Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Backlinks From Press Releases - Should I Disavow Them?
-
About 2 months ago, I published a press release through PRWEB with a link back to my website of course.
Now it must have been one of those morning where the coffee wasn't strong enough as my website already has a Penguin penalty I'm trying to get lifted. The intent wasn't to spam the web but rather to gain some traction in the business hosting world.
Like I've said, the coffee must've been too weak that morning as it didn't even cross my mind to see if I could "nofollow" the links in the press release. I just hit the submit button...
As I'm in the process of submitting a disavow links request to Google, I'm wondering if I should include the URLs to copies of those press releases?
I mean, there's no way I can find all those links as it was submitted not long ago. Google and link tools will keep discovering other copies of the PR for months to come probably.
-
You can remove the links from PR Web press releases, even after publication. No need to disavow unless they have been picked up by other sites and do-followed.
That said, I seriously doubt they can get you into trouble...unless they are part of a sustained pattern of misconduct, say dozens or hundreds of press releases from spammy press release sites (not PR Web, which is reputable.) Your backlinks from PR Web may even be helping.
There is much confusion on this subject. Two general and casual remarks Matt Cutts made years apart have been taken out of context and widely misinterpreted. The conventional wisdom seems to be that all backlinks from all press releases are always and everywhere useless or harmful.
This suffers from the defect of being untrue.
And it's s just as silly as saying:
"All directory listings are useless -- or harmful."
or
"All guest blogging is useless -- or harmful."
or
"All infogrpahics are useless -- or harmful."
Life is complicated. Context is everything.
And much depends on your overall link portfolio.
-
If they are spammy, anchor-text rich links then you should disavow them with the rest of your links. If the press release is being syndicated to other sites, it may be worth disavowing those as well, especially if they are low quality sites.
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
-
Backlinks from local businesses
Hello, I need to make sure I understand this correctly. Will it help my SEO if I: find local businesses with a good DA & low spam score select businesses that are somehow related to mine (Insurance Agency) offer to guest post and include a backlink on their blog ( ask them if they'd like to reciprocate) For example, businesses such as
Link Building | | laurentjb
Roofing companies
Contractors
moving companies
etc Please let me know if there's anything I'm missing? Many thanks0 -
Backlinks from different TLD's impact
Hi MOZ'ers, I'm wondering what the impact of different TLD backlinks is for same language pages. For example: we're on a website that has a German national TLD .de. We're earning backlinks and they are coming from .de as well as .ch (Switzerland) or .at (Austria) pages. What would be more desirable, and how big would you consider the difference? Looking forward to hearing your responses 🙂 Justen
Link Building | | Justen_H0 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
NoFollow & Directory Scraper Backlinks
I was wondering how important it was to remove/disavow: NoFollow backlinks - many ("buy viagra" etc). Directory backlinks - many questionable/generic directories. Obviously the focus is the equity passing links but both of the above constitute a significant proportion of backlinks to the site - I've seen that "scrapers" are seen as natural and obviously NoFollow do not pass link juice - but does the sheer number have a bearing and therefore make them equally important to address? Thanks in advance for your responses. Regards
Link Building | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Backlinks through dofollow commenting
I'm interested in building backlinks to my photography business site by leaving good, engaging comments on other photographers' DoFollow blogs. Is this a good idea? Is it worth the effort? Through a little research, I've managed to locate more than 40 dofollow photographer blogs that have a domain authority of 35+. The idea is to take an hour or so a week to leave 10-20 comments on their blog posts. Would you consider this a good strategy? I rank on the first and second page of most of my keywords that I'm working on, but I want to rank 1st or 2nd on them. I used the keyword finder tool on google adwords to find the keywords that are the most searched for in my area. Surprisingly the competition is not large, so I'm fairly comfident I can get there. I've already optimized my site substantially and I'm looking into link building. Thoughts?
Link Building | | studio35design0 -
Should I Use a Backlink Plugin
One of my clients recently asked me if he should use a Wordpress plugin to create backlinks to his website. He mentioned WP-Syndicator as an example. I just redesigned his website and I'd like to ensure that he gets a bit more traffic than he was before. Should I suggest that he purchase/use a Wordpress backlink plugin? If so does anyone know which is the best one? Not sure if it's necessary, but here is the website I'm referring to http://intouchhome.com
Link Building | | eddie_olivas0 -
Press Release Sites
Do Press Releases sites still worth to engage in terms of link building and domain authority building? I heard they don't deliver link authority anymore? If they they still do, Which top 10 free and paid site would you recommend? What is the up-to-date link building method would you recommend? Thank you very much!
Link Building | | DigitalJungle1 -
What is the best way to manage backlinks?
What back link management software do you guys use or recommend? Need to manage types of links on each page. Thanks
Link Building | | joemas990