Blog Post 2 of 4: 400-Plus News Media Mentions And Counting

Chocolate Candle in the Wood Wick Candle Collection.

How We're Building Brand Trust Through Digital Outreach

At Willis Candle Shop, we believe in the power of visibility. Making the cleanest, longest-burning candles on the market is only part of our mission — helping people discover them online is just as important. That’s why we’ve launched one of the most aggressive press distribution campaigns in the candle industry.

Over the past month, we’ve been featured in over 400 legitimate media outlets, including regional radio networks, city news journals, agriculture cooperatives, lifestyle blogs, finance syndicates, and state-specific publications across the U.S. All of them shared news about our handmade, eco-friendly coconut-soy wax candles — and every single one now links back to us.

Whether you found us from a press release or you’re just curious how we’re building our brand’s digital footprint, this blog outlines what we did — and why it matters.

Why We're Listing Every Press Link Publicly

You won’t find many businesses listing 407 backlinks in a blog post. But we’re not like most businesses — and we’re playing the long game.

Here’s our thought process:

Even if most of these links are “no-follow”, Google still sees and parses them.
Publicly connecting our website to legitimate press outlets helps search engines understand our brand's credibility.
Search crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, and others often discover secondary brand signals by following links from known news sources — even when those links aren’t indexed directly.

By publishing this archive, we’re establishing a one-way trust map from our domain to every outlet that has ever mentioned us — a move designed to reinforce our legitimacy and improve entity recognition over time.

Think of this as the digital equivalent of putting all our press clippings on the wall for Google to see.

What Makes This Different Than Just Posting on Social?

Press coverage isn’t just noise — it’s a form of validation. Every mention is indexed in a database somewhere. Every link is a breadcrumb that leads back to our store, our story, and the values behind our products.

Unlike social media posts that disappear in a feed within 24 hours, news links:

Stay live indefinitely
Are syndicated to secondary and tertiary domains
Can be cached and cited in Google News, Bing News, and even third-party newsletters

Even if a crawler doesn’t immediately index one link, the cumulative effect of 407 publications pointing to Willis Candle Shop is too strong for search engines to ignore.

Why It’s Worth It — Even Without Do-Follow Backlinks

Some marketers skip newswire outreach entirely because of the no-follow tags on most press release links. Not us. Here’s why:

The authority of domains like NewsNetMedia, The Globe and Mail, and Benzinga still matters — even if the links are no-follow.
When Google sees the same brand mentioned on 400+ different domains, it improves topical relevance and brand recognition signals.
Many of these articles still show up in search results, especially for branded queries like “Willis Candle Shop candles.”

We’re also seeing some of these mentions get scraped and picked up by independent aggregators — which do include follow tags in some cases. It’s a domino effect, and we’re lighting the fuse.

Check out what This Lady Blogs (a do-follow backlink) says about The Importance of Candles in Home Decor.

We're Not Just Building a Brand — We're Building a Signal

This outreach is just one part of our broader mission: to show customers and search engines that we’re a legitimate, growing small business that’s earning recognition across the country.

It’s not about tricking Google. It’s about showing up everywhere we’ve actually been mentioned, and making sure those mentions are tied back to our site.

No gimmicks. No link wheels. Just authentic outreach, published at scale.

Check out our newest addition to the Willis Candle Shop Select Barrel Collection, the Red Frosted Mocha Masquerade Candle, in a double-wick, 6.25 oz wax weight.