I was about to post a similar question, but found that this was already posted, recent and has some good discussion. Hope I am not "highjacking" thread. Figured it would be repetitive to ask the same question...

If I may, how often would anyone suggest utilizing a press release service? My experience and other sources have given me the impression of once per month, maybe twice. This would be solely for the purpose of gaining backlinks.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the reply. I agree at this being worth a test. As I have stated in a response to "Highland" below, this is definitely NOT a primary SEO strategy by any means. Just another supplement to what we have been doing.

I've also been weary doing this due to Google's "content farm" update... I just need to make sure we are utilizing sites that have not been penalized as of late, which in my studies I have found them to be the article sharing sites more so than sites like PRWeb or PRLog, etc.

Thanks for the reply! I figured as much for going little to no benefit... Just needed to reassure my stance before I present my thoughts back to upper management and co-workers.

This is definitely never my "primary" source for SEO. It is mainly just an addition to the currentl link building strategies already in place.

My main concern was the fact some individuals in the office don't understand SEO very well and wanted me to send our our PR's multiple times. I think they misunderstood my explaination at sending them out at the most once per week and using different sites to do this. I really just wanted to get another solid answer of "No" to reassure myself.

I do like your idea of just putting the PR on the site and letting people link out to it. I am planning on converting the PR's into PDF files and then putting them on our site as well. Problem is, I don't want to submit the same release 5 different times, then put it on the site. I'm more for the submit once, post on the site for visitors to view.

To be truthfully honest, the competition we have is doing a lot of this for SEO purposes. They are trying to rise up organically as our industry prepares for a possible change in the market. I see a consistant number of companies pushing out PR's, with lack of purpose other than to help them with backlinks. Once again, not primary, but definitely part of their strategy. I think this is the main reason my co-workers feel that they should do the same, which I am telling them, "No, lets put one out per week at the most... Maybe just 2 per month."

I've never considered this as a good practice, but is there any benefit to submitting a press release to one PR source, then going to other PR sources and submitting the same content? My main goal, currently on one project, is the soul purpose of link building and backlinking.

I see this as duplicate content, although I am seeing competitors submitting the same press release multiple times trying to reap some sort of benefit from it. In my honest opinion, I would rather submit 1 different press release each week throughout the course of a month to a quality site like PRLog or PRweb.

Comments? Opinions? I would really like to hear them.