Do Press Releases help ranking?
-
Sorry to bring up this question again. I have done a ton of reading on it and most of it shows me that it is not a good idea:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-press-release-links-16136.html
http://authoritylabs.com/blog/press-releases-seo-strategy/
http://www.theclinegroup.com/2014/07/09/google-killing-seo-press-releases/But then there are a few articles showing some semblance of it having an affect.
Here are some from my company that were done by our last marketer. We're trying to determine if we should continue doing these. Probably launched close to 200 of these.
http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/chicago-business-lawyers-weigh-if-motorolas-gift-to-city-violates-antitrust-laws-579439.htm
http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/new-york-attorneys-will-be-in-high-demand-if-data-security-law-passes-579440.htm
http://www.abnewswire.com/pressreleases/chicago-business-lawyers-weigh-if-motorolas-gift-to-city-violates-antitrust-laws_23357.html
http://www.abnewswire.com/pressreleases/new-york-attorneys-will-be-in-high-demand-if-data-security-law-passes_23358.html
http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/california-intellectual-property-lawyers-battle-to-protect-clients-ip-579154.htmWhat's your take?
-
Excellent. Glad I could help Mase. It sounds like you have the right perspective on this as well. Cheers!
-
Thanks Ryan.
I fully agree on the approach of trying to put out a press release with the intention that it will get "picked up" and covered by some other news / media outlet where we get an original and unique article discussing the topic, rather than just reposting the same exact press release.
We have been doing this under one effort - as we expand. And then there are the releases I pasted in my question where we were doing it for the sake of SEO and I didn't like that once I figured out why / how we were approaching it.
-
Thank you everyone! You have confirmed my thoughts on the matter in every way. I think as we try to understand why SEO is doing well (yay!), we want to do our best to figure out which things had the most impact. It seems nearly impossible to answer that well, and so we end up questioning things and want to try to get to the bottom of efforts like this.
-
You have some good answers from Ryan and Hutch there. Press releases should be used as part of a larger overall strategy and not be the only thing you're doing to build links and/or drive traffic.
As Hutch said, by all means, if you have something useful to say, why not do a press release? If you're just doing it for the sake of it, you'd need to consider what the benefit is.
Ryan said it better than I could but definitely steer clear of spun press releases as this all this will do will give a short cut to getting yourself a penalty.
I'd look to invest in a more complete content strategy if you haven't already. If you're still looking for more traffic and have the budget, have you considered using a content distribution network such as Outbrain or Taboola? This can be a great way to get more eyeballs on your content and also build links. Here's a great post on using content distribution networks written after a test carried out by Seer Interactive. Rand also did a Whiteboard Friday a few weeks back on how paid media can have SEO benefits. This is something I've done in the past with really good results.
-
Look at your press releases how you look at content, if your press release is worth while and either ads value or answers a question then it can be useful as it will be picked up by relevant sites and used properly. If you are just putting out press releases across sites which are spammy, then as Ryan said, they will not be helpful, or even have a negative effect.
-
Hi Mase. The type of press release that gets the best benefit regarding rankings is when it's sourced via the press side. In situations like that, you have news based sites that are receiving large numbers of visits sending referrals to your site along with the associated links. The release from your side of it may be a new product, service, personal interest story, local news, business profile, etc. You'll be wanting to pitch various aspects of your site to the press for them to do the write up and publish to their network. Those are still, and will remain, really great sources of links / referrals.
The commoditized form of spun press releases across a network of press release sites is a bad route to go. Google has taken on several algorithmic changes to discount these. Cheers!
-
I am getting ready to test this myself using PRWEB and would love to hear feedback from other folks too. It looks like the links from PR Web are no follow, but I am not sure if the News Sites they distribute to add nofollow.
Anthony
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
-
Rankings preferring English URL
We've recently had a redesign of our website and we have both a Dutch and an English version. However, in MOZ for both NL and BE-NL it seems to favor the English URLs. This never used to be the case and I'm wondering why it's happening and whether it could actually be hurting our SEO, as search engines would favor local languages for search queries.
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
We're merging 2 separate websites into 1 but need to ideally rank service pages for both locations
I have a dilemma, we're merging 2 websites, one an Australian branch and one a UK one. We've decided to have a UK page and a AUS page so agency.site/uk/ agency.site/aus/ but what is the best tactic for the service pages? ideally, we'd like a web-design service page to rank in Australia and the UK but not sure if this is actually possible, or whether to duplicate the pages and localise them i.e. /web-design-leeds/ and /web-design-melbourne/ What's everyone's thoughts on this? localised landing pages with some duplicate content or one master page with both locations mentioned? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Unbranded_Lee1 -
Houston Printing Company Removed City from Main Page - Will Our Rankings Change?
We operate a full service printing and direct mail company located in Houston (www.catdi.com ). We have been in business for quite sometime and had enjoyed top tier position on page one for many years. However after revamping our website and main page it was determined that we used "Houston" way too often. Our keywords are ( Houston Printing , Printing in Houston)
Local SEO | | NEWCHOPPER
I suppose to the pros it looked and it seemed a little spammy with all the references to our city. But after the changed we have now dropped to mid - bottom of page two. Should we worried or does after sometime
will be move back up? I dont want to hastily change back but to our surprise those aren't really searched terms I would hate to see our positions and ranking fall because of this change. Thanks CATDI PRINTING0 -
Domain Forwarding and Rankings
I recently purchased two custom domains (www.greenvillencshredding.com and www.shreddinggreenvillenc.com) that are being forwarded to a page on my site (http://www.crmi-online.com/shredding-greenville-nc.html). The purpose for this is because I am trying everything I know to get my rankings above my competitor for shredding services in our market of Greenville,NC. I thought that purchasing a custom domain might help but I have not seen any results and they are ranking in the bottom 50's. Any suggestions to help get my rankings up for my service/area? Thanks a bunch!
Local SEO | | CRMI0 -
Does blocking traffic from a country via a firewall affect my ranking?
The main conversion point on my site is a contact form completion. Approximately a third of my conversions last year were from an international country we don't sell our services in, and all those conversions were attempts to sell us services. We are considering blocking the traffic to the site from that country. I'm trying to figure out if that will negatively affect my SEO rank here in the US before we proceed with that plan. Does anyone have any experience with implementing this tactic?
Local SEO | | Bear.Group0 -
Decline in rankings
Hello everyone, Our website has NOT yet ranked on page 1 for any of our keywords but something strange happened two days ago when we noticed that 7 of our Leeds keywords and 2 of our Manchester keywords were ranking between position 5 and 8 on ''page 1'' so we made a list of them. To make sure that we were not mistaken, we checked this at 3 different occasions over a period of 3 hrs and 2 of my colleagues witnessed this too. We were really overwhelmed as we were not expecting this rise at all. But we were shocked when we rechecked these rankings today and noticed that ALL these rankings have dropped from position 6-7 to 15-25 and this has happened for 9 keywords. There has been no Google message in the webmaster tool etc. Has someone ever noticed something similar. At the time of rise in rankings, we were spending huge money on PPC campaigns, could that be a reason why our organic rankings went really high??? I dont think there is a connection between organic and paid rankings but that is the only thing that I can think of really. Any advices will be highly appreciated Thanks in advance
Local SEO | | Imy840 -
Rank not improving despite best practises
Hi there, I have a photobooth hire company in and have been working on getting our site onto the top page for keywords relating to our service and location for almost a year now, but am really struggling to see rank improvement despite my best efforts. After a major penguin update back in mid 2014 I noticed that due to some bad practises from a company that we previously hired, our rank began to plummet. So in the aftermath of that, I found myself having to clean up and disavow a lot of spammy and broken links. This was back towards August last year and despite trying to "clean the slate" and continue to build better backlinks (mostly through reputable directories) I'm still getting little to know rank increases. Is there a possibility that the site is still being black listed by Google in some way and thus all my best practises for the last 6 months haven't really helped at all? Thanks
Local SEO | | 16seo0 -
What is The Best Way to Rank in Multiple Countries?
Hi, I have a client that would like to rank in google.ie as well as .co.uk and in the middle east and possibly other parts of Europe. What is the best way to go about this? Would a new domain for each country be best and hosted in that specific country or is there a way to do this with one site? Bearing in mind that SEO will need to be done to rank in each country. Many Thanks.
Local SEO | | WSIDW0