Free Press Release – Using Online Press Releases for SEO Purposes

Is doing Online Free Press Release (PR) worth the effort from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) perspective?
Yes and No.

I recently released a Free Press Release related to a client’s activity to the online media, with SEO and Link Building in mind.

I found that:

1. Direct link building benefit is marginal at best, considering that most news and PR sites (1) severely restrict you from placing links on the PR, (2) put rel=”nofollow” attributes to the links, or (3) place your PR on non-ranked or 0 PageRank pages.
2. Indirect link building benefit does exist, as the news and PR get syndicated to the websites’ affiliates. This is actually the primary benefit of online PR activity.
3. Google News normally gets “pinged” and picks up the release very quickly. In my case, the news was on the top of Google News results within less than 1 hour!

As a side benefit, I am certain it would generate some natural interest from the readers, which means relatively high quality traffic.

Would I do it again? Definitely yes if I can afford the time, and definitely recommended to at least think about it.

Would I pay for it? Doubtful. I am still keen on inputs on the value of premium Online Free Press Release websites such as PRWeb.

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