How effective are online press releases for SEO purposes?

[Doug_Hay]

As part of a SEO program for a small business, how effective are optimized, online press releases?

[AndyMacLean]

A service like pr web is very good for well written and targeted releases. It's ability to target specific journalists and niches can mean you get decent secondary coverage on niche sites e.g the last pr I wrote got covered by a local news site. Links on many pr sites themselves are worth next to nothing as google must have them on their panda/penguin radar.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Doug-      Its kind of like getting dressed up for a big party. Someone could ask you how important is it to wear a nice shirt? The answer is it is important; but so is fixing your hair; your shoes; brushing your teeth etc...Optimized online press releases are an effective part of your overall strategy if you have interesting stuff to release.

If you do online releases, to optimize make sure that you do several important things:

• Anchor text links (3 are recommended). Make sure they link back to your product or solution page, to your blog post which will mention the release and of course your home page.
• Make sure you have images. Pictures and videos can DRAMATICALLY INCREASE your CTR. In the images make sure you have alt-tags....
• Make sure your title of the release is keyword optimized. And make sure you have your money keywords in your descrioption tag (meta tag).
• URL string-make sure your keyword is in there. All of the online PR companies do something different, so make sure you include it.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

Mark

[ufmedia]

I'd say they can still be fairly effective for SEO.  However, in a post-Panda environment you'll need to be pretty careful on the distribution.  Quite a few press release distribution services got Pandalized rather badly.