Helping PR Companies Understand SEO Guidelines
A number of lifestyle bloggers have been struggling since the Panda update last summer. Giveaways and comments on the post are seen as link schemes and/or keyword stuffing. To review – the basic fixes are here and here. Today, I want to help you discuss the rules with your PR companies. There is a lot of misinformation and some of it is difficult to describe to your partnering company, especially if you’re not clear on it yourself. Hopefully this will help.
Pre-Giveaway
- be sure to let the company know that in no way are you obligated to include a follow-link to their site. Any links to their site, will by default, be no-follow as you are benefiting from the relationship (in product, good will or monetary). If you wish to include a follow link it will not in any way be considered part of the relationship between the two of you
- no key-word stuffing will be used, but only natural language that helps your readers understand their offering. Same goes for the excerpts, rich text formats, photos and videos.
- comments for a giveaway will not be allowed on your site/post (use an alternative like Linky Tools and widgets) as it resembles keyword stuffing
- The post may only be published once through out the internet in a machine-readable format. Images, excerpts, and small quotes are allowed.
Giveaway Launch/Post Review:
Here’s a template that you can use to communicate with the PR companies outlining the best practices that will ensure neither of you are penalized for your relationship online.
- Review Link & Title
- Use of the Review/ Copyrights: Please remember that copying anything verbatim is frowned upon by Google and will hurt both our rankings in search engines. If you would like to promote the review, I’ve provided a short intro that you can use below: “Blah, blah, blah, link here.“
- Provide a short descriptive paragraph that may be used in their promotional materials and social media sites. Include the keywords, and their product name. Include something exceptional about it – or an endorsement that they can use on their site. LINK back to your review page (not front page).
Does this help? How have your PR companies responded to the no-follow link suggestions?
