Google Values Link from Press Release, as in ‘Unique Stories’

Google has recently updated the link scheme document under their Webmaster Guidelines to warn against large scale guest blogging, advertorials and optimized anchor texts in articles and press releases. The news spread like wild-fire and feared many online marketers and PR teams.

John Mueller, one of Google’s lead Webmaster Trend Analysts says added that there is still great value in using a Press Release, especially to make inroads to your news, product launches, discoveries and announcements. When the press hears about your news and decides to write about it, these links do not need to be nofollowed. Links in editorial stories are what Google values the most. However, if you are sending press release to earn SEO benefits, you may want to add nofollow to the links.

Adding to this, Google’s Matt Cutts once said link from Press Release will not affect ranking, however, SEO practitioners are able to proof links from press release do affect rankings, twice. It will be interesting to see if there is a third attempt after the link scheme document change.

In Google’s example of so-called ‘optimized anchor texts in articles and press releases’, it is easy to spot attempt to link-spam. I think this is what Google frowns upon. See the image below:

As long as you are not spamming the web with articles containing links like the image above, you should be fine. But will these links hurt you? They should not. If link spamming can hurt a website, it will be an obvious and easy exploit for blackhatters to hurt their competition. It once happened, that’s how ‘negative SEO’ got it’s trail.

The web is full of links, and links make a “web”. Google needs link to work their valuation. If the Web suddenly drops all the links, PageRank is out of business. It will be a tough call to determine if a link is natural or unnatural, paid or unpaid, but Google is definitely capable of perfecting their algorithm to value the web the way it should be.

As marketers, we want to make sure we are not involving in any degree of web spam. Every piece of content we produce has to provide unique value to our visitor. It’s perfectly fine to use Press Release to attract visitors that you otherwise cannot reach. It’s also perfectly fine to guest blog. It’s the ‘spam’ Google is going after, not press release, guest blog nor advertorials.

The changes to link scheme is a good news to online marketers, as it weeds out spammers and give us a chance to serve our community. Do what you are already doing, don’t worry, don’t panic. As long as you are not a spammer, Google is your friend.

At the same time, do not forget that we now have more venues to attract visitors, build brand and community. SEO is no longer the only path. If you don’t prefer to go the ‘paid ad’ way, you can still run content marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing….the list goes on.

For a fact, 30% of the traffic to our blog are from social networks. So have you been paying attention to the world connected to you on these social platforms and track your social reach? Grab Social Metrics Pro today and start tracking.