A recent conversation came up in the online marketing community about the effectiveness and benefits of press releases for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. With so much “clutter”, and with any small business able to purchase low-cost distribution of its “news”, many SEO gurus have written off using online press release distribution as a valid strategy to improve SEO rankings.
The question is if whether or not to skip using online press releases as part of one’s SEO efforts. The answer is if you used them in the way they were used in 2008-2010 then their importance has diminished considerably, and using an online press release distribution service for SEO benefits will have to drop significantly in terms of priority on the checklist of actions to be taken.
If, however, you apply some of the advanced methods then you actually may find that online press releases actually can benefit you quite nicely from a SEO perspective!
These advanced methods include:
- Having truly legitimate “newsworthy” content to share
- Geo-targeting
- De-optimized anchor text to the company website (home page or other)
- Linking to one’s social media properties
- Linking to one’s “Tier 1 properties”
- Embedding YouTube videos (or other online videos) which already are optimized properly
- Intelligent link building to the press release URL
- Backlinking to the press release channel URL
- Having “evergreen” content to be worthwhile long after the event was deemed to be “fresh” news
- Leveraging the press release URL to authority websites and bloggers seeking guest content
There is a ton to discuss in each of the bullet points listed, so feel free to contact me with your questions.
Here is one of the recent article’s where experts call into question the effectiveness of online press releases, and you will see my first comment at this link:
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