Do Press Releases for SEO Help?
A press release can be super beneficial to a company, but what effect does it have on your SEO?
Back in the day, SEO engineers would stuff links and keywords into press releases to gain relevancy and power through backlinks. Google put an end to this by introducing no follow links that don’t transfer link power.
So, do press releases for SEO still help your rankings or are they just another strategy that doesn’t work anymore?
What Is A Press Release
Let’s quickly go over what a press release is before we get started.
A press release is an official statement from your company that you give to a news organization or a journalist with the goal of it being widely seen and distributed.
A press release gives a quick overview of the article in the heading then gives a little more info in a subheading under it. It’s almost like an inverted pyramid. You want to give the most important information in the heading/title and get more specific and detailed as you keep reading the article.
There are a few different reasons why a company or person would want to put out a press release.
- Get noticed – If you are trying to make a name for yourself because you are just getting started a press release could be a good way to get some media attention.
- New products – If you are now offering a new product or service a press release is a good way to let people know that you are now offering a new product/service.
- Damage control – If there is a negative story about you this is a great way for you to try and respond to and control the story so you can minimize the damage it does to your brand.
These are just a few of the different reasons why you might issue a press release.
Are there SEO Benefits from Press Releases
Press releases are still very helpful in 2024 as part of your SEO strategy. Even if a press release gives you a no follow link it can still help you with SEO. In 2019, Google made an adjustment to its algorithm so it hints at no follow links. So, no follow links are definitely not as good as do follow links but that also doesn’t mean they have value.
A well placed and timed press release on the correct media outlet can get you referring traffic. As people read your press release, they become more likely to click on one of your hyperlinks to your site/products. Even if there isn’t a huge power transfer going on this is still traffic to your site showing Google that you are relevant to whatever your press release is talking about.
These are a few of the other ways that press releases can help your SEO.
- Increased brand recognition – press releases will help your brand get in front of new people and audiences that might like your brand, but wouldn’t normally find you.
- Faster backlink indexing – media outlets are indexed more often than regular websites because they are constantly being updated, so they will see the backlinks faster.
- Increased topical authority – Just having your brand name appear on a high authority website will help your brand gain topical authority when Google sees that.
- Brand Protection – If there was a negative article that was released about your brand you can publish a press release that Google will see to direct the story and protect your brand.
Backlinks
A good strategy for generating backlinks is very important and press releases can be a part of yours. Even though no follow backlinks aren’t going to pass much authority the press release can still be a great way to get backlinks from many other high DR rated sites that will pass on power.
There are a few different ways that a press release can generate backlinks, one of which is with journalists. If a press release is picked up by a journalist in the company that is a great way to get backlinks because when a journalist writes an article about you usually that backlinks are do follow. Thus, passing tons of authority through those links to your site.
Press releases can also get you backlinks by just exposure. You can get backlinks from people who discover you from the press release and decide to post about and share your site around the internet. Now these most likely won’t be do follow links but as we are learning those aren’t bad links, they still deliver traffic to your site.
How To Write a Press Release
Writing a press release is a little bit different than writing a blog post. This should be more formatted to reflect a journalist’s writing style. A journalist will always answer who, what, where, when, why, and sometimes how in their writings, so you should try and reflect that in your writing because you are posting on the same medium.
You also don’t want to publish a book. What I mean by that is you need to keep it short, around 300-500 characters (one page). If you get any longer than this your reader will start to lose interest and not make it your call to action at the end.
It is super important to make sure that you don’t misspeak, or have spelling, or formatting errors because this is a super simple way to lose trust and credibility in your article. When you make these simple mistakes, you appear uneducated and potentially not worthy of taking advice from them. Most people are hyper-critical of these mistakes, which is why you need to be 100% sure that you aren’t making them.
Grab Your Readers Right Away
When you are writing you want to grab your readers in the first few sentences to keep them interested, but because of the nature of press releases, you actually need to grab them with your heading.
People come across press releases more rather than look for them, so with your first heading, you need to make sure that it is attractive enough to make people want to click and read your article.
When you are trying to grab attention keep in mind that your title tag is what people will see in the SERPs. So not only will you need a heading that will grab attention, but you will also need a title tag that’s under 60 characters to grab attention for your article.
When you are writing your headlines you also need to remember that a good sounding headline isn’t everything. If it is too long people aren’t going to read it, and that doesn’t do you any favors.
For example, if you write “Why The New Age Of Emerging Power Of AI Places A Great Threat On Not Only The Importance Of Data Driven Jobs, But Also On The Implementation Of AI Into Cars And Trucks”
Now that heading tells you everything about that article but if we are being honest not one of us is going to read that, so a better example would be “How Is AI Changing The Job Market For Everyone.”
Now that last iteration is nowhere near as descriptive as the one we first wrote, but more people will read it because it quickly tells you what the article is about rather than reading a whole dissertation.
Make It Easy To Comprehend
No matter what you are writing about, you need to make sure your press release is easy to understand. It doesn’t matter if you understand everything you wrote if you use language that is too advanced for most people your press release won’t perform well.
This changes based on what you are writing about because if you are an engineer writing to other engineers about your new software for volumetric surveying (find the volume of something that is usually quite large). The language that you would use is way different than if you are doing a press release about why a gravel company should know the volume of their gravel piles.
If you still need some more proof that your language changes based on the audience, I just showed you the above. I briefly mentioned volumetric surveys and then put a short description after it because I would bet most marketing and SEO specialists aren’t up to date on the new land surveying trends/terms. But I wouldn’t put that description as a blog aimed at engineers, so there is proof that you need to make your press release easy for your specific audience to understand.
Keep Your Readers Interested
You want to write this like a news story to keep people interested in what you are talking about, so it’s always a good idea to use quotes from key people in your company (it can be you). It’s also a good idea to use pictures and videos to keep the readers interested.
There is also the added benefit of the fact that then if a journalist picks this up to write about you have already started to point them in the direction you want with the info you provided.
Final Thoughts on Press Releases for SEO...
So, as it turns out, press releases for SEO do still help with SEO even if there are no follow links. Just keep in mind that you need to make sure that you aren’t making simple mistakes because the more you do the less likely this press release is to get shared or picked up by a journalist to be turned into a new article.
Writing a press releases can be intimidating or hard for a lot of people. Our marketing team can help!
If you want to make sure your press release is written correctly, give us a call today!