Are PR releases good for Link Building?

[HMCOE]

I'm having a bit of a conundrum with Press Releases:

I recently sent a press release on PRWeb (which I personally think is just "average" compared to others as it focuses mainly on the CBS network and is not focused at all unless you pay for an expensive release) and got over 100 incoming links from high PR news sites (according to Webmaster Tools) but these links had PRWeb in subtitle, so for all I know these were syndicated releases and not "Pick up By" as PRWeb reports.

• Will this affect Page Rank value or rankings for any keywords?
• Are these links treated only as temporary links or permanent back links? (I know sometimes they appear in Google News or Yahoo News, but disappear the next day)

Was it valuable to the company?

Our business is in health sector exclusively on East Coast U.S. and the release was seen all over the world and not one of the links coming back was from a health-related section. They were high rank online sites, but is there value in such links?

added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)

[DavidKonigsberg]

If they got picked up by media and reworded then that is great for seo if they just got picked up as is it doesn't help seo so much.

[davidangotti]

The short answer is those links are useless and will not benefit your company in any meaningful way.

Press releases by themselves should not be considered a good link building tactic. Press release ARE effective when you use them to promote something you have done that is newsworthy. In this case, the press release is a hook to catch a journalist and hopefully get positive PR and interviews that link back to you. It is not the link from the press release that helps you, but the editorial link from a highly authoritative site that helps. Unless you have something exciting enough to share with a friend at a bar, you probably should not be using a press release for it.

If you would like to read additionally on this, check out this article:

http://searchengineland.com/how-prweb-helps-distribute-crap-into-google-news-sites-140597

[HMCOE]

David, like I said though... we did get an additional 100+ link backs from high PR sites (6+7) that were in the PRweb network where the release was distributed to.

Yes, we did get interest from reporters and got interviewed but I was asking about those 100+ links from the PRweb network.

[davidangotti]

The backlinks from the duplicate content press releases that were reposted by a network of news sites will not help you. That is unnatural duplicate content with the lack of natural anchor text variances. The recent Penguin and Panda updates targeted this exact sort of thing.

Now, if you can get real editorial links from reporters that makes the whole thing worth while!

[Debdulal]

_I hate the idea of considering Press Release as another form of Link Building. It has a simple and straightforward purpose and that is – helping you promote a new service or product.  So, when you are trying to promote your website via Press Release, you need to make sure that you are not making any kind of compromise on the quality front. And for God’s sake do not use exact matched anchor in the press releases as it may make your website more vulnerable to algorithmic updates. _

[HMCOE]

That's a great point about anchor text. Would you recommend linking to a different/new landing page?

[Debdulal]

Nope, new landing page is not that much required.  However, since it is a paid promotion kind of thing, you need to add no follow tag against the anchor text if you wish to be on the safe side.

[HMCOE]

Do you have some reference?

Here's what I found out last night which is contradictory to what you said:

added 11/30: I was reviewing competitors' link backs I found they did a lot of press releases and gained a high-level link back from each one. These were the best/highest-authority links they had. The syndicated releases were not even listed anywhere. And then I reviewed their SERPs... and guess what, their ranks increased with each one. (So I don't think "duplication" is an issue. If anything only the syndicated copies were penalized, but not the original one)