Press Releases and Backlinks - Is This Good or Bad?

Kaellyn,

If the links don’t lead to your website, they will not affect your website (positively or negatively).

There is a lot of debate around the web as to the benefits of press releases for backlinking. For instance here is a post on SEL about a case study involving backlinking with press releases and how it was effective in this scenario.

Links From Press Releases Do Have Ranking Benefit Despite What Google Says

Other sides claim that there is little or no value depending on where the release comes from.

See this thread on it,

http://www.seomoz.org/q/press-releas...-for-backlinks

My personal view is that the links could be beneficial but here is the issue. Google sees a red flag when all of a sudden a ton of links get created at once. For instance if the data was displayed on a graph and there was sudden spike in backlink creation, that would not look good. Also, when you think about it, no one is changing the anchor text for the link you have inserted in your press release when it is distributed to dozens, hundreds or thousands of sites. That too is a red flag especially when you don’t have diverse anchor text already.

Press releases without links continue to be a great way to promote websites and I would not avoid them entirely.

Hope that helps,

Shawn