The Association of Online Publishers (AOP) recently announced a set of guidelines that aims to ensure publishers are suitably credited for the original content they produce.
Driven by accusations between rival newsgroups about stealing exclusive stories, the AOP’s Link Attribution Protocol seeks to address the common absence of links to original sources in online news content.
The arrival of the protocol shows that the AOP and its members recognise that links play an important role in driving traffic and revenue on publisher’s websites and that backlinks are also vitally important for SEO, in a move that could also benefit the digital PR industry.
The AOP aims to establish a best practice for its members to request backlinks from other members via a link attribution email address. Each publisher’s email address is to be included in a database on the AOP website to make them easily contactable.
The issue of attributing credit for content amongst publishers has been around for a long time. Many news organisations, including the BBC, operate a strategy of not providing links in their articles. Where other news outlets do provide a link, it is usually marked as “nofollow” sapping it of SEO benefit. The AOP’s advice is that all links should now be “follow” rather than “nofollow” and that hyperlinks should be anchored on the text of the title that broke the story.
The announcement of the protocol has been initially framed as a platform to create a level playing field amongst news publications in what is arguably a very uneven market.
In an interview with Press Gazette, the Sun’s head of SEO Carly Steven said: “We believe that fair attribution for original reporting is vital to maintaining a healthy and diverse digital ecosystem. Our exclusives are the lifeblood of our brand, and it is clearly in the best interests of both publishers and readers to promote and reward the energy, passion and investment they represent.
“We fully support AOP’s new link policy and look forward to working more closely with all publishers to make this vision a reality.”
With regards to digital PR does this mean that news publications will be more likely to link out more often and to sources other than their nearest rivals? That currently remains to be seen.
In the same Press Gazette interview Richard Reeves, managing director of the Association of Online Publishers said: “Fair citation not only shows respect for the time, effort, and money invested in generating premium-level content, but is also vital for maintaining publishers’ visibility, traffic and ultimately, survival.”
To us, this suggests that the big publishers should at least consider linking out more often to content creators where the content is worthy of a link.
In choosing whether to provide a backlink the AOP asks publishers to think about whether the content provides “original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?” If these pillars are consistently represented in your releases, then it could be worth chasing up those backlinks for your client.
Key takeaways
- The AOP and its members have recognised that fair attribution is vital to ensure publishers are credited for the original content that they create, with a link directing users to source of a story.
- The new Link Attribution Protocol created by the AOP seeks to create a best practice for publishers to request links from outlets who have not cited their exclusive content.
- The AOP’s advice is that links should be “follow” rather than “nofollow” and that hyperlinks should be anchored on the text of the title that broke a story.
- Whether the new measures will also extend to content produced as part of a digital PR campaign remains to be seen, but the protocol does mark a major shift from some of the biggest publishers in the country who previously didn’t publish links in articles at all.