Links from PRWeb press release violate Google's quality guidelines?
-
My site has had a manual action performed on it by Google indicating that I have inbound links that fall outside of their quality guidelines. I did my own research, found what I thought was the issue, had the links removed and requested reconsideration. Google's response surprised me in that they highlighted two specific pages with links that were the direct result of valid press releases and a publisher picking up our release off a wire service. Has anyone else seen this occur? Anyone had a case successfully reconsidered? I realize that I don't need to do anything at all as the manual action is in effect and will stay that way, discounting those links, but I would rather a) not have any manual action against my site and b) know for the future so this doesn't happen again. Also, is this applicable for guest blog posts, which effectively create the same type of backlinks? Thanks
-
It was a mix of both. There were some embedded keywords with nofollow links (which I thought were ok given that they were nofollowed). The keywords weren't forced in, just naturally present and then linked, doing so to have a nice balance between follow and nofollow links to the site.
-
Follow-up question on your links that were no followed.
- Were they links within the body of the release that were optimized with anchor text. e.g. Widget Industries Inc (Wii) is proud to announce the latest in wigitized technology, pink widgets! Joe Smith, president of Wii said that, "Our red widgets are a technology leader, we thought pink widgets would be a win win win!" and in your text "pink widgets" was linked to an optimized page for pink widgets on your site.
or
- Was it that you simply had a link under your contact info e.g.
Widget Industries Inc 124 Anyroad, Anytown, State, Zip, www.domain.ext, phone
Just curious the types of links you put into that release.
I have seen talk from various persons saying links in press releases are ok as long as you are not keyword embedding them. Seems silly that you would be penalized for linking to your company in the contact info, but I wanted to see.
Thx,
-
Upon further investigation, I traced back all inbound links created from PRWeb activities and found that most links created were correctly tagged as "nofollow" but it appears certain publishers removed the embedded nofollow tag when publishing. Specifically, pressreleasepoint.com and streetinsider.com are two examples where the same press release that was sent to and published by hundreds of other outlets as nofollow, were published by them with no such tag.
-
Thanks, Federico. I understand your logic. And I'm not arguing it - I just tend to try to "read between the lines" whenever Google makes a statement. I certainly can see the logic of nofollow on a link while a PR sits on PRWeb or another PR site. But if the NYT or Wash. Post decided to run that story (yeah, I know... pretty unlikely ) I have difficulty understanding how Google would hold it against a site if the paper left off the nofollow.
Thanks for the response!
-
They should be no-follow even on those sites that may pick the news up. Like the question says, the response from Google to the reconsideration request mentions links that were on syndicating sites, not on the actual PRWeb site.
And the statement I mentioned was a quote from PRWeb, and it says and I quote "all outgoing syndication" meaning that even those outside PRWeb site are being no-followed.
-
Federico, I'm familiar with the fairly recent statement from Google that links in press releases should be nofollow. In searching for it, I can't locate where it was, but I found this on the support blog: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
This only refers to anchor text rich links, however. Do you have a link that will clarify this?I ask because my impression is that they only need to be nofollow on the PR distribution site. If a journalist picks up the release and runs it, my impression was that it needn't be nofollow then, (unless, of course, we see it's on a low quality site).
Thanks!
-
Links coming from PRWeb and other Press Release websites should be no-follow and Google is quite finicky about this and do not allow anyone to build links through this press release related sites.
Hope this helps!
-
Yes. Links from PRWeb are considered unnatural if not no-followed. You must nofollow all the links in your releases, and in case other sites pickup your PRs, just make sure those links are no followed.
PRWeb claimed they made several changes to comply with Google guidelines, but given the amount of people that use their services only for the SEO effect, it would be hard to believe that they actually force the nofollow to all their releases and the sites that syndicates them.
From PRWeb:
"As far as changes in links and backlinking these changes come from google and apply to all press release distribution. We have been proactive in these changes and marking all outgoing syndication as ‘no-follow’ in accordance with Googles new rules."
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
-
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Why am I getting links in my link report from sites that no longer exist?
So, I have a link report from Link Detox. And I'm going through all of them and considering what sites need to be removed. and trying to find emails and contact webmasters. There is just one odd thing i'm starting to see more of. A lot of links are on websites or webpages that no longer exist. The link no longer exists. Some of the domains are even available for purchase. Why are these links showing on the backlink report and are they really harming my website? Also, do I need to add these links into the disavow document that I will submit to Google?
Link Building | | lightwurx0 -
I am getting links on people's wordpress blogs but are not showing up on the just discovered tool. Is it true that wordpress links are no-follow links that do give off any link-juice?
A blogger told me that "wordpress.com does not allow blogs to show advertisements or use links to sites that sell merchandise of any kind" is this true? Am i wasting my outreach time trying to get links from wordpress operated blogs?
Link Building | | odegi0 -
What are the Low quality link?..Any one explain
Hi All, How you find out that how many links are low quality what are the area of consideration for finding the low quality link. I have checked the Google webmasters for list of all site links. and finding out that few link have not found or have no PR, links from irrelevant theme. Please tell me more about the low quality links. Is disavow link helpful for removing those links from the website also? Thanks
Link Building | | lucidsoftech0 -
Does Google see this as an inbound link?
Hi, I'm looking at adding my site to a directory. It's highly relevant to my industry and has relatively good PA/DA. The external links on the directory uses some PHP code like the following: http://www.ThisDirectory.com/visit.php?i=3141635&url=http://www.ExternalDomain.com Obviously the links works as a redirect but they do not show up in OSE. Would Google count this link as an inbound link? Thanks,
Link Building | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
High quality links but where do you find them?
Hi, A lot of the answers on here point to building high quality links, which makes sense but where do you find these links? Lets say the website sells Football Boots, the current keyword you are trying to rank for is say 'Indoor Football Boots'. How do you now go about looking for those links? Cheers
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
RSS links vs. contextual links
Which has more value? Passes more "link juice"? Auto generated rss links or contextual links?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline0 -
Using parked domain page to get 50k+ of low quality links, good idea?
Hi all, I'm managing the seo for a hosting company. We have a lot of parked domains with a parked domain page. This will now be updated to promote our products. When this page is updated it will give 50k+ of low quality links to specific pages almost overnight. We curently don't have a very good seo ranking for our keywords, so there is little risk on the downside in the short term. Do you have any suggestions as to how I should go about this? Some alternatives off the top of my head: 1. get the page up an focus all the link equity on relevant pages with keywords in anchor text 2. add noindex / nofollowto all pages or only part of them to avoid puishment 3. add noindex / to the majority of the pages and "release" a percentage every week or so to avoid a "link bomb" Thanks for any and all input!
Link Building | | espenjo_mamut0