Press Releases. What are the reasons (if any) that I should even consider them?
-
For the last couple years, i believed common knowledge that press releases was NOT the way to go for SEO. So I avoided it like crazy!
Now, I'm doing some research and I realize that some (or alot) companies still create press releases to get the word out so that they can spread the message. I am going to be signing with some clients that are bigger brands and I want to do everything in our power to get the word out. I've done social outreach, commenting and cold emails to influencers before, but now I've been seeing some competitors using press releases with a little success, I want to ask the community, is there a method they recommend of testing efficacy of press releases?
My biggest fear is using press releases then months/years down the line be hit hard by a penalty just for testing different PR sites.
-
Hi Jason,
This is something I can't really give a confident answer on unfortunately. Our list of clients these days don't really lend themselves to legitimate causes for a press release so we haven't done one in a little while.
My best suggestion would be to look at them very closely before submitting and check for the usual quality factors (trust, authority, linking practices etc) and more importantly, try to find sites that actually have real traffic to amplify your efforts rather than just being launched into the ether to be seen by nobody
-
I've always actively avoided those PR sites if I'm honest, so I couldn't tell you my experience with them. As you say, it's a control thing.
-
Thanks for the response Chris! That's really reassuring. I had a feeling that'd it be okay, but just always want to make sure I get my facts straight from my peers.
I mentioned this to Ria (above) but do you have any experience/ or would you recommend dealing with the big PR sites like PR Web? I've handled Press Releases internally and sent them out personally to organizations/targets personally found. I'm sure there are targeted press release sites as well, but I'd just like to get some feedback on that aspect.
-
Ria, thanks for the response! I've utilized the strategy you have mentioned before and it is definitely one that has shown some effectiveness for us. Its much more of a manual but controlled method.
Thats why i'm so nervous bout the PR sites, PR sites your just spitting out generally. Have you ever worked with sites like PRWeb and the other big ones?
-
Just like so many things in this industry, press releases can be done just fine if they're submitted for their original purpose - to release information to the press!
If you're doing it just for the sake of the link then that's where you run into potential problems. Doing it for the right reasons means you're typically going to be placing it on a good site with well written and interesting information rather than just spinning some content to go through the motions.
-
I guess it depends on how you do it, and what it is you're promoting. I'm no PR expert (in the slightest), but one method I personally find effective is to write a press release that could easily be published as a blog post "as is" with different promo images attached. I will not publish this on any of my own platforms.
I will then hunt down and make a list of websites, bloggers, vloggers, etc, that are relevant to what I'm trying to promote. Then send them each personalised email attaching the PDF and images. I've found it a good way of getting it out there in front of the right audience and getting backlinks from relevant websites (especially when run with some sort of incentive like a competition). Many bloggers will thankfully re-write the original press release anyway.
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
-
Are online tools considered thin content?
My website has a number of simple converters. For example, this one converts spaces to commas
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConvertTown
https://convert.town/replace-spaces-with-commas Now, obviously there are loads of different variations I could create of this:
Replace spaces with semicolons
Replace semicolons with tabs
Replace fullstops with commas Similarly with files:
JSON to XML
XML to PDF
JPG to PNG
JPG to TIF
JPG to PDF
(and thousands more) If somoene types one of those into Google, they will be happy because they can immediately use the tool they were hunting for. It is obvious what these pages do so I do not want to clutter the page up with unnecessary content. However, would these be considered doorway pages or thin content or would it be acceptable (from an SEO perspective) to generate 1000s of pages based on all the permutations?1 -
Are bloggs published on blog platforms and on our own site be considered duplicate content?
Hi, SEO wizards! My company has a company blog on Medium (https://blog.scratchmm.com/). Recently, we decided to move it to our own site to drive more traffic to our domain (https://scratchmm.com/blog/). We re-published all Medium blogs to our own website. If we keep the Medium blog posts, will this be considered duplicate content and will our website rankings we affected in any way? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Are links on a press page considered "reciprocal linking"?
Hi, We have a press page with a list of links to the articles that have mentioned us (most of which also have a link to our website). Is there any SEO impact with this approach? Does Google consider these reciprocal links? And if so, would making the links on the press page 'nofollow' solve the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Disabling a slider with content...is considered cloaking?
We have a slider on our site www.cannontrading.com, but the owner didn't like it, so I disabled it. And, each slider contains link & content as well. We had another SEO guy tell me it considered cloaking. Is this True? Please give feedbacks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ACann0 -
Can a domain name alone be considered SPAM?
If someone has a domain that is spammy, such as "http://seattlesbestinsurancerates.com" can this cause Google to not index the website? This is not our domain, but a customer of ours has a similar one and it appears to be causing issues! Any thoughts? Thanks for any input!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Tosten0 -
My site has disapeared from the serps. Could someone take a look at it for me and see if they can find a reason why?
my site has disappeared from the serps. Could someone take a look at it for me and see if they can find a reason why? It used to rank around 4 for the search "austin wedding venues" and it still ranks number three for this search on Bing. I haven't done any SEO work on it in a while so i don't think i did anything to make Google mad but now it doesn't even rank anywhere in the top 160 results. Here's the link: http://austinweddingvenues.org Thanks in advance Mozzers! Ron
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ron100 -
Publication of articles by the press office
When the press office sends content about my business portals and it is published, is it considered a natural link or not? What is the correct form to put the link on this content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | soulmktpro0