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
-
Do you think Content distribution might help for linkbuilding outreach ?
I'm building my netlinking strategy, and I know that creation great content on my website is the first step for good linkbuilding. However, as we know, a link does only worth if he can be viewed, shared, and ammended. I'm already including email outreach for my strategy, but I'm thinking of content distribution as a method to reach an even great audience, and to get some backlinks. To be clear, I'm not saying that my backlink strategy will be based on the links received through content distribution (which will be NOFOLLOW); but I think a large audience from the aggregate websites can see my content, and maybe link to it, so I can earn backlinks from the content I'm creating on my website. Based on your experience, what do you think?
Industry News | | manoman880 -
How much to charge for my E-commerce SEO services and web design
Hello, I'm starting a web design company doing standard web design, E-commerce web design, and E-commerce SEO. I've been doing the nuts and bolts of an E-commerce business with four online stores, one very successful, for nine years. Since that's my main experience, I'm sticking with helping others with the nuts and bolts of their E-commmerce SEO. I also do the web design, which I've been doing since 2001. What should I charge per hour for my web design and E-commerce SEO services? I live in Boise, Idaho. I'm thinking $100 an hour for everything, is that too much for web design or too little for SEO? The SEO would be billed exact but my web design estimates are more generous. Looking for honest opinions. I don't want to over or under charge. Thanks Bob
Industry News | | BobGW2 -
Re-writing articles, how does this effect SEO?
Hi there, I noticed a competitor had re-created a couple of articles I wrote, but they made reference back to me in the article, can in anyway possible myself or their site be penalised for duplicate content? The article isn't completely copied word for word, however it is definitely shows some similarity. Any advice around this? Thank you in advance
Industry News | | edward-may0 -
Can not get the ranking needle to move even after a year with a US based SEO company
Hello community, I have spent the last 16 months spending lots of money on our USA Based SEO company and on content. For some reason. The powers who may be at Google are not giving us any love. I am beginning to become very dissapointed after all of our efforts. We did have a link penalty a year ago however that has long ago been removed. We have been doing everything our SEO company has asked us but the needle is not moving. Any ideas for us? http://tinyurl.com/n2yoeyn Thank you in advance. Chris
Industry News | | scamper0 -
SearchDex for SEO consultation? Price feedback?
I know the JCPenny story from 2011 and read their CEO response to that. I've been pleased with my conversations with them so far and was given a reference that checked out well. Now us. We are a small business and our expertise is in print manufacturing and fulfillment. A portion of our business is running a network of retail websites related to the print business and that network generates six figure revenue, but we rely entirely on our affiliates to promote and drive traffic. I've been learning SEO for about 9 months - primarily just so that I can be informed while managing our direct to consumer initiative. But we don't have the internal expertise to pull off a campaign that is not heavily outsourced so that is why I'm open to talking with SearchDex. Does anyone have any feelings about them one way or another? Does anyone have a recommendation for me to talk to that might be an even better fit for what we want to do?
Industry News | | rickpeyton0 -
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 -
Seo is dead?
Hi there, I see a lot of conversations about the term "seo is dead" because some people speak that seo are dead because of google plus and facebook. Is it true? What do you think? What do you think that is the future of our business? We will stay uneployed or we still continue to work? Me personally I hate facebook. Is just so much stupid (like most of people, I guess thats why is so popular) but what about google plus? Is a serious and worthy social profile.This will kill us? I read in SEL or SEW ,I dont remember which of them that this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhad_Manjoo said that seo is dead and some are even supporting him.Also he said that "Google just broke its search engine" with the creation of Google plus. Me I think search msrketing,seo will live for long time yet,Me personally and my friends NEVER EVER CLICK on Facebook ads(if we do it , is just curiosity, and after we never visit again that page,this guys what I was reading their articles before they said that they see a lot of traffick from facebook.me also but the taffic from facebook dont do nothing,even in adsense they dont click on my sites,not to convert to buyers).I have 20 close friends and none of them cares what kind of content they find from facebook.Is our mentality (I am from CYprus)? Or is just a fact?That facebook ads are just some crap? Or general the acebook is a crap?Me i think that is.Is made for some people who are boaring and need something to kill time.so the traffick what you get is some boaring people who dont care about nothing, just some more things to watch and comment with their friends.So practically you have them on the site and after BAM, new hot site so bye bye.Never visit again your site.Why is so much importand?Their likes etc?The difference with google adsense is that all from our company are clicking on the ads and on the results. (much more on the results, because we think that is the best.Including me that I know that SERP can be manipulated.But we still prefer that.Why all speak about that SEO are dead? Are paid from facebook? WTF? Why I never hear somebody from SEOMOZ to say this?My result is that they are some bunch of I@@@TS and they dont know what they speak or are on the other side.I am sorry for my bad english but like this I can express my fealings.If you dont understand something please ask.
Industry News | | nyanainc0