Are "Press Releases" effective?

[EricOM]

Ive just released my first press release for roomratecompare.com on prlog.org

Im quite new to the seo stuff.
Prlog.org is a PR6 site so I reckon google must think it has some merit .
Do you think press releases are worthwhile marketing ?

[jihoy]

Really depends on what you are selling, the quality of press release, and possiblity of it getting redistributed to other sites. I did a press release to about 125 sites, and noticed a slight increase of roughly 400 visitors in one day before traffic dies off from press release site. For my niche (free classifieds), that really isn't worth the time and trouble.

But if you have good quality contents on your site, and the press release draws attention, and you are able to convert those into users or sales, then it's a good idea.

As for so called PR 6 link, don't use press release as your primary form to build links that way, you will go broke. PR 6 is the front page, your site will maybe appear on front page for a few days at best, before getting pushed into inner pages with page rank 0. Google look at the authority site, but also the link juice passed on the page, and unless your press release is so amazing, that it naturally attract hundreds of links from other people and bookmarking them, referring to them, otherwise, 99.9%+ of the time it will be sitting on a page rank 0 page with no link juice.

[klepfish]

For an effective press release you need a hook, a spin, something to make your story newsworthy and to stand out from all the other press releases.

I've had press releases bring in a ton of traffic, and some that got no results at all. Its all in how you write it, and sometimes how lucky you get.

- Leon Klepfish

[Steven Carl Kelly]

In a word: yes. Overlooked and undervalued by lots of IMer's, press releases can be very effective. In fact, my team has planned a full-tilt press release blast that we think is going to get a lot of attention for the pre-release of "Weapons of Mass Marketing" later this year.

[Metronicity]

Yep...as the man said, you need to put some spin on it. I did a release for a Private Detective client recently, using prMac - a press service "offering Mac-centric news media distribution services". As in Apple Mac.

The client had his Adwords a/c hacked through his Gmail whilst using the open-source proxy server Tor on his new iMac. The gist of the story was a hacker demonstrating how he harvested 254 passwords in 24 hours from Tor - for Yahoo, Gmail, Ticketmaster, PayPal, and LinkedIn.

The story did very nicely. Got picked up by Google News and a bunch of other sites and at one stage we owned half of Google's first page. We also picked up a 10 minute Radio interview.

[AndrewCavanagh]

First you should define whether you mean online or offline press releases...the 2 are very different.

In this case where you're talking about online press releases yes they can bring you a lot of traffic.

The real keys to making an online press release work are:

# Seeing them partly as an SEO tool. In other words having a good keyword phrase in the title of the press release and linking them to a page optimized for that keyword phrase or a similar phrase too.

# Giving an enticing reason for people to go from the press release to your site. A free report, audio or video mentioned in the press release can work.

# Making sure you direct them to a page on your site that is designed to convert people from that press release into subscribers or paying customers (or whatever you want them to be).


I've made real sales from press releases, had outrageous numbers of views (well over 40,000 views in a couple of days from a single online press release etc etc).

So they can be a useful tool.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[Rod Cortez]

When used correctly, press releases can be pure gold. So yes, in many cases they are worth it.

[hangtimenino]

i suppose it would help add to your traffic. but i hope its not the only way you're using to attract those potential clients.

[DavidO]

I get a huge spike in traffic from every press release. But they're not often buyers. They tend to be either journalists or people who are curious, but never would have searched for me otherwise.

So don't think of it as a tool for immediate sales. But I do believe a press release is very useful for SEO. If you do it right you will be #1 for your targetted keywords in Google News for a short time.

Don't over use them. I only do a press release when there's genuinely something newsworthy and that's no more than once every few months.

[nim3]

Theres methods to getting your site top of google via press releases, so I say its worth it.

[Jason James]

I think so.. even just free press release sites can get you in the top results in Google within hours sometimes for your keyphrase. They will not produce massive results.. but every little bit helps to get your message out there.