Google recently amended its link schemes document to includes new provisions on how companies can generate inbound links fairly. The search engine added components to govern large-scale guest blogging ventures, inappropriate use of advertorials and press release content for SEO that uses anchor text to fuel linkbacks.
While Google has been clear with its stance on advertorials, as noted in a recent Webmaster Central Help video, updates to guide future guest blogging campaigns and press releases come with some eye-opening insights.
Honest guest blogging still OK
The search engine notes the following certain practices will raise a red flag: guest blogging with the intent to build links. Theoretically, with the company paying close attention to how companies engage in guest blogs, certain penalties may be applied to brands conducting themselves in a malicious manner to inflate PageRank or domain authority. Perhaps Google may request every company publishing a guest update to use the nofollow tag to remove any inbound link. This would mirror recent rules placed on how companies market news updates through press release wires and web content.
PR content must follow new set of rules
The biggest update to Google's link scheme document is how marketers use news wires for promotional and link building purposes. Google advises, "links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites," is an example of unnatural link building. Companies that publish PR content on their sites and distribute the same article through wires should be sure to nofollow links from external publishers. Failing to follow this provision will result in a manual penalty.
The update around press release practices should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with SEOPressor Founder Daniel Tan's May 2013 experiment. Tan argued against Google's Matt Cutts that press releases don't influence PageRank, and attempted to optimize a release for a random word that linked back to Cutts' blog. The test worked, and highlighted that companies can use self-promotional online content to improve the volume of keywords pointing back to their websites. This could have served as fodder for Google to reconsider how it looks at press releases before updating the link scheme document.
No comments:
Post a Comment