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
-
Auto-generated, weird, long URLs? Or possible hacking? Help needed.
Good afternoon, Moz. My team and I are a bit stumped. We are getting ready to send out reporting and discovered that we are getting hits on a few very odd landing pages. We build our websites and we never made this URL: https://eaglehearing.com/Home/gclid/ EAIaIQobChMIo_K0t8T_3QIVg81kCh1NQAKIEAEYASAAEgJajfD_BwE There are around 7-10 variations on these weird URLs pulling up in our reports for two different clients now. Do you think we got hacked?
Industry News | | TaylorRHawkins1 -
Looking for an SEO consultant/agency specializing in ecommerce and data architecture? Any suggestions?
Looking for an SEO consultant/agency specializing in ecommerce and data architecture? Any suggestions?
Industry News | | EE-Tom1 -
Does Sticky Post in WordPress Have Impact on SEO?
Hi, I Have a Blog that I have attached a "sticky" post, obviously the content in the "sticky" post is the content that I want to ensure that everyone sees. I do update, by adding new posts daily or at least everyother day, my question is: Is the "sticky" post hurting, helping, or is it indifferent to SEO? I know the SE enjoy fresh content, and was wondering does that fresh content have to pop-up at the top of the page otr not. Any input would be great. Thanks. Jimmy
Industry News | | jimmy02250 -
Has anyone been to SMX or any other SEO Conference?
Hello All, I have been given the opportunity to go to several conferences. But like most SEO guys, I have a tone of work, and need to use my time sparingly. The one conference that has peaked my interest is SMX. I was wondering if anyone has been to SMX before and if they recommend it. Also if anyone has any other conferences they would recommend, preferrably on the east coast, that would be interesting please let me know. Any answers are appreciated. Thank you.
Industry News | | Asher1 -
Ideal SEO / Social Media Employee Skillset
I’ve been wondering recently what makes a good SEO / Social Media employee. It seems to me that SEO and Social Media are in the process of merging into a single role. What are your thoughts on the skills that this new world SEO / Social Media employee would need? Or do you think these roles should ideally remain separate and that a “traditional” SEO is more what is needed? My own role has been moving much more towards social media recently and I was wondering if this was a common trend!
Industry News | | RG_SEO0 -
Will Google ever begin penalising bad English/grammar in regards to rankings and SEO?
Considering Google seem to be on a great crusade with all their algorithm updates to raise the overall "quality" of content on the Internet, i'm a bit concerned with their seeming lack of action towards penalising sites that contain terrible English. I'm sure you've all noticed this when you attempt to do some proper research via Google and come across an article that "looks" to be what you're after, then you click through and realise it's obviously been either put together in a rush by someone not paying attention or putting much effort in, or been outsourced for cheap labour to another country whose workers aren't (close to being) native speakers. It's getting really old trying to make sense of articles that have completely incorrect grammar, entirely missing words, verb tenses that don't make any sense, randomly over-extravagant adjectives thrown in just as padding, etc. etc. No offense to all those from non-native speaking countries who are attempting to make a few bucks online, but this for me is becoming by far more of an issue in terms of "quality" of information online as opposed to some of the other search issues that are being given higher priority, and it just seems strange that Google have been so blasé about it up to this point - especially given so many of these articles and pages are nothing more than outsourced filler for cheap traffic. I understand it's probably hard to code in something so advanced, but it would go a long way towards making the web a better place in my opinion. Anyone else feeling the same way? Thoughts?
Industry News | | ExperienceOz1 -
SEO Serice Company for aspx website
Do you know a reputable SEO company that has good experience in optimizing aspx website ? We are looking for one if you know one.
Industry News | | ypl0 -
Questions to help get to know a potential client and see what the possibilities are for there campaign?
OK so I am putting together a list of questions to refer potential clients to. The purpose of these questions is to: 1, Help them understand the difference between "just give us your keywords and we will make you rank" seo and the full range of options that are advocated here on seo moz. .... 2, Get them to see that there are different levels of involvement that are available for different aspects of a campaign and give them ideas and options on how much input they want to have as well as make them see that we can help them with even the stuff they are gonna do themselves or do it for them with there input and permission. Thats where things get a bit confusing I was thinking of having a list of fifty linkbuilding/linkbaiting techniques and check box options beside each one so that they can read a little bit about the particular technique ie forum participation for example and then see how they felt like that related to there industry , wether they would want there staff to do it with some training from us wther they would want us to help them find the right forums and show them how to link back and to which page, or wether they would just want us to handle everything or simply not feel that that was right for there business .. then they would move on to the next thing ie video creation or user generated content and in the end we would have a big list of things to discuss with them and they would have a better understandiing of how much there is to good seo and what might work for them and also how we could help them and how a relationship/ partnership might look I would love some feed back on this is it possible will it help us to build trust with potential clients (which is diffucult for a new biz in this industry) how would you lay it out would it be a usefull resource for other seo companies etc thanks so much seo mozzers this forum is awsome and i know you will steer me in the right direction oh ps this would be something we would keep on our site
Industry News | | duncan2740