We’ve talked about the value of press releases for SEO in the past. Is PR of benefit to optimizing your website? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. See this dead horse?
We’re going to beat it. Press releases are good for search engine optimization.
If you didn’t believe what many others in the industry assumed, now you have proof. A patent by Google has surfaced recently that talks about “implied links.”
Between the Abstract, Claim, and Description there are approximately 274 lines, 323 sentences, 10,163 words, and 62,035 characters that describe this patent. Sooooo, we won’t bore you with all of what it says and will just talk about why it’s awesome.
Within all of the technical jargon is a key sentence or two. Primarily the following.
“The system determines a count of independent links for the group (step 302). A link for a group of resources is an incoming link to a resource in the group, i.e., a link having a resource in the group as its target. Links for the group can include express links, implied links, or both. An express link, e.g., a hyperlink, is a link that is included in a source resource that a user can follow to navigate to a target resource. An implied link is a reference to a target resource, e.g., a citation to the target resource, which is included in a source resource but is not an express link to the target resource. Thus, a resource in the group can be the target of an implied link without a user being able to navigate to the resource by following the implied link.”
To be more specific, this verbiage implies that when a website talk about you that any mention could be considered an implied link. How does this relate to press releases? Remember all of that press that you’ve been working on, press releases you’ve been sending out, mentions on blogs you’ve scored? Remember doing all that (or, at least that you should have been doing that)? It wasn’t all done in vain.
For years we have done press releases for clients. It was often considered icing on the cake and was an added service that we just enjoyed providing over and above what was expected. However, assuming this patent’s outline will work its way into Google algorithm this will mean a big boost for those of you that have worked on building your brand awareness. All of that exposure in the past that lead to name mentions, but no links, may end up being counted as a(n implied) link after all.