My clients are being duped, and I need to say something to set the record straight. Press release distribution services, like PRWeb and others, have been advertising their “SEO services,” in an effort to convince businesses to pay extra for a completely unnecessary service.
Some of you may be under the impression that you need to write a search engine optimized press release in order to get backlinks to your website via news services. But here is the reality. Google has already beaten you to the punch. It doesn’t matter if your press release has a bunch of links with the right anchor text because, in all likelihood, Google will only index one of your syndicated articles from one news source.
Gaming the search engines is so 1997
Google has evolved over the years. It is now able to detect multiple copies of the same article on several different sites. When it does this, it recognizes the article as “duplicate content,” and it uses special programs to stop all of this extra content from having an effect on your search engine rankings.
Why does Google do it? Because Google is trying to cut down on the amount of spam that gets onto the web. By de-emphasizing the effects of having multiple copies of the same article on many different sites, Google is removing the incentive to create spam. As more content developers realize this, they are compelled to create genuine content for a human audience. The web suddenly becomes more relevant and enjoyable.
Matt Cutts explains the rest
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Google’s Matt Cutts (head of Google’s anti-spam initiative) will explain the rest.
“I’m not against doing press releases; press releases can be a useful part of getting traffic and building a brand. For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it’s primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that.”
-Matt Cutts, Comments on Newsweek SEO article.
Here is the takeaway. Don’t create a press release because you want to increase your website’s Google ranking. Create one because you have a really important piece of news. The more interesting your press release is for a human audience, the more likely it is that some of those humans might just decide to link to your site out of their own volition. That’s the kind of “link juice” money can’t buy.