Digital PR FAQs: How to gain backlinks in news releases

In our digital world, SEO is an important aspect of any PR and marketing strategy. After all, in PR, when you’re trying to build authority and trust for your brand, part of this should be about building authority and trust for your brand’s website.

One common way of achieving this is by gaining backlinks. Simply put, backlinks are when one website provides a link to another and, not only can they strengthen the SEO of the page that’s been linked to, they also provide a gateway for new audiences to find this page online. 

In digital PR, an effective way of securing backlinks is by placing them in news releases that are distributed by online publications. However, gaining backlinks from these publications isn’t always so simple and there are some unwritten rules that you must stick to. Working by these will help to ensure you appropriately build relationships with journalists, understand the most valuable backlinks for your brand and put an effective strategy in place.

We’ve answered some FAQs on gaining backlinks through news releases to help you uncover everything you need to know.

“What is domain, page and link authority and why should you consider them in your PR strategy?”

Let’s start with the basics. Firstly, building links is all about improving the authority of your website - a concept that is based on the strength and ability of a site to rank highly in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). When given a score, the higher your website authority, the stronger it is.

To break this down even further, the phrase ‘domain authority’ was coined by Moz and refers to the ability of your domain as a whole, to rank highly on SERPs, partly based on the quality of its content and its usefulness to search engine users. On the other hand, page authority is the ability of a single page to rank highly on SERPs.

Among other things, domain and page authority are both influenced by the number of backlinks that lead to these web addresses, the domain and page authority of the websites that contain these backlinks as well as the backlink’s link authority. (For a more in-depth understanding, check out this explanation from ContentKing).

This is why getting other websites with a strong domain and page authority to link to your website is so important for your digital PR strategy: it will strengthen your own website’s authority and support SEO performance.

You must take this into consideration when seeking backlinks from online publications - some will have a higher domain authority and will, therefore, provide more value if you gain a backlink there. 

Understanding which ones will best help your SEO strategy is important in PR - so you can tailor news stories, articles and commentary for the publications that you would most like to be featured in and gain backlinks from.

“Are nofollow links a problem for news releases and SEO?”

Nofollow links are links that don’t count towards your search engine rankings and some news editors may add a nofollow tag to a link, telling search engines to ignore it.

Google introduced them to stop the spamming of links across the internet, in comment sections or irrelevant blogs and news sites. After all, it wants search engine rankings to be based on good quality content and good quality backlinks.

Because of this, news sites can be penalised for posting links inappropriately and may add the nofollow tag to a link. So does this make a news release redundant for your SEO strategy?

The answer is no. News releases can still help your SEO in several ways.

Firstly, we heard from an editor that brands that include backlinks within the body of their news release (and not as separate links sent to a journalist) can still stand a chance of gaining good quality backlinks that help their SEO. The editor said that some editors will not bother changing these to nofollow links and, therefore, these will still be useful for your rankings. Some sites, however, will automatically make links into nofollow links as part of their policy. So, really, it depends on the news site.

Beyond this, even a no-follow link will still drive more traffic to your website and increase the chances of other people sharing your content and providing links in this way - all helping your SEO.

“How should you place a backlink in a news release?”

To make your backlinks most effective and improve their quality, there are certain ways to use them within your news releases.

Adding hyperlinks within the body of your news release is a good way to start. The hyperlink can connect to your homepage, a blog page or a landing page for content and research downloads etc. It’s key here that the words you hyperlink are contextual, relevant and describe or name the page you’re linking to. You could do this by linking a specific statistic, a quote or, for instance, by naming the research you’re referencing.

Ensuring your links are embedded in the body of text and are relevant to the connected page is essential to improve their success. Links are considered stronger when contextual so they’re more valuable in the body than if they sit alone at the footer of the page.

Do remember, though, that journalists have the ability to remove or edit backlinks wherever you place them. Because of this, there is no guarantee they will remain in their initial locations once they’re distributed to publications.

“Can you ask journalists for backlinks?”

This is really where your PR and media relations come into play. Gaining backlinks from journalists is supported by building up a good relationship with them, understanding how they (and their publications) work, what they want and most importantly, what their boundaries are.

Generally, it’s best not to ask journalists for backlinks - they’ll include them if it works for their publication and if it doesn’t, they won’t. If you ask them for it, it can end up frustrating them; after all, they’re already supporting you by publishing your news release and broadening your visibility in this way. If they include a backlink, it's a bonus but don’t expect it as a given.

We’ve been told by journalists that they’ve stopped working with brands that are overly persistent in their requests for backlinks - one PR hadn’t done their research and was pushing for a backlink in a printed publication - so remember to respect a journalist’s (and publication’s) boundaries when link building as mistakes like this can damage relationships in the long run.

“Why do some news outlets include backlinks and others won’t?”

It’s often not a journalist’s preference that decides whether a backlink is included in a news release. Instead, it’s the publication policy that determines if they are omitted or not. These general rules change between industry, sector, and publication so if one outlet includes you and others don’t, it’s down to their own industry and professional strategies.

For example, in the HR market, many publications are unlikely to include backlinks in their news coverage and no amount of asking will change this.

Why? In part, because niche industry publications work differently. Gaining a backlink may be part of paid-for editorial content, or it may be because they link only to valid, educational research or their own guidance on the same subject.  

Gaining backlinks on consumer publications works quite differently - you’ll frequently see bigger publications using a backlink where they help their audiences find more details. So it’s not uncommon to stand a higher chance of securing a link here. 

Our one bit of advice? Each publication has different policies, each journalist is working according to those policies, so understanding the differences is vital in managing backlink expectations and the overall campaign.

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