Press Release and Duplicate Content

[Aviatech]

Hello folks,

We have been using Press Releases to promote our clients business for a couple of years and we have seen great results in referral traffic and SEO wise.

Recently one of our clients requested us to publish the PR on their website as well as blast it out using PRWeb and Marketwire.

I think that this is not going to be a duplicate content issue for our client's website since I believe that Google can recognize which content has been published first, but I will be more than happy to get some of the Moz community opinions.

Thank you

[josh-riley]

I have an issue with some of our press releases ranking above the product page or  for targeted page for a certain keyword because of the inbound links and such a press release can gather. There can be some risk of dup content, depending on how the PR is written in comparison to the pages it relates to.  However, I have found dup to be less of a problem and keyword cannibalization to be a bigger one.

I have to go back in and update anchor text, links, etc. in the press releases to push some of the "juice" through to the product page we want to rank for those terms - definitely messy to undo and work with.

[DanielFreedman]

Not sure of the technical answer. I'll leave it to others.

But why not publish slightly different versions on the company site and the press release site (unless there is a compliance or disclosure issue.)

Verbatim press releases on company websites often disrespect readers by including things best avoided:

• a hyperlink to a site people are already on
• an "about XYX company" that duplicates material already on the site
• boring, label-like headline wording done for SEO purposes, or to comply with the "news hook" requirement from some PR distribution sites

If I read one more press release headlined "XYZ Company Announces Launch of Super-Duper Widget" I'm gonna scream.

IMHO, best practice is to produce a slightly different version for the website.

Failing that, you can just summarize the news release and link to it on the press release site.