PR Releases? Do they help your SEO?
-
Do PR releases help? Do links from PRweb.com carry no value? Was Matt Cutts being specific to the user's website in the Google Webmaster discussion, when Matt said "I wouldn't expect links from press release web sites to benefit your rankings, however."
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/O178PwARnZw/discussion
-
can you provide some link of the pr site please to use
-
My first career was as a traditional public relations guy (press secretary for a congressman), and I continue to use press releases now that I am dedicated on SEO, and they work great when done correctly.
As others have already said, that means: (1) you need to make sure you are announcing something newsworthy, and (2) you will only have good results if reporters or bloggers write about your press release on their own website. Press release distribution platforms are not valuable, in my opinion. So in addition to ONLY writing press releases when you have something newsworthy to announce, and in addition to writing very well-written press releases, you'll also need to follow up personally with lots of targeted reporters and bloggers if you hope to get a lot of bang out of press releases.
It's not easy, but it is a great way to generate high quality 'editorial links' from trusted domains, so I think it will actually become more and more important in the future.
-
Personally I would only use the PR strategy if it were for PR purposes (imagine that). For instance if your company has made a notable partnership with a vendor, landed a large contract, or has done something noteworthy in the community then it would be sufficient to push a PR piece.
My interpretation of Cutts' statement on this topic is that a PR/Article will not be a very noteworthy citation.
For my clients the efforts that we would put into a PR piece we are now allotting into a content marketing push with being featured on a guest blog or onto our blog or social channels.
I hope this helps...
-
Unfortunately I don't have any data on that.
-
The general SEO's response of "it depends" doesn't apply here. I've done a lot of PR article backlinking in the past and I've never had a case where it helped for anything but maybe the company's name and even then we couldn't track any additional sales to the PR efforts.
The ONLY exception that I've seen is concerning ORM (Online Reputation Management) of a personal nature. The reason is because the objectives are different. With traditional SEO/SEM you are trying to drive sales, therefore you can not rely on spammy outlets. Whereas when we are conducting ORM for the different varieties of a person's name - there is almost no competition yet you need to dominate the top 5 SERPs. I always use an extremely diversified strategy but I do include PR articles about 50% of the time and it does help... especially on pages 3-5.
-
I am not sure about how online press releases help your seo, but what I can tell you about them is, they do help promote your business.
As someone in the PR field, I use online press release sites a lot, but never the paid version. The responce we do get from the press release is huge.
I done an experiment last year where i compared the amount of business we got from an advert in a newspaper to spending time writing five press releases and putting them on online press release sites. We got much more sales from the press release than we did get from the advert, we also found that a number of online magazines and blog sites were publishing our press release.
I have heard a lot of people say that press release sites can damage your seo but i am not convinced on this, but i am also not an expert in seo so only people like Keri and other experts can tell you if they can help or damage your seo.
-
Hello,
You have a total syndication amount of 380 on that press release.
To me a very good press release is around 8,000 to 10,000 results. The higher the results the more it will help.
We use methods on a daily basis where we guarantee 3,000 + results.
You could get the higher end prweb and I think this gives you around 1500 or so, but I am not sure, I haven't used prweb in a while, since we have other methods that I feel are just as good if not better.
-
Was Diablo 3 prior to Matt's 2005 post?
-
I show you as number 6 for "Psoriasis videos" that seems pretty good.... although google didn't pick up the actual video.
Where were you before the release?
-
Great post,
Very interesting points. I like the part he puts "however". He always leaves off certain factors where something could help in a specific instance ha. It's hard to say with press releases, but I know that they work.
I ranked for a diablo 3 term in only 3 hours after making a press release when diablo was popular. So this tells me that if I can rank for a keyword in 3 hours at first in the world for something they are working. Now the keyword wasn't very hard to get, but it was 2 words and it was about diablo. So to me, press releases will always be worth it.
Have a great day.
Matthew Boley
-
With many of the updates over the last year, do you think that scraper sites like chron.com could actually hurt your SEO efforts?
-
Back in November we published a press release. It got picked up by 79 news sites. Despite being a relatively small site, we saw zero visible change in SEO. This was unusual, and I was considering making my own question about it. Maybe it's something new?
You can see the PR here, it has pretty good PA on PRWeb by itself. It should've made a noticeable impact somewhere, but it didn't. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/11/prweb10180911.htm
-
Matt Cutts chimes in on Alan B.'s SEJ article at http://www.searchenginejournal.com/get-over-yourself-matt-cutts-did-not-just-kill-another-seo-kitten/56842/ and mentions that he (Cutts) said the same thing in 2005. The series of tweets Matt made are copied below:
I think I covered this on http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/ pretty well (search for “press release” to catch all the comments I made.
Ultra-short version: 1) don’t expect links from press release websites to help ranking.
- Don’t expect press releases on many other websites, e.g. http://www.chron.com/business/press-releases/article/Levitra-Buy-Viagra-Cheapest-Prices-Guaranteed-3993998.php on Houston Chronicle to help either.
& 3) the benefit is not links/PR from the press release directly; it’s primarily when reporters write an article as a result.
but I think all of those points are implicit in my 2005 comments on press releases from http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/ Hope that helps.
-
I am sure the general SEO statement of "It depends" applies here as well. I picked on PRweb.com specifically because they are not a "Free-For-All" PR site.
My suspicion is that many of the sites that call themselves PR sites are of very poor quality.
-
I would also think in this manner as well. You need diversity of platforms and Ips. So if anything it's good for that. They are also natural looking links to your site since they get syndicated.
I would however make sure that that you aren't making your press releases to over promotional, they link to a source other than your main site and you don't use to many anchor texts.
I personally like to link to my website and then a source like wiki, gov site, a health site for facts, or anything in this nature to help show where you found your facts at.
Have a great day.
Matthew Boley
-
From what I have heard/read, Google's seems to want you to believe that press release links are not valued, but from what I have seen they definitely seem to have some impact on rankings. Maybe they have turned down the tuners on links from press release sites, but they certainly seem to have SOME positive effects.
Just my thoughts!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
CRO help how to convert already existing customers on limited budget
Hi guys! We are a start up and just launched our website in December. We are having issues with our website not converting and we have identified a few possibilities of why it may not be converting after an extensive competition analysis. Therefore, due to our limited budget we have had to cut our adwords campaign and now have 1 shot at fixing the conversion rate optimization by changing the registration process and also our offer from "FREE" to discounted rates eg: $1 per min for all new customers instead which will also work in with the way our system is configured as we have a deposit funds method. Our current offer stands at 3 FREE mins on all chat sessions, however this can not be claimed unless the client deposit is min $20 - now I realize why our competitors would use the discounted rates instead of the FREE minutes. Other competitors can achieve this as they don't require the customer to deposit any amount as they just deduct the account after the 3 minutes is up from the credit card. After running 1 months of adwords on a limited budget (i know its not long enough to test) we gathered around 24 sign ups, 3 of which entered credit card details but no deposits, and the rest who signed up only got to our 2 step registration. In this case we are working our way on changing the registration process and changing the offer. Can anyone provide any expertise or recommendations about what they think may work? Our website is www.zenory.com Thanks and I look forward to your responses.
Industry News | | edward-may0 -
Train Client to SEO?
What would you do if a potential client asked you this: Bob and I could meet with you soon to discuss how we would like to work with you regarding SEO. We are specifically curious whether or not it is worth it to have you work on SEO-related issues for a specific period of time or to pay to have you train Bob in doing so for that period of time. We would be interested in comparing rates and the value of each proposition. I am tempted to tell them that I do not doing SEO training. But, I have a feeling that there is a way for me to help the client and to make some money for myself as well. I'm curious what the rest of you would do in this situation though. Thanks in advance.
Industry News | | theBREWROOM0 -
Best Places to Post SEO/Marketing Jobs?
I have several colleagues in the industry (and some fellow marketers) who have asked me where the best places are to look for and post SEO job opportunities. I personally like InBound.org and LinkedIn. Where do you recommend marketeers look for job opportunities? D
Industry News | | danatanseo1 -
Real-Life Negative SEO Study
This isn't so much of a question as an offer The Offer first, then the story. We are currently the target of a sustained negative SEO. This was only discovered in the last 3 or 4 days (Webmaster reports impressions down from 15,000 to 1,600!). I'm not asking for help, I believe we know what to do in order to combat it. My question is whether anyone at MOZ would like to use it as a real-life ongoing case study. We are not a new company and have never dabbled in black hat SEO. All current thinking suggests that this shouldn't have been possible given our age and reputation. A summary of our company/site below: 9 Year old domain $3m annual sales Previous Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Company 25,000 Facebook fans Hundreds of natural links including CNN.com, Washington Post, Inc.com I'm not the best writer and I'm not that technical. I would gladly give the right person full access to anaylics, webmaster tools, sales reports, interviews. Given that this is still ongoing (and there's always a chance we might not recover!) I suspect this would make a great case study for the community given the right author. gfbM8kV
Industry News | | experiencedays1 -
SEO Consulting for Sex.com
Hello everybody, We are looking for someone to help us improve our SEO, more specifically on google.com. We seem to be getting positive results in general, but we are far from our objectives. We are looking for someone that could: Do a complete analysis of the site Write a report of the needed changes Proposed ideas to get better positioning Experience with adult oriented websites would be a great asset. We would repeat this process every 3-4 months to make sure we stay on top of our SEO strategy. Thanks!
Industry News | | ejodoin0 -
Help! I need to hire a SEO / SEM Specialist - Am I asking for too much?!
Hey all! I'm expanding my in-house marketing team and I need to add an SEO / SEM Specialist that will strategize, execute & manage the following: Organic SEO PPC across multiple channels (Google, Bing & also social sites like Facebook) Remarketing & Display marketing Banner ads Retargeting We're a lean company that's all about doing more with less. But not being very familiar with the SEO / SEM world I'm afraid I'm asking for too much! What do you guys think? What's your experience been? If you do think that this is potentially a single position, what would be the best title for attracting talent? SEO / SEM Specialist? Digital Marketing Manager? With the research I've done - jobs / titles have been totally across the board! I'm not able to find much consistency. Thank you all for your help 🙂 It's greatly appreciated!!!!!
Industry News | | RochelleRietow0 -
Can anyone recommend SEO Vendors in the NY NJ area?
I am looking for an SEO consultancy service preferably in New York, any suggestions?
Industry News | | EBDM0 -
Who is the Rand Fishkin of black hat seo?
If you had to choose one person to represent the black hat community who would it be?
Industry News | | JasonJackson0