press release links

To many marketers, press releases may seem like an outdated way to share information. The thing is, that’s just not true. Today, thousands of press releases are distributed around the world every single day. But just how effective are press releases — for your SEO rankings and online exposure? The answer isn’t simple. Used the right way, press releases can be an extremely beneficial and effective marketing tool. Used the wrong way, press releases are absolutely useless. Let’s take a deeper look. First: What Are the Benefits of Press Releases? 1. Send Out Your Brand News Straight from the Horse’s Mouth Do you have a news-worthy story, an announcement, or some other piece of information about your brand where the facts are vital to get right? (Think new product launches, earnings reports, company mergers or acquisitions, or an official statement on an issue.) Do you want that news distributed to a targeted network (e.g. local news stations)? If the information is going to make news anyway, sending out a press release is a great way to take control of the narrative (for your part in it, anyway). Companies have been doing it for over 100 years for a reason. Press releases help you get out accurate facts about a news event so they’re reported correctly when journalists pick up the story. [bctt tweet=”Used the right way, press releases can be an extremely beneficial and effective marketing tool. ? Used the wrong way, press releases are absolutely useless. ? Find out the difference ➡” username=”ExpWriters”] Did you know? We write press releases that have a 100% acceptance rate with outlets like PRNewswire, PRWeb, etc. See pricing! 2. Startup? Publicly Traded Company? Get Important Press Coverage If you’re a publicly traded company (read: swinging around big numbers) OR a startup looking for investors, buy-in, new customers, etc… For your most important news and announcements, you need more than a simple blog or social media post to get it out there. Press coverage gives you the potential to show up in local AND major news publications, where your target audience gets their news. It’s a good investment to draw up a press release and get it distributed for maximum exposure in these cases. 3. Increase Brand Awareness Good press release writing can do a lot more than simply announce your news to the world. It also has the potential to earn you positive brand mentions and associations. Even if they don’t include a backlink to your site, those positive mentions still matter for building brand awareness, authority, and a good reputation. And, according to Search Engine Land, the search engines might be using these linkless mentions to determine your website’s authority. After all, the people who read your press release matter. Their opinions and perception of your brand matter. If your press release does a good job of presenting your brand positively, and news outlets pick it up and their subscribers read it, those are big wins. Need a stellar press release written for your brand? Trust our proven team. When Are Press Releases Useless? Don’t get me wrong. Press releases are great for meeting certain goals. But if you’re not using them the right way, producing and distributing them can be worthless. Particularly, I’m talking about syndication.  Now, syndication as a tactic to get your press release more widely read and shared is a good idea. Syndication as a strategy to get SEO rankings and backlinks: bad, bad, bad. To illustrate this point, let’s look at a study I did a few years ago. The findings are still relevant today. Syndicated News: Is It Worth the Investment? (A 2016 Study) $6,100.00. That’s what one big brand was spending per month on press release distribution, according to a study by marketing agency owner Tim Grice, posted on Moz in 2012. That’s a huge number. At Express Writers, we used to offer syndicated online press release distribution to all of our customers, at rates well below what our former news partner charged on their own site. Our clients got a good deal—and we felt happy to offer it to them. That is, until October 2016—when we stood back and looked at the actual benefit of using online, syndicated news for Google rankings. I even got two experts on the line to help me dig up solid truths about this industry. (I’m indebted to Steve Rayson at BuzzSumo for pulling metrics and data for me, and Tim Grice at Branded3 for an updated quote.) Our findings weren’t good, by any means. The Story Behind the Study: What Inspired Me to Take a Deeper Look at Press Release Distribution In 2012, when we started offering press release distribution at EW, I saw amazing, fast results in Google. For instance, one press release we did back then was about a stuffed toy. The company’s keyword, a solid, low competition long-tail, ranked #3 in Google in just days — and that #3 result was their actual press release. Now that was value! But I had not seen those kind of results since. And we’re talking out of dozens to hundreds of press releases that our team wrote and distributed. On average, we were distributing 6-10 press releases for clients in a month. But we had SO many clients complain about the reports we sent them. “This is all the data and results we get?” And the truth was, we didn’t really have an answer for them. The quality of the news results online was finicky. I’d see an online Fox station pick one up — and then it would be gone the next day, when I was ready to send the link to the client. Results weren’t permanent. And nothing showed in the first page of Google for their (great) long-tail news keywords. The more I saw this happening, the more I realized I needed to research syndicated distribution. A bad feeling in my gut drove me to do it before we renewed our contract that year. And sure enough, … Read more