Linking to Media Mentions

[steer15]

I'm doing SEO for a high-profile lawyer who has received numerous media mentions.  My hope is that linking from her site to these media mentions will enable Google to make the connection.  The difficulty is that their business name is their own name.  I'm thinking this will make it harder for Google to make the connection.  It's not appropriate to request links from the articles (they typically relate to murder trials).  Any suggestions?

[FedeEinhorn]

If you link to those articles you are flowing pagerank to them, but you are not getting anything in return. The best would be to contact those article writers and ask for a link. Even if the articles are about murder trials, she is a lawyer, therefore related to murder trials. You can ask a backlink on the name or "lawyer" or whatever word refers to her and her job.

[peterlaurent]

This should be a good credibility building third party source of google queries for interested parties thus no need to really link to them. Maybe you could comment on the articles if possible or encourage the lawyer to write articles in publications and link them as a contributor using Google + to both their website and the article in various publications.

[MoosaHemani]

If they are mentioning your client’s business even without a link so you are getting the benefit of citation but as far as the links and SERP visibility is concern the idea is to be creative, launch something news worthy on your client’s website and then contact all the journalists to and then ask them the link on previous articles where your client is already available.

Obviously going directly to ask for a link will be inappropriate but making something up for journalists will allow them to take interest in you and then you can easily come to the point.

[KaneJamison]

Have you heard the PT Barnum quote, "I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right."? That's going to be a factor here. While the obvious ideal is to get a link from the article, as you mentioned it may not be appropriate and the client may not be comfortable with those types of requests. If the name is fairly unique, eg "Meiers and Young, LLP", then it's likely that Google can make an association over time using concepts like co-occurence. While that's not likely to be as strong as a link, it does likely provide some value in sending those citation signals to Google.

To make better use of that press, I would typically add a page such as www.client.com/press/ or www.client.com/in-the-news/ that lists those press mentions in reverse chronological order, and feel free to link directly to them if you think it actually provides value to potential clients viewing your site.