A Press Release Sent Out to Get Links

Four hundred copies of one announcement

The offer sounded simple. For a fee, a distribution service would send your press release to hundreds of news sites, each copy carrying links to your website.

A week later, a search for the headline turns up page after page of copies, on sites nobody in the business has ever heard of.

The links do not use the business name. They use the words the owner hopes to be found for, usually a service and a city.

No reporter has called, and none of the copies seems to have a reader. What was bought was placement: the same text, put on pages for a fee.

What Google's guidelines say about them

Google's webmaster guidelines have a page on link schemes, and it names this practice: links with optimised keyword text in press releases distributed on other sites.

A link is meant to be a choice made by someone who found your page worth pointing to. A link you paid to place four hundred times is a choice you made yourself.

At best, Google ignores such links and the fee bought nothing. At worst, they form part of a pattern that leads to a manual action, reported in Webmaster Tools.

Where the copies actually go

Most packages publish the release on networks of sites that exist to carry releases. Each page is one more copy among thousands, with no editor and few visitors.

Search engines find hundreds of identical texts and usually show one, or none, for any search. A copy of a copy tells Google nothing new about your business.

The releases that matter are the ones a person reads and acts on: a reporter who calls, or an editor who writes a story of her own.

When a release is worth sending

A release still has a place: handing real news to people whose job is reporting it. A fair test is whether they would want it with every link removed.

• Real news, such as a new location, a product nobody else offers locally, or a project people will see.
• The right readers: the reporter, editor or trade publication covering your field or your town.
• A person to call, with a direct number, in the same week the release goes out.
• Facts that can be checked, with dates, places and partners who agreed to be named.
• Photographs they may use, credited, and large enough to print.

The second item decides most of it. Ten recipients who cover your trade are worth more than four hundred pages nobody visits.

How the links in a release should be marked

Use your business name or web address as the link text, not a phrase you hope to rank for. That is how a reporter would write it.

Links in a distributed release should carry the nofollow attribute. It marks them as links nobody chose editorially, so they pass no ranking credit and carry no risk.

Ask how the service marks links before you pay. On the news page of your own site, ordinary links are fine, since nobody is placing them for a fee.

A worked example

A concrete polishing contractor in Langley grinds and seals floors in warehouses, showrooms and restaurants, and lately in homes. It runs two crews from one shop.

Last spring it paid to distribute a release about a new decorative finish. The release carried three links, each reading polished concrete floors and the name of a city.

The owner later found copies on dozens of release sites and none a customer would read. Webmaster Tools showed no manual action, but the links fit the guidelines' description.

Its web developer asked the service to mark the links nofollow on the copies it still controlled, and the contractor stopped buying distribution.

Last month the crews finished a showroom floor in a restored heritage building. The owner sent a short release with photographs to two design magazines and the local reporter who covers new businesses.

If either writes about the job, any link will be one an editor chose.

Releases already out there

Many businesses have sent releases like these, often on advice that was widely repeated. Finding old copies is no reason to panic.

Start with the Manual Actions page in Webmaster Tools. If it is empty, stop adding copies and handle every future release properly.

If there is a message about unnatural links, the cleanup is careful work: removing links, listing the rest in a disavow file and asking Google to reconsider. A professional should do it.

What earns links instead

Useful links are given by people who chose to point their readers at you. That needs something worth pointing at, and people who know it exists.

For a local trade, that means a supplier's list of trained installers, an association's directory, and reporters who covered a job worth seeing.

It also means pages that answer real questions. A plain guide to caring for a sealed floor is the kind of page a property manager sends to a client.

Writing a release a reporter can use

Put the news in the headline and the first sentence: who did what, where and when. A reporter deciding in ten seconds should not have to hunt for it.

Keep the quotation to something a person would actually say, without words like leading and innovative. Reporters read them as advertising.

Name a contact who can answer questions that day. Send the release to each reporter by name, in an ordinary email rather than to a list.

The counter-case

Wide distribution has honest uses. A company with news that matters across the country, or one required to publish certain announcements, may need to reach many outlets at once.

Distribution also places a release where some reporters look for stories, and a publicist who knows who covers your trade can make it worth the cost.

In those cases the release is sent for its readers, with links marked as the guidelines ask. The trouble here is narrower: copies bought for their links.

A release for readers, not links

1. Ask whether it is news to anyone outside the business.
2. List the reporters who cover your trade and town.
3. Put the news in the headline and first sentence.
4. Link with your name or web address, not keywords.
5. Mark distributed links nofollow before anything goes out.
6. Check Webmaster Tools for a manual action message.
7. Build pages worth linking to on their own.

Step one saves the most money. A release that is not news to anyone outside the office will not become news through distribution, however many copies are made.

Thanking sponsors without a wall of logos looks at the same rule from the other side, where a community event gives its sponsors links in return for their money.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.