Writing a press release for SEO good or bad?

Is writing a press release right for your site?

With Big G’s latest announcement that links in press releases are unnatural, SEO consultants are running around like headless chickens because this was considered to be a white hat strategy since time began. In this post we are going to tell you how you can still make press releases  work for you and what exactly is wrong with the traditional way of doing them.

There are two important things that Google has warned us about with this update

• Google does not want you to use optimized anchor text
• Google wants you to use a “no follow” tag in the links in the press release

You can watch this video here where you can see Google’s views on press releases

So what is the reason for this update?

The main reason for this update is that SEO experts have been spamming this technique to the core and it was about time somebody set them straight. If you are doing press releases with optimized anchor texts then what you are doing is paying for the distribution with the net effect being SEO value. You are buying links and that is not something which Google appreciates.

So what is the solution?

The solution is in writing press releases with anchor texts that are either generic or brand names. The intent with the press release should be to release new information about your products or company and not just to get link juice back to your site.

The answer here isn’t to stop doing press releases all together. You just need to know the the proper way of doing them which is  something like this:

 

Monitor Backlinks is announcing a new way of analysing your links. More information can be found here( the right way)

Monitor Backlinks is announcing a new way of analysing your links ( the wrong way)

Here is another example

See how I refrained from using anchor texts. This gives a clear signal to Google that we are not playing the system.

What about the press releases that you have done in the past?

Well this can be a major pain. The beauty and the curse (now) with press releases is that they are syndicated all over the web and are quoted and referenced in  articles that use them. News agencies are dependent on wire networks for news and once a press release is out there, it spirals out of control. You’re only in direct control of your release on PR Web. You cannot dictate where it goes from there and where it has already gone.

You might  need  the Google Disavow tool in the future for those old press releases.

So if Google lashes out a penalty based on press releases alone then any over optimization of anchor texts that you have done in the past in the form of optimized anchor texts could harm your rankings.

The second thing with press releases is that newswires haven’t introduced the  “ rel= ( nofollow) tag yet which could cause a problem with future press releases. Since the world’s most used search engine wants you to no follow the links there is no way you can change the links from the past now and you don’t want to risk getting a “do follow” from them now.

But for the future, stop optimising your press releases with anchor texts.

We have a solution to this

At Monitor Backlinks we analyse your links and can offer you an in depth view of the links that are built to your site when a press release is done. We offer daily mails informing you about the new links that are being created and we show the most powerful links that you have and the links that you made in the past.

If there has been an over optimization then we can show that to you when you put your site links to our system either through the Google analytics feature or  by manually adding your link.

We use ahrefs api to find the backlinks to a site and once done we analyse those links for you.

Here I am showing an example how you can monitor your links once a press release is submitted. As new links are built Monitor backlinks will send you emails regarding those new links and you can keep a tab on them. This will help you track down your links and possibly remove them if you have optimised anchor texts.

Now if you are connecting the site with your Google analytics account it will find your links daily. You can see that an analysis of the links is complete showing their status like whether they are live or not, the MOZ rank of the page, their PR etc.

At the same time we have a few suggestions for writing press releases:

1. Use infographics as press releases instead of writing them.

2. Use videos and images. Google values its own property highly and if you can add a video which has your site link in the description then not only will it be considered less spammy but your video also gets lots of links.

Press releases are a great way to let people know about the service that you are offering but you should keep in mind that you are not supposed to spam with them.