TRAFFIC
PRESS RELEASES:
BUILDING REPUTATION
AND BRAND
Nick Garner of Oshi bitcoin casino thinks PR is something everyone who cares about branding and
SEO should be paying attention to. Here he explains how marketers can use press releases to build trust
and rankings.
IN PREVIOUS ARTICLES, I’ve talked
about my general experiences with my
white label casino, Oshi (on the SoftSwiss
platform). In this piece I want to share with
you some experiences and insights around
online PR, and why I think PR is something
everyone who cares about branding and
SEO should be paying attention to.
With my casino, I am constantly
looking around for good links that will
add both Trust Rank and Page Rank.
When I go looking for links, these are
my basic choices:
– buy links from link sellers who are
touting into my inbox (the ones who
have terrible English and equally
awful websites)
– buy links from what I call ‘closed’
link sellers i.e. an SEO agency or a
trusted seller
– win organic link placements through
awesome content (very unlikely,
it’s gambling!)
– do online PR, mainly press releases,
and get link placements there.
In this article, I’m pitching the press
release approach.
Before I go into the ‘how to’, I want
to just give some context on how I see
SEO working in general, which should
give you a backdrop on why I like press
releases so much (Caveat: as with all things
SEO, there is circumstantial evidence
and hypothesis...)
Links were what made Google (page
rank algorithm), and links are what could
have destroyed Google. Fortunately for
them, they have progressively downgraded
the importance of junk links so they now
‘know what a good link looks like’. In other
words, links are becoming what they should
have been in the first place, an editorial vote
in favour of another site or piece of content.
When I look for link placements,
my number one criterion these days is
whether a site ranks. If it ranks Google
trusts it. Therefore Google will trust links
from that ranking site. Of course there
are caveats and exceptions, but as a
general rule it makes sense to me.
Google Trust Rank, the placeholder
term for how Google trusts your website,
is partially determined by the ‘quality’ of
the websites you get links from.
By quality, I mean the authority and
the respect of those websites. I believe
Google passes Trust Rank through
no-follow links.
If you take Wikipedia, it is probably
the largest and most editorially controlled
single body of information there is.
If we assume links are editorial votes,
then links from Wikipedia must have
value to Google as a ranking signal.
Since Wikipedia links don’t pass Page
Rank, they must pass Trust Rank, which
passes Wikipedia’s authority. More
authority means more trust and more
likelihood of sites being ranked.
Which conveniently leads me on to...
Meritocracy
The second megatrend after the ‘link
cleanup’ I’ve seen with Google is the rise
of the ‘search result meritocracy’.
Assuming links are a vote, more links
(votes) are a good signal that a website
has more merit. But, it can be gamed.
However, you can’t game engagement,
provided you have the right checks and
balances in place.
iGB Affiliate Issue 64 AUG/SEP 2017
15