Online press coverage: publications asking for fee to add backlink. Should I pay?
-
For the last few years I've been gaining steady backlinks for my clients by producing online press releases for them (e.g. publishing results of a survey they commissioned, or their expert opinion on recent news, etc). The online coverage included a backlink naturally or by me just asking the publication nicely. But recently I'm finding that publications are asking for a fee to publish the article (with a link) or they will publish the article for free, but will add a link for a fee. Note: these publications aren't link-building-sites, they're good DA sites such as https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/ and https://www.moneymagpie.com/ (MOZ DAs of 80 and 56 respectively). The fees are around $200 each.
The clients can afford to pay for this type of coverage, but is there a risk in these cases with Google?
-
Yep. Sounds about right to me. I'd also check the relationship of their content to your client's industry. The more relevant the better. If you're paying for it, I'd also request they use specific SEO-friendly anchor text.
_Ex: rather than hyperlinking the root domain (prisonconsultants.co.uk) would be better to hyperlink 'UK prison consultants' or something similar. _
-
It's for a followed link. If I don't pay, then they don't add any link at all (or simply don't publish the article at all).
-
Thanks Ryan. Yes, the impression I get is that they either add a do-follow link for a fee, or it's no link at all.
So I guess a sensible approach might be to simply look at each publication's domain score and the content they publish and make a judgement about whether they look/feel legitimate rather than them looking like they are just in it for selling links?
-
I don't see any 'nofollow' in their external links, which is a good thing.
_Ex: https://www.moneymagpie.com/make-money/how-to-make-money-as-a-prison-consultant - search for the prisonconsultants domain and use inspector to see the source code. _
Spam scores for this site is also low (1%) so I don't think you would be penalized.
From a tracking perspective, you will not see traffic attributed to the referrer because of the rel="noopener noreferrer" tag in the anchor ref, so source will show as 'direct'. I think it would be a good experiment. Let me know how it goes if you do end up doing this, may use for some of my clients as well.
- Ryan
-
Do you wanted to ping google? I mean .... I can read you ask if it is ok to spent 200$ for a followed link? Or is it nofollow, no problemo in this case.
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
-
Backlinking and Redirect links
Can anyone properly explain that whats the basic differnce between redirects? and backlinks? my site lottery sambad is getting some 301 redirects, is that good or bad??
Link Building | | Mubashir_Baloch0 -
Unreadable backlinks
Greetings master
Link Building | | oqib12
Recently I have embedded the roqibus.com site link on one of other people's more popular sites. But after I checked with Moz, it turns out that there are no backlinks from the site?
How can be like that?0 -
Press Release, yay or nay?
Hi guys, I've got an ecommerce client who has asked if we should generate a press release when they add a new range of products/add a new brand? Is this a good idea? Do we just publish it on their blog or do we send it our to PR websites to distribute with links back to the site. I don't want it to be spammy, just announcing a new brand. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | trCreative0 -
Which Backlinks to Disavow?
I am a site owner just getting to learn more about managing things myself after outsourcing SEO to a firm a year back (they stopped all activities about 8 months back). The question I have is about disavowing the low quality links. After collecting all the data from many sites on the basis of this helpful posting - (http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal), I am now left with around 2,800 back-links. I discovered most of the bad ones using ahrefs and majestic (and Google webmaster did not show many of the bad links). In fact, in the very first place, I realized that there was a spam problem when I saw the anchor cloud on ahrefs which showed many unrelated anchors for my site. I have three questions: **First, **Many URL's are actually from websites which have nothing to do with my line of business and I can sure spot them. What I get confused with is this - I can not say that these sites are downright spam. Some of them look to be good sites for example - a coffee machine vendor (with full business details and a fairly decent looking business), a Nike sports shoes mart etc. But they have nothing to do with my business. So my first question is - What is spam really? Would a back link from a high ranking website in the travel industry be considered spam from the point of view of someone who runs a website for medical equipment, specially if the back-link is from an unrelated anchor text like - "3 nights travel package" (which has nothing to do with medical business). I think I should disavow all the low quality back links with an erroneous anchor but Id like some views on this. Second, I see that in the disavow file, one could either upload a whole domain or a specific URL (could somebody please confirm this). I have some sites which have 8-12 (more in some cases) back links to my site. In most cases these sites are either really bad quality or have nothing to do with my business. I am tempted to disavow the entire domain for such sites instead of going by the URL's. Any views? Third, this is what I'd really like some help with. In case I delete the very pages (on my site) to which these back links point, should I still disavow the pointing domain? Finally: I have not created most of these backlinks. In fact, over the last 2-3 months we have started creating links from good sites in my industry. Most of the anchor cloud is good for me on ahrefs but there are these bad ones to which my question relates. I have not got any manual penalty from Google, though my traffic I think took a hit in the first week of October 2013.
Link Building | | sanar0 -
Ask a QuestionBacklink Anchor Text Profile
I'm looking to clean up my back link profile as we have a Google penalty for unnatural linking. Any pointers on what I should be looking for in terms of what makes a link bad? We have a massive percentage of links under the anchor text of "workwear" and this is the keyword we have the penalty for. Is it better to get the links removed or the anchor text changed? Thanks
Link Building | | hvwltd0 -
Is there a tool I can use to check backlink profiles against each other
Hi, Does anyone know of a tool where I can compare 2 (or more) backlink profiles to check common linking domains. It is one of those things that I know I have seen somewhere before but cant remember for the life of me where! Thanks
Link Building | | rickv1010 -
Outsourced Backlinking?
Hello, I've been newly hired to head up a decent sized company's digital marketing initiatives. Between social media campaigns, web content development, ppc management, etc. I've been a bit overwhelmed. It looks like until my team gets a bit larger we may have to outsource link building, but with the new penguin update I'm worried about choosing the wrong company and ending up with a ton of spam links that gets us nailed. Does anyone happen to have any good recommendations? Thanks!
Link Building | | JFritton0 -
How important are edu and gov backlinks?
I have heard that edu and gov backlinks are important but how so in a niche area like mine - real estate? Perhaps I am missing the point but I do not see how either type of site would ever backlink to a commercial real estate entity. If these are that important in theory, are they obtainable in practice?
Link Building | | casper4340