Press Release PR

I read an interesting - for interesting, read ill-informed - article at leading article directory GoArticles.com today. Entitled “What is Press Release” (sic), it basically trashed the idea of a press release’s ability to increase traffic to your website. Not only that, but it did this by stating some of the worst examples of incorrect and false “facts” I’ve ever read. Here are just a few examples:

1. “Rumor has is that press releases are the next big thing in the SEO business.” This isn’t rumor, this is cold hard fact. Using a search engine optimized press release can offer a substantial increase of traffic to your website, thanks to embedded keywords linking to strategic pages on your website. This has been happening for at least a couple of years now, with excellent results for companies using them - hardly the ‘rumor of the next big thing” as mentioned in the article.

2. “Unless you are writing a press release about Microsoft, Adobe, Sony or one of the other mega-companies, or at least about a company that is relatively well-known, forget about it.” If this isn’t one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever read, I’m not sure what is. I’ve written for small clients who have been featured on national TV and radio; I know of colleagues in the PR industry that have provided their own clients the same publicity. It doesn’t matter what size the company is - if the press release is newsworthy it will be picked up, end of story.

3. “Yes, the PR companies will tell you that they have vast experience in writing Press Releases that will make yours stand out and get picked up but this is not accurate.” Check Google for keywords on companies or products - many of the results will come from a search engine optimized press release having been picked up by the media or news outlets relevant to the story. So that kind of blows this argument straight out the water - and I’m not too impressed with the author’s implication that all PR companies are liars, either.

4. “Use that money to buy (although I do not recommend this) links from high-ranked websites and you will pay less and receive more benefit.” So, the author is saying that, instead of paying for a press release, webmasters or companies should buy links from link farms yet says he doesn’t recommend it? Which one is it to be? I’m not surprised he doesn’t recommend it - falsifying a site’s popularity in this way is known as blackhat SEO and is one of the surefire ways to have your site blacklisted by Google. So why even suggest it in the first place?

5. “Conclusion: A press release is useful if you wish to contact the press and maybe get some free publicity, but it is of no use if you wish to use it as a tool in order to advance your website in the search engines.” Apart from offering a conflicting view of his whole article - stating that press releases in general don’t get picked up by the press and are very costly - the author’s closing statement is wrong in so many ways. A search engine optimized press release is one of the best ways to “advance your website in the search engines” for many reasons.

• Embedded links in the release act as natural backlinks to your website, increasing SEO importance.
• The sites that the press release are picked up on also count as invaluable backlinks - imagine the benefit of having thousands of sites linking to you or your story.
• The interactivity in an optimized press release offers some of the best SEO methods available - embedded links, RSS feeds, video and MP3 and more.

As you can see, the author of the article makes numerous errors that try to paint PR and press releases in a negative light. Then again, when you look at the links that the author provides to his companies, it’s not really surprising - a dubious landing page trying to sell an AdSense tool, and a Reprint Article Site both without any form of contact details. Considering that the author has such a strong opinion, it’s surprising he or she doesn’t want to be contacted to speak about it - therefore, I think his or her comments about press releases can be taken with a large pinch of salt…

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