Note I’ve broken some hyperlinks below:
I saw a post from a UK-based digital marketing agency on Linkedin recently on “How to earn top-tier links” [by Digital PR outreach] in 3 simple steps including:
“[3] Pitch the advice to top-tier journalists. Link building is simple.”
I looked at the photo in the post which showed a link to the Digital PR company’s client website from an article on a major UK tabloid newspaper’s (owned by Reach PLC) website.
I then looked at the source code of the page on the newspaper’s website in my browser and noticed that the link to the 'client’s website' was was to : hXXps://go.SKIMRESOURCES.COM/?id=76202X1526515&xs=1&url=hXXps%3A%2F%2Fwww.bedkingdom .co.uk%2Fbeds.html&sref=hXXps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mirror.co.uk%2Flifestyle%2Flittle-known-overnight-hack-cool-32780594 . As it says at the top of the article in question: “This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it.”: skimresources.com is a domain of Skimlinks - an affiliate network . I've seen that the agency in question says that they charge £5K for a PR campaign...
I've seen another Digital PR agency post on Linkedin about one of their ["reactive PR"] campaigns for an online pharmacy with an example of the "coverage" they have obtained in a national newspaper - again it is a tabloid which says at the top of the article in question: “This article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it". When I review the link to the client's website from the newspaper website (yes you guessed it -it is another Reach PLC website!) it is a Skimlinks link again...
The link in question does not appear to be an “editorial link” obtained by PR outreach (if it was, the hyperlink would be to https://www. bedkingdom .co.uk or similar). Hmmmm….
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (the UK's regulator of advertising) states that "content related to affiliated products (and the links themselves) should be identifiable as advertising. If not otherwise clear from the context, this means highlighting the relevant content so that it is obvious prior to engagement which links and associated content are advertising within each article." Simply stating “This article contains an affiliate link, so we will receive a commission on any sale we generate from it” is not enough in my analysis. See https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/affiliate-marketing.html .
The links in the two above examples (as per Google’s best practice for affiliate links) have been ‘nofollowed’, indicating that most definitely (along with the fact it’s an affiliate link) Google will not count the link AT ALL for ranking purposes in my assessment. Thus the links in question will most likely offer zero SEO benefit but may pass some relevant traffic.
It is not clear who is the affiliate in these examples - is it the digital PR agency or the publisher? Are the digital PR agency paying the publisher for placements from the affiliate revenue?
Publishers have become more aware of SEO and the value of backlinks (thus want some compensation as other revenue streams are drying up) - thus some Digital PR agencies appear to have given (at least partially) given up on PR and become affiliate marketing agencies...
As for Reach PLC, is this "people-first content"?