Formatting of Links in Direct Press Releases
-
I have been looking around but not found any great suggestions.
If we send out a direct press release to a journalist, eg to their email address, what is the best format to send it in (eg word, pdf, rtf, html)?
Also, if it was to be sent out as a pdf or word doc, is there a good way to put links in there to increase the chance of them putting a keyword link in the article if it was to be published on their site? Would a hyperlink in there be confusing or is that ok?
-
"A hyperlink in word can easily be stripped out by someone and then it is not clear what the link was to or what words it was on."
Personally in my opinion this is the nature of the beast... If you give good relevant links that help the authenticity of the article, then the poster, will not have as much inclination to remove the hyperlink...
But if it is obviously trying to be an SEO Anchor text link, then you run the risk of it being removed as this is not the aim of a link in a press release... A link should be informational and not self serving (or not seem self serving
w00t!
-
Hi,
Just as a personal opinion placing a self serving SEO link in the first paragraph is sort of bad ettiqute, and could possibly affect your distribution, as well as readability. But of course this is an age old battle as he is correct, a link higher up has more ability to be indexed and possibly pass rank.
I would also attempt to not concentrate on "placing" SEO links, but actually find relevant and helpful ways to place anchor text, as in the future just placing random and obvious anchor texts that "sort of" make sense will loose more and more "steam"
Shane
-
Yes you are right Of course on PDF file the link will be more secured, but it is not comfortable to adjust the text there. So the best option still will be MS word, the when the editing will be finished, you can convert the doc into PDF.
I am sure you know that you can't simply copy the text from PDF on website because text in MS word has hidden coding and it might mess your HTML!
Cheers, Russel
-
Hi Russel,
Thanks for your help. I understand the points that you have mentioned. However, it is not easy and there is a lot of room for error when using word.
A hyperlink in word can easily be stripped out by someone and then it is not clear what the link was to or what words it was on.
Cheers, Edward
-
Dear Edward,
I will suggest you to keep the docs in Word format, because this is the easiest format for adjusting the text and adding the hyperlinks!
Also make sure that your article doesn't have more than 3 links, because then your article might not bring any value for SEO. Meanwhile the recent research shows that the highest value will bring the link located in the first paragraph! So if you have for ex. the keyword "Roller skates", try to locate this anchor text with the link in the first paragraph.
Hope it will make sense to you,
Cheers,
Russel
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
-
Links
Hi, im wondering if links that is not exact anchor links gives any boost for rankings? Example if lets say somebody links to my site http://domain.com/category/article with anchor: domainname or url link.
Link Building | | Rob_I0 -
Linking to sites that link to porn or casinos, my site getting penalized?
I have some link exchanges with some sites to get web traffic but when i ran the bad neighborhood link checker, i found that one site links to some casinos and another site has one link to a porn site. Is this getting me penalized? should i remove the links to these sites? Thanks, Ron
Link Building | | Ron100 -
Outbound links
We are working with a large, global customer that has asked us to link to their website from about 5,000 pages of our website. The links would either point to one page on their website, or they would point to specific pages throughout their website. Is this a bad thing from an SEO perspective, as in - would either of us be penalized from search engines for doing this?
Link Building | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Link Building
I noticed another SEO builds backlinks (tons) on a social media profile that then has a link to his client's site. Another site he builds backlinks are a bitly account that 301's to the clients account. Why would you do this? Is it that you can build links indiscriminately to build a page up in PR to 3-4-5 PR, then pass that higher PR to your site (safe). Is that PR building method better than placing 100's of smaller PR links on your site? It seems logical that if you passed in a tremendous amount of juice to juice a site up to PR4, you won't make your main site PR4 by JUST that link. You would need to build a lot of PR4 sites to make your site PR4. Why not just put all the backlinks on the main page instead of building up secondary social profiles etc... Please reveal this secret. I know a lot of SEOs are using this method. Help 🙂
Link Building | | JML11790 -
Are PR releases good for Link Building?
I'm having a bit of a conundrum with Press Releases: I recently sent a press release on PRWeb (which I personally think is just "average" compared to others as it focuses mainly on the CBS network and is not focused at all unless you pay for an expensive release) and got over 100 incoming links from high PR news sites (according to Webmaster Tools) but these links had PRWeb in subtitle, so for all I know these were syndicated releases and not "Pick up By" as PRWeb reports. Will this affect Page Rank value or rankings for any keywords? Are these links treated only as temporary links or permanent back links? (I know sometimes they appear in Google News or Yahoo News, but disappear the next day) Was it valuable to the company? Our business is in health sector exclusively on East Coast U.S. and the release was seen all over the world and not one of the links coming back was from a health-related section. They were high rank online sites, but is there value in such links? added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)
Link Building | | HMCOE0 -
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Why does my website have 2,000+ links, but only 16 linking root domains?
Link Building | | thestudio40 -
A few questions about link building?
1. Is it worth gaining more then 1 link on a website when link building, for example if I did a guest post on a blog, is it worth doing another guest post on the same blog linking to the same website? So 2 guest posts on 2 blogs, or 4 guest posts on 4 blogs? 2. When building links through guest blogging, you have two options, a link in the byline and a link in the content. Will a link in the content have more benefit then in the byline as its surrounded by relevant content? 3. Does having a link higher up the page have more benefit then one lower down?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Press Release Service for Link Building
I have a small question on your Mozzers! I have down in 30 days about 75 Backlink from 75 different sources of PR, National and International Press Release Domains. Some of them, are waiting for approval, from administrator, and some of them goes automatically published, but all have a good PR and PA&DA too. All 75 press release content was unique, 75 different contents, what do you think, are this links worth or not? THanks
Link Building | | leadsprofi1