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference. Would appreciate the feedback
Local Website Optimization | | AndyL93
Thanks
Andy0 -
Hreflang | Should I implement hreflang for regional targeted but - different content of websites?
Hello, I'm implementing hreflang for my e-commerce websites which have different languages and do serve different content based on location. Currently, I'm only using hreflang for for alternate language (fr-fr, fr-be, fr-ma, ...). I wonder if it might be better or if I am allowed to add other version of my websites (IT, ES, DE,... ) even if those version are serving specific content for these specific location. So, the content (products) of Germany is different of the product of the other countries. Here is an example : www.mywebsite.com/apple-phone (selling apple phone for US with product avalaible only in US). www.mywebsite.de/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Germany with product avalaible only in Germany, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.it/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Italy with product avalaible only in Italy, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.es/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Spain with product avalaible only in Spain, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.pt/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Portugal with product avalaible only in Portugal, the available models might be different from US and other websites).
Local Website Optimization | | manoman880 -
Hreflang errors "no return tag" sitemap.xml , and local search landing page with wrong Languages
Really need help , our website when search in google(US) will provide global page (keyword:asus/asus zenfone3). and search console also return "no return tags"another wear thing is when use googlebot crawl sitemap.xml googlebot cannot finish the file less than a quarterCan you please advise on what needs to be edited or changed to make sure my implementation is correct and not returning errors?
Local Website Optimization | | June01270 -
Should I use Rel-Canonicals links for a News site with similar articles each year
Our small town news site provides coverage in a lot of seasonal areas, and we're struggling with the current year's content ranking above previous years. For instance, every year we cover the local high school football team, and create 2-3 articles per game. We'll also have some articles preseason with upcoming schedule and general team "talk". We've seen where articles from past seasons will rank higher than the current season, presumably because the older articles have more links to them from other sources (among other factors). We don't want to delete these old articles and 301 them to the newer article, since most articles include information/stories about specific players...and their families don't want the article to ever come down. Should we rel-canonical the older articles to the newer one, or perhaps to the "high school football" category page? If to the category page, should we rel-canonical even the new articles to that main category page? Thanks for the help.
Local Website Optimization | | YourMark.com0 -
How to Handle Franchise Duplicate Content
My agency handles digital marketing for about 80 Window World stores, each with separate sites. For the most part, the content across all of these sites is the exact same, though we have slowly but surely been working through getting new, unique content up on some of the top pages over the past year. These pages include resource pages and specific product pages. I'm trying to figure out the best temporary solution as we go through this process. Previously, we have tried to keep the pages we knew were duplicates from indexing, but some pages have still managed to slip through the cracks during redesigns. Would canonicals be the route to go? (do keep in mind that there isn't necessarily one "original version," so there isn't a clear answer as to which page/site all the duplicated pages should point to) Should we just continue to use robots.txt/noindex for all duplicate pages for now? Any other recommendations? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | TriMarkDigital0 -
Can a Find Us Link suffice as the NAP in footer of site?
I understand the need for NAP in the website for citation sourcing / local ranking purposes, etc. Is it possible to use a linking anchor text such as "Find Us" that can link to the Contact Page of the site that does list the street address? Or should it link to the google places listing? The client basically wants to "hide" the NAP, but keep the power of the local listing. Can this be done? Any suggestions? Or an example of website that does this successfully?
Local Website Optimization | | cschwartzel1 -
Does Google play fair? Is 'relevant content' and 'usability' enough?
It seems there are 2 opposing views, and as a newbie this is very confusing. One view is that as long as your site pages have relevant content and are easy for the user, Google will rank you fairly. The other view is that Google has 'rules' you must follow and even if the site is relevant and user-friendly if you don't play by the rules your site may never rank well. Which is closer to the truth? No one wants to have a great website that won't rank because Google wasn't sophisticated enough to see that they weren't being unfair. Here's an example to illustrate one related concern I have: I've read that Google doesn't like duplicated content. But, here are 2 cases in which is it more 'relevant' and 'usable' to the user to have duplicate content: Say a website helps you find restaurants in a city. Restaurants may be listed by city region, and by type of restaurant. The home page may have links to 30 city regions. It may also have links for 20 types of restaurants. The user has a choice. Say the user chooses a region. The resulting new page may still be relevant and usable by listing ALL 30 regions because the user may want to choose a different region. Altenatively say the user chooses a restaurant type for the whole city. The resulting page may still be relevant and usable by giving the user the ability to choose another type OR another city region. IOW there may be a 'mega-menu' at the top of the page which duplicates on every page in the site, but is very helpful. Instead of requiring the user to go back to the home page to click a new region or a new type the user can do it on any page. That's duplicate content in the form of a mega menu, but is very relevant and usable. YET, my sense is that Google MAY penalize the site even though arguably it is the most relevant and usable approach for someone that may or may not have a specific region or restaurant type in mind.. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | couponguy0