Paid Press Release Site - Our competitors do it... and it seems to work?
-
Hi
Im seeing our competitors use sites like 24-7pressrelease.com to release rather uninteresting and dubious press releases and it seems to be, looking at their link profiles, the lions share of all links to these particular landing pages. Yet since I've joined SEOMOZ all i've seen is that PR sites don't work and arent worth it.
So far, I've resisted doing any PR stuff and have just kept on creating and promoting content which is severely time heavy work. Is there really 0 value in these? If i have 0 PR currently and add just a couple is that worth it?
The co. we compete against are at it every week with this site and similar paid sites. Are they making a mistake?
-
The true power of Press Release submission is not in spammy press releases but in having a real issue to write a press release about and then making sure it gets printed and posted online by a real news site. If you can do that then you will get a coveted journalistic link that google loves. What your competitor is doing is not a long term strategy. Even if it is working now, at some point google will catch them and they will spend a lot of time fixing the issue. Just continue posting legitimate content on your blog and site and every now and then do something news worthy so you can then get a media mention online, in papers, radio and on tv. Charitable giving and actions go a long way.
-
Hi Guys
Actually we have done, we've started to produce really good video guide content that is involving a local community and we feel it's a real value/content play compared to the competition. So I'll push that one as far as i can first before the press releases.
-
LOL at "I hope that all of my competitors are working their asses off doing press releases." Me too, especially ones that actual media professionals laugh at.
My guess is that you'd be better served by taking the same content you would try to form an exciting press release out of, and crafting a great guest post instead. Find a respected blog in your field to post that on, then repeat with another (original) guest post, and you will SPANK the press release competitor in the SERPs in no time.
-
Three things come to my mind about your situation...
-
links posted on mass press release sites are worth very little
-
if you submit one you might get a tiny tiny amount of credit, if you submit two the second one gets even less credit and if you submit twenty the most recent 10 combined might get less credit than the first.
-
if I want to beat my competitor I will try to do something superior rather than mimicking his methods
What can you do that is superior?
Honestly... I hope that all of my competitors are working their asses off doing press releases.
-
-
Well, I guess I will add a couple of press releases and measure what happens. As long as it's not hurtful I'm happy (apart from the $400 burned of course)!
I'll make sure they are relevant and interesting. Thanks for all the comments.
-
I agree with CharlotteWorks, it really is useless as in generating traffic and buzz unless it is news worthy.
Case studies, product releases would be some good reasons to use PR, if those categories are attractive.
But I do believe it is possible that PR sites can help with link building, but might just be an expensive link. I've looked at places like PRweb(have not used any PR places yet), and they offer PR and submission to NYtimes and AP, for about like $400.
Now I am not sure if these links from NYtimes and Associated Press are actual 100% guaranteed but if they are, it might be worth it just in a link building perspective.
-
I agree in theory with Charlotte, however in real world dynamics, I'm seeing a lot of our competitors using the same PR tactics you describe to inflate inbound links. Clearly this must be a better choice than using the over abundant link directories that are spam saturated.
I would think using PR services in moderation to distribute decent content would be more helpful than relying entirely on them for linking purposes.
-
I tend to think that unless there is actually something exciting or newsworthy to report, a press release is inappropriate, and probably not going to do much for you in terms of a link building boost.
I also tend to think that paid press release sites know there are plenty of people who think press releases DO work to their advantage, and capitalize on that by charging for publishing them.
Unless you have something the world really needs to know about, and therefore a chance of writing a press release that will actually draw some attention from the media, I would focus on other avenues, like maybe guest posting.
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
-
Organic and Paid
HI Guys, For one of my site we have been investing a less in Paid and since we have done that the Organic has gone quite up. I know there is a connection between the two but i would like to know if any of you can share their experience on this matter. I would like to know if someone has a run some experiements to understand how much each channel influences the other. It goes without saying that Paid tend to cannibalize a bit of organic but when it goes down, should i really expect an increase in organic? Any thoughts? Thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | AlessioCesaro0 -
Talking about competitors on your own website to improve quality score
Hi Mozzers, I'm seeing more and more companies improving their quality score by including information about their competitors on their website, when driving traffic from competitor brand terms. For example, for 'Yahoo Mail' related terms, Zoho drive traffic via an ad to this page: https://www.zoho.com/mail/yahoo-mail-alternative.html I'm planning a new campaign targeting competitor keywords and wondered what people think about this approach, and the legalities around talking about and comparing yourself to competitors on your own website?
Paid Search Marketing | | Zoope0 -
Paid vs. Organic for Brand
HI We've seen a huge drop paid campaigns for impressions on brand terms YOY - 37,140 vs. 792. Our impression share is still high. Organic is higher this year for impressions also. An agency manage created the campaigns for us and can't seem to find a reason, but the drop is huge - it seems like it's just people not searching but we haven't seen this in organic - could it be organic showing instead of paid ads for brand terms? Paid is fairly new to me, so just doing some fact finding Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Giving 404 Errors to Working Pages
We have a problem that just came up out of the blue with Google, in particular Webmaster Tools & our Merchant Center. We're getting a 404 errors for 1000s of pages in both of these applications, but the pages are working just fine. Our shopping campaigns have been hit hard as many of our top products have been suspended from our merchant feed. Webmaster tools is giving us 1000s of 404 errors to product & category pages alike. But every page returning a 404 error is working. We've contacted Google and they mention that they are not getting a 404 error, but their crawler seems to be. Has anyone ever experienced this? What could be causing this? Thanks for any input.
Paid Search Marketing | | paulcorrado30 -
Is High PageRank Quality Related But Paid Directory Listing Still Work?
Hi, We are a local cleaning company in Singapore specialising in all types of home and office cleaning service. My question is after the Google Penguin, does high PR but paid directory still working?
Paid Search Marketing | | chanel27
Or it will be considered a toxic links. It is getting harder to do backlinking now so we really need to be very careful here.0 -
Why doesn't exact match appear to be working for me in Google AdWords tool?
Hi guys, I recently read Rand's article here and tried out the exact match symbols on my keywords. However, these don't appear to be working for me as the results aren't showing up as they do in the above SEOmoz article (attached screenshot). What am I doing wrong? Google_AdWords__Keyword_Tool-20130511-115528.jpg.jpg?resizeSmall&width=832
Paid Search Marketing | | featherseo0 -
Is ReachLocal Killing My SEO Work?
I have a customer that I did SEO work for. I cleaned up title tags, content, image tags, the works. Recently, they signed up with Reach Local to do some Pay Per Click. The problem/question I have is that reach local completely copied the entire site and put it on their server. So all my work for this company is now completely replicated. Now there are two sites. ex. windowname.com and windowname.reachlocal.net. It appears they do this for all their customers. Does Google view this as duplicate content? Does my regular website lose positioning to the more powerful ReachLocal?
Paid Search Marketing | | smartlinksolutions0 -
Keyword Traffic - Does this count paid traffic?
I'm looking at keyword rankings, and specifically at the number under "Keyword Traffic" for one of my keywords, which is described as "how many visits this keyword has generated for your website". We run adword campaigns for some of these keywords. I'm wondering if this number is tracking visits from adwords or is this only organic?
Paid Search Marketing | | mboynton0
