Link Building with PRweb press releases
-
Im looking for tips or best practices when sending out PR for link building.
I send out at least 4 press releases per month using prweb’s advanced release which allows anchor text. For the past few months I’ve been rotating branded terms, exact match keywords and full URL’s as the links, but always linking to my home page or to one particular subpage. Most of the releases are to announce upcoming projects or to announce a recent website launch for a client, less often we’re highlighting a service or special we want to promote.
Im wondering if I should be linking to more sub pages to spread links around, and if I should be focusing more on branded terms vs. exact match anchors. Due to the cost involved I just want to be sure im getting the most out of it.
-
[Response removed by forum moderator.]
-
This is always the issue with "We need you to prepay because... blah blah blah." The real reason is, if we did it month to month, it would kill the model.
I think the problem will be that slowly it has no real value. How slowly,who knows, I have never been able to justify the cost for the PR services. I have gotten a lot of emails from them telling me they disagree with me though.
Best
-
For one client whose work is generating some interesting potential headlines (business technology for the financial sector), I'm starting to experiment with PressKing.com. It's a distribution wire that's roughly like DM'ing an unusually large, influential Google+ circle. It's too early to call it a success, but here's why I think it's important to use in tandem with any PR:
- Their database includes journalists and bloggers who've consented to receiving fresh news on an overwhelming list of topics. Client wants to publicize a new patent for mobile checking? Want to get your PR in front of 2000+ US-based columnists who've expressed interest in "ATMs", "Business Technology", or "Digital Imaging"? (It seems like a good idea, no?) You can do that with PressKing, and the contacts span from high-DA sites like NYTimes, Bloomberg, and WSJ to niche news sites and industry quarterlies.
- If you're already using OSE to identify where related sites receive links from, and you know your client's low-hanging fruit (i.e. sites that link to multiple competitors but not to your client's site), it could be an excellent idea to add contact email addresses from those sites to the distribution list. Would it be more effective to reach out directly to individual journalists with a personalized note? Probably – but if you don't have the time, I think there's a way to do this respectfully, and successfully.
The technical considerations of which keywords to use, what anchor text, to which pages, I think are old-world considerations that obscure the real issue. The real issue is how to get links to your latest and greatest content while it's still fresh, and "fresh" is powerful bait for many journalists seeking word counts to occupy an otherwise slow news day. I hope this helps!
-
Wait, PR Web is sending some really nice links your way.
-
I am no expert, in fact I probably should not be giving advice, but here are my 2 cents. With the recent Penguin updates it seems that we now need to blend exact match anchor text with branded keywords. Make sure you diversify your back links, try to keep it natural.
-
Great ideas, thank you! The reason I've been sending them as one-offs is to keep the flow steady and add these types of links each month, but I really like your ideas about promoting great content. Easier said than done of course...
-
It's working OK, but it's hard to justify the cost. My goal was not to get the attention of the press, although I have on rare occasions, it was to get the releases picked up by authority domains for some decent links. It's certainly a case of diminishing returns since it seems to be the same sites that pick up the releases each month. I prepaid for a year with PRweb so im trying to get the most out it.
-
Most of the releases are to announce upcoming projects or to announce a recent website launch for a client, less often we’re highlighting a service or special we want to promote.
These topics are ephemeral rather than evergreen.
Just saying what I would do.....
I would announce client sites in batches - one batch of several clients every couple of months.
I would make three or four great pieces of content that are best-on-the-web in your niche each month (posted on your own site) and send one press release to PRweb that announces all of them. People might say WOW... if anybody still reads PRWeb releases.
I think that this would focus your efforts on building great equity in your website and minimize your investment in topics of temporary interest and using PRWeb - which IMO is a low value service. Maybe share your release with a couple of bloggers in your niche.
-
Nick,
Wow, by paying extra you get to use anchor text! OK, sorry, had to do that...
To say I have an opinion on these is an understatement. First, it sounds as if you are using them as more of an actual release which is good. Most companies use them as web trash and news rehash with a company or firm name repeated: XYZ announces inside toilets used more often than outhouses in US!!
My question would be, how is it working for you? Are you getting links back and are they of value? If so, where do you need/want them and make sure you are watching for questionable ones, keeping anchor text varied, etc.
Rand did a nice piece on Link earning versus link building that I went back and reread that speaks to more "meritorious" (for lack of a better term) link gathering. I think over time we will see this type of link building diminish. As someone who understands PR, I can tell you that the "press" does not see this type of thing due to there being so much of it. So, to call it a press release is overstating it at best. These are link building tools for the web.
I think with Penguin and all the other animals, slowly these will lose value.
Good to see someone at least using it like a real press release about their company,
Best
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
-
How to build Domain Authority?
My site: https://www.fishingspots.com.au/ has started to drop Domain Authority in the past weeks, however less quality sites like http://silverstories.com.au/ are rising... I am not sure why? Is there someway I can understand why my site would suddenly start dropping authority?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
Google WMT/search console: Thousands of "Links to your site" even only one back-link from a website.
Hi, I can see in my search console that a website giving thousands of links to my site where hardly only one back-link from one of their page to our page. Why this is happening? Here is screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VleUf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Problem with internal links
Hello! Our domain, http://www.unionroom.com/, is having a strange issue with OSE in that it is telling us our internal pages aren't linking to one another. An example of this is that it is showing our About page ( http://www.unionroom.com/about/ ) only having three links, but this link appears twice on every single page on the website (~200 pages) in the header and footer. We've hung around for a little while to see if OSE would correct itself, but it hasn't and this now suggests that it may be an issue with our in-linking structure. Can anyone spot any issues with our build? The rest of the websites that we produce, that are all built in the same way, all have healthy internal linking structures according to OSE. Very confusing! Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unionroom0 -
Is Link Building Pretty Much Irrelevant Now?
When I ask this, I am not under the illusion that links do nothing. I am more curious if from an SEO strategy perspective is executing a link building campaign a really unwise use of time and resources? Currently my company literally has every single one of our SEO clients ranked on page 1 rank 1 for their most high value keyword and in the top 5 results for another 5 to 10 high value keywords. we have almost done no link building for these clients. I mean we have established a handful of really good links, but thats it. I look at some competitors link profiles and they have hundreds yet our clients sites are outranking them. I am almost at the point of not implementing link building initiatives. I mean we will still establish high quality links as they naturally present themselves, but as far as investing time and resources building links i am leaning towards not even doing that anymore or atleast for a while to see what the effect will be. We seem to find better results when we spend our time building great additional pages and following all web best practices. Just curious as to what other think? Thanks SEOmoz Community!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0 -
Heavy Internal Linking Help
One of the sites I work on is a home improvement ecommerce website that does fairly well for its niche. One of the biggest problems that we're not sure how to adequately handle is a heavy internal linking issue. The homepage (http://www.fauxpanels.com/) has approx. 226 internal links which is mainly due to the navigation structure. There are far worse pages though (the Samples page http://www.fauxpanels.com/samples.php has over 800 internal links). For the most part, management doesn't want any massive changes to the navigation layout. The Top navigation bar has a number of dropdown menus when you hover, the Left Navigation Bar expands to show more choices, and the Bottom navigation bar in many instances is just repeats of links that can be found elsewhere. Also, the product links in the body of the page can be found linked in the Left Navigation. This is not what I would personally consider the best way to handle navigation but the Customer Service Department has gotten numerous calls and emails over the years about how much people love our navigation and how easy it is to find things. My thought was trying to lessen the amount of links by having things grouped more often into Category pages/hub pages where applicable so we can remove some of the links. We've also considered NoFollowing links but my understanding is that even if you NoFollow the link equity is still divided by the number of on-page links. So, any of you much more experienced SEOs have any idea how I can lessen the heavy internal linking without completely re-doing the site's navigation layout and not harming link equity, ranking, etc.? Or, conversely, would you consider having an average 200-300 internal links per page not to be a real issue given the positive effect it has apparently had on user experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeRoberts0 -
Site Wide Link Situation
Hi- We have clients who are using an e-commerce cart that sits on a separate domain that appears to be providing site wide links to our clients websites. Therefore, would you recommend disallowing the bots to crawl/index these via a robots.txt file, a no follow meta tag on the specific pages the shopping cart links are implemented on or implement no follow links on every shopping cart link? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RezStream80 -
Tips for Link Building for Mobile Sites
Hi, I wondered if anyone had any tips and advice for link building for mobile sites. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkChambers0 -
How should I handle these links?
I recently purchased a site which is in the same niche as my personal blog. MANY of the keywords which I want both sites to rank for, they are already ranking well for (Eg I rank #1 with one site and #5 for the other). I haven't started linking the two sites to each other yet (waiting to announce the acquisition before I do). I have 2 questions for you all... How powerful do you think linking between these sites could be? How do you think I should handle the linking between these two sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroAndJobu0