Yes it helps but you have to include other things like article marketing, social book marking, networking and more... Lambert
I've had good luck using PRWeb for press releases. If you use one of their paid options, you get traffic and some useful backlinks. The first time I used them for a press release, it was read something like 40,000 times. That's useful. Charlie
Remember that a "read" according to their stats in no way, shape, or form actually means it was read.
Writing a press release and submitting to free sites noted above, is a waste of time since it would simply be duplicate content and filtered out by the search engines. A full press release will cost $300.00 to $600.00 and can help with rankings, however they are sent to journalists and if there is more important breaking news your PR will never be seen. For example news about economic issues, a major terrorist attack or death of a major star as well as 100s of other news items can drown out your press release and will have wasted your money. Read MTBiker & Jhmattern for the best answers as to how useful the idea is truly.
What they call a "read" is just how many times that page was accessed. Think of it vaguely as pageviews when you're reviewing your website stats. Yeah, it's great to see a high number, but it means very little if they're bouncing off that page in a second or two. On your own site, that short pageview at least might have been short b/c they clicked on an ad or something. For your press release with PRWeb, that short view doesn't mean anything to you from a PR or even marketing perspective, because they haven't been there long enough to even grasp the basic idea of your news or who you are. What you should care about is real pickups (again, PRWeb stats mean squat for this, because they're estimates masquerading as statistics), or at a bare minimum actual traffic from your release to your site (as in who cared enough about what you had to say to check you out further). It's impossible to determine how many people actually read your press release and get your story out of it. That's why I've been saying for ages now that PRWeb needs to be a bit more transparent and change that stat to something like "Views" rather than "Reads." I'm really disappointed to see that they still consider that to be appropriate, given the fact that they target such a Web-based, stats-obsessed audience. Their stats should reflect what makes sense for the service and its users - "reads" does not. I'm not saying you shouldn't use PRWeb (that depends on the company, news, and target audience), but rather that you need to be careful about being misled by these statistics to think you're getting something out of it that you may not be.
They've worked for me. I created a PR when I've launched a site a whenever I've made any major changes to it.
It seems to be a recommended way to increase traffic but it will not last that long. If your website has nice content, then there is a chance that those people that came from PR will come later for more.
If you started new business with some unique and nice things Press releases can be good to idea to explore you website in the market. It will increase some traffic on your web site.
I tried sending press releases out, free and paid for two months, and I can write compelling text, but I found that the time it took to make compelling, interesting copy and submit it was not worth the effort. Time-money wise it would have een better to throw the cash at an adwords campaign. I am also suspicious of the distribution these sites REALLY have. They may say they submit it here and there and are on x and y mailing lists blah blah - but how do you KNOW. I could set up a news site in a day, put on it that I distributed through all the major channels etc, and for it all to be a lie to drag in some revenue from people who, chances are, will never check my claim.