This technique is being used now in a couple of new ways that are really generating major benefits across Google, for back-linking, to stimulate engagement and, of course, it’s a great way to syndicate content.
Press releases have been around since the early days of advertising for both news and editorial content. And, truthfully, for a long time I was one of those folks who wondered, “Why bother with press releases now? Who needs them anymore? Because the Internet has changed the medium.”
The evidence that what we’re seeing is actually showing that press releases are not only one of the most successful strategies to syndicate content, but they also deliver a LOT of ancillary benefit.
The Benefits of Using a Press Release
When you submit a press release correctly, what happens is you send it out to a number of press outlets. It’s going to get looked at and, if it’s a well written press release, the outlets will want to pick it up, want to syndicate, and furthermore, might even want to do a more in-depth article on you or your story. There is the potential to get huge traffic, huge authority, and huge results.
But an online press release is not just about getting printed in the paper. It’s also able getting printed on these news outlets’ authority websites.
These PR distribution services are deemed both credible and SEO-friendly, which are the only inbound links we truly value.
Credibility: We determined credibility by checking the Search Engine Optimization industry’s most trusted metrics: Google Pagerank, Majestic Trust Flow and Moz Domain Authority. This process eliminated most of the free sites in our list. We think paid sites should offer more link credibility in addition to bonus features, so we slimmed down our list to include only those with high scores, also.
Search Engine Optimization: We also took into account basic Search Engine Optimization functionality. These sites allow tagging, anchor text links, keyword data and other search elements. The paid sites typically allowed up to eight outbound links, whereas most free sites only allow one.
There are three MAJOR benefits to publishing press releases: deep Link Building, short term boost to your ranking for certain keywords and result page crowding.
- First, press releases allow you to build anchor text links to deeper pages on your site that don’t attract links naturally. And because of syndication and scraper sites, those deep pages will acquire lots of links from a variety of sources. Many sites pick press releases because they are relevant and it is basically free content for the sites.
- Secondly, those pages often see a quick boost in the search results because of freshness factor of press release syndication. However, that boost is temporary and will fade over time. However, the short increase in search engine traffic is a big benefit.
- Lastly if you include your brand, company name or product in the headline or subhead, the release should rank page one for a branded query and help you “crowd the SERPs” for your brand. And often, that release will occupy a slot on page one for a few months.