PRweb & PRnewswire

[lovealbatross]

Hi Guys,

Looking for thoughts on press release websites in terms of link value.  Recent press releases on both these sites have recently appeared in OSE with DA's of 93/98 and PA's of 47/48 - great stuff.

Given we can control anchor text and include links these are great opportunities to combine anchor text vs branded links, include citation and co-citations all from within the main body of the release too depending on the PR package you subscribe to.

So are these link opps as valuable as they appear or could they be devalued based on the fact they are sat on these PR sites? Might Google view them as no more important than links from ezinearticles? Are they frowned on even more as they might be considered paid links?

Further to this, if they aren't as high value as their DA/PA suggests then might an extra filter in OSE to account for this be useful?

Interested to hear your thoughts
Cheers
James

[Vinnie]

Hi James,

We have used PRWeb for the last 10 years to release some quite compelling press releases that have worked quite well for our client’s in announcing new services or updates to existing services.

Your question are they valuable then yes initially and a well written press release supported by a good SEO and social media campaign can prove beneficial. As for a long-term linking campaign I don’t feel it is beneficial – the press releases are picked up as static content and placed mainly as is on a variety of websites that for the most part are not indexed by Google.

There is a very good article by Tim Grice about the very subject:  Are you wasting your time with online press releases?

Thanks

Vincent

[Jeepster]

Matt Cutts on press releases, as quoted by SearchEngineLand:

http://tinyurl.com/63pabf6

Interesting bit:

Matt clarified that the links in the press releases themselves don’t count for PageRank value, but if a journalist reads the release and then writes about the site, any links in that news article will then count.

[Jeepster]

For what it's worth and to update my previous response, see this from Search Engine Land. I think the URL is self-explanatory:

http://searchengineland.com/links-from-press-releases-do-have-ranking-benefit-despite-what-google-says-145139