SEO for PR: Republishing content can hurt your search rank

Not only is his feedback important for search marketers, but also key for public relations professionals that manage site content. Sites with blogs, RSS, or keyword aggregators or press rooms—that might, for example, repost press releases to their sites—with the goal of yielding a high amount of traffic to those sections may be doing more damage than good to their search rank.

Before we get to Cutts’ feedback, let’s take a quick step back and discuss what we know about how Google assigns value to content.

Google’s algorithm ultimately aims to rank results in the order it believes will be most meaningful to a user. Specifically, the following questions are asked in determining if content is worthy of a high search ranking.

• Is this content unique or authentic? Google rewards the original webpage that houses a particular piece of content or article.

• Do users like this content? This helps determine popularity of the site or source.

• Is it coming from a trusted source? This is measured primarily in the way of links pointing to it, +1s, as well as the age, and history of the website’s domain.