New, credible links are not effecting DA
-
The company I work for recently started distributing press releases via PRNewswire. Our first press release had over 100 pickups. We included several links to our site in the release. It was published on credible sites like AP News and Yahoo Finance (these sites have DAs of 94). None of the links or mentions show up on our discovered links and it's been over a month. Our DA has not increased at all and it's only 18. Am I missing something? I would think with over 100 new links, we should've gained some traction. I've checked all sites for "no follow" markings and haven't found any so I don't think that's the issue. Please help!
-
@hyperionmarketing thanks for the question and for all of the information that you provided related to it. It looks like you have a few questions that I will try to answer for you. I obviously haven't seen the press release and do not know the quality, if it's newsworthy, etc.. so I'll just answer the question in general and not related to this specific Press Release for your company.
- Non of the links or mentions show up on our discovered links and it's been over a month:
Yes, many of the websites that pick up your press release are high-quality and may have a high DA. That said, a number of reasons could make it so tools do not pick up the links or haven't yet. The first, one month is usually not long enough. A few should show up if they are indexed and discovered by month 2 (maybe sooner), maybe month 3. Tools and search engines are not instant and they optimize crawls and indexing to be efficient i.e. high DA sites get crawled often and deeper, low DA sites get crawled less often and they may not use as many resources to index a lot of the site (two very, very simple and basic examples)
- Why has our DA not increased:
Unfortunately, submitting news releases is not a good way to build quality links. In fact, it's not a good way to build links. News releases should be newsworthy and used sparingly for most businesses.
Your news release didn't get picked up, written about and sourced, which is the main goal of news releases. Syndication could mean your news release goes to a bunch of websites that publish every press release anyone pays (<- important to remember when link building, can I pay to get this done easily? if so, meh) to distribute.
These sites get crawled less frequently are already pre-themed by Google to be syndication sites and the links do not need nofollow tags because they basically get one from Google's algorithm similar to how footer, sidebar, sitewide and blog comment links get devalued etc..
*In a few months, maybe 6, check to see how many sites still have your news release indexed. It will quickly show you the value of the links without knowing about DA, PA and all that other stuff. An unindexed link is unknown.
- All links are no-follow, so I should get roughly 100 links, right?:
No, similar to above, Google treats these sites (or sections of websites) differently and on top of that, many of these sites publish so many news releases that your news release is pushed really deep (in terms of the site structure) and Google no longer finds it.
Tools may find the links, keep them for a bit, but they'll likely fall of in the long-run. Find the best source of your press release - possibly the PRNewswire's website, and make sure that it stays indexed on that site.
As a side note, submitting press releases to build links is not effective and is a complete waste of time if you do not do it correctly. News releases need to drum up new stories, reprinted stories will do you and the company you work for no good.
In fact, if I read the first sentence correctly - recently started distributing press releases... it sounds like you will be doing this often, which I would not recommend unless they are done correctly. It seems like you are using them to build links and that will likely do you harm - there are a lot of negative things that come along with building links via press releases. Do a Google search and you will find a lot of good information that should help you out.
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
-
Do you have PA and DA minimums for link building outreach?
Hi all! I'm putting together a list of sites I want to attack for link building. I'm looking at my competitors while also seeking specific sites I know would work well to link to us. My question is, since this is very time-consuming, do you have a minimum PA and/or DA that you require in order to perform manual link-building outreach. For example, if a site has a DA below X and PA below X, what would X have to be for you to not consider it worth your time. I'm just trying to gauge where my efforts will be best spent and trying to get some benchmarks. Thanks!
Link Building | | Kibin0 -
Links in the Classifieds
We rent apartments. One way we use to find clients is to advertize these apartments in Classifieds. Generally, we use free ads. Sometimes, for very popular sites ( like Kijiji), we pay so our ads can be seen first. Could this be a problem with Google? Some sites send us clients, many of them never do. We keep putting ads there because of their PR. What is the worth of this kind of links? Thanks for your answers.
Link Building | | Caru0