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
-
Where Should Your Company Press Releases Live
Hi there, Our company publishes press releases on the company blog and have found we were hit by an algorithm update. We have identified the press releases as being the culprit and would like to move all press releases to a company press page on the main site and title it "press room" or "press." We have a lot of media sites that visit our blog to grab the most recent releases, so they are important to the business. My question is, how should we handle the page SEO wise? Should we do a "no index" or a "no follow" on all the links? I'm curious what advice the community has on how to handle a company's press page. Thanks!!
Branding | | Ecom-Team-Access0 -
Can you recommend a Content Delivery Network for hosting 20 videos across the website?
We want to host multiple videos across our website and are considering which CDN provider to use, with an average of 18.8GB per month for visitors, we are considering the following companies, some offer a free trial. https://www.maxcdn.com/pricing/ http://www.cdn77.com/pricing https://www.cloudflare.com/plans Does anyone have any other recommendations regarding CDNs for video streaming or have experience in this area as any advice would be much appreciated.
Branding | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
What To Do With Content From SEO Perspective
With all the SEO focus now on creating and sharing unique and high quality content I ensure that is exactly what we do, however... All we seem to do is add this content to our blog with some good quality images to break up the text. Our articles are at least 800 words in length and they are always informative... Once added to our blog we share the content across the 'big 3' social platforms (Facebook, Twitter & Google+) I also do a little bit of 'internal linking' from the blog post to a relevant page on the main website - the blog is actually part of the website! So, my question is... in light of the recent 'guest post' scaremongering and the fact that every blog owner I seem to 'reach out' wants payment should I look at Web2.0 platforms such as; Squidoo Hubpages Quora Triberr ...and the many other similar sites that exist to add some of our content to? Also what about Article Directories? Ezinearticles GoArticles I know this seems like a 'throwback' to 2-3 years ago but I just wondered whether the above still have any credence? Obviously I would be very selective with regard to 'back linking' and would ensure that I vary the anchor text - to be honest, as much as a link would be useful, it's more about brand exposure ... Any advice \ recommendations would be greatly appreciated! Andy
Branding | | TomKing0 -
Press Releases benefit from having an author
We just started doing some Press Releases and want to maximize the benefits of them to our full potential. Would it be beneficial for our PR to have an author? We know Google likes real people and was wondering if attaching the author to the PR will provide more strength to that particular author?
Branding | | WebRiverGroup0 -
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 -
Social Media Content - Duplicate Content?
Hi All, What's your opinion on sharing the same content across your social media outlets. We are targeting only slightly different markets across each social media outlet. I find it hard to develop content for each outlet 3-5 times a week. There really is so much to share. At the same time, I wouldn't want to get canned for any duplicate content or anything like that. Along those lines, can anyone provide some advice on which social media outlets are "followed" vs. "not-followed," both in terms of links and overall indexing? Thanks!
Branding | | CSawatzky0 -
Converting Site Content to Different Niche and in Different Language
Background STORY: I'm a wordpress theme designer, and i have a 3 years old wordpress-based site in english language with more than 100 post. Let's just called this site "olddomain.com" (generic brand name, didn't have keyword on it) Almost all of content are just showcase post and download link for my Free Wordpress Theme Download. So the site is lacking in terms of quality article content. I never doing any SEO work (keyword targeting,etc) for this "olddomain.com ", but the site backlinks is growing viral since the beginning, perhaps due to the nature of a "freebie" site. Using the OSE, it showed 12,850 Total Links from 349 Linking Root domain. Back when Y! Site Explorer still exist the number of linked domain is around 64,000+ links, and google webmaster tools show the number of 655,000+ Links. It's now has PageRank 5 (for almost a year) , with Home Page Authority 62/100 and Domain Authority 55/100. But in terms of traffic and revenue, the site is doing pretty bad. I only got less than 3000 visit per month. Revenue less than $10/month from adsense, and generated less than $1000 over the last 2 years from premium wordpress theme affiliate program. Some people told me that i have to add more article to attract traffic. but the thing is, i don't really good on writing english article, It's not my native language, so i can't really express my thought. I know i can outsource article writing, but i feel more comfortable and affordable if i write from my own mind. RECENT STORY: For the last 3 months i also learn more about SEO and internet marketing , and recently doing some local keyword research in my native language (Indonesian) with google keyword tools combine with SEOmoz keywords analysis. I found more than 100+ of Indonesian keywords in multi-niche with more than 3000+ Exact local search/month. And after using SEOmoz keyword analysis, almost all of them are in relatively low competition level under 40% . So The Potential is HUGE. MY IDEA: I want to create a new multi-niche informational content-rich website based on the keywords i found on my language. Something like about.com, squidoo, or hubpages. My question is : 1. Should i completely start that site in a "newdomain.com" completely from scratch (No Pagerank, Backlinks, PA, DA) ? or I just use my existing "olddomain.com" which already got the link advantage (Pagerank 5 with thousands of backlinks) and just recreate the site-structure and put the new article content on it, although it's on different niche and different language . 2. What's the effect for search engine if you changing your site content to different niche (from wordpress theme to Multi-niche Informational website) and also to a different language (english to indonesian) Best Regards,
Branding | | thefaizal
Faizal0 -
Is it good/bad to place a press release on a third party website as well as your own?
I have read that if a Company issues a press release via a third part service (e.g. PR Web) it is best not to place the release on the company’s own website due to negative SEO effects. Is this the case? I‘d really appreciate others thoughts on this.
Branding | | E2E0