I have heard so much about PR and I just wrote and added my first PR to Free-Press-Release.com I was wondering if you could guide me a little about this PR thing. I am totally new to PR. How can one develop backlinks from submitting a PR? All I have is my URL in the contact information. There is no such thing as anchor text that I could use to back link to my site. How do people get traffic off PR websites? How can they help in developing more backlinks and traffic? Looking forward to your expert advice! Thanks, z
1. Most backlinks you'll get from free PR sites are crap. They're either from the PR sites themselves (which are not only irrelevant sites, but where you'll get buried in archives quickly), or from scraper sites. 2. The quality backlinks mostly come when you have a real news story with a well-written release where you've properly targeted your distribution. Why? Because that's how you get high quality, permanent, relevant backlinks from highly-ranked and high-traffic sites. If you can get even one or two "big ones" to cover your story, chances are that you'll get a trickle-down effect to smaller niche sites who will also give you well-targeted links and traffic. 3. Keep in mind that most of the traffic you get from a release is poorly targeted. It's people looking at your site to see if you're worth covering for a story or blog post - not the end readers you're hoping to reach (yes, they can find you directly in news engines these days, but the reality of the situation is that most do not, and they don't trust news in a press release the way they trust it from a reputable source covering your story). The "good" traffic again comes from the coverage - not the release itself (by having "influencers" of your primary target audience tell people about your news and your site). Just my $.02 based on my experience specializing in online PR for several years. Take it for what it's worth.
I would have to agree, press releases will not get you the best traffic. However, I do think their backlinks are good and worth the effort. I've gotten a fair number of backlinks from using free press release sites - I would not pay to do this unless you have a professionally written release. The list of free press release sites for online marketing that I use can be found in the link.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see Google eventually de-value these kinds of links (and those from article directories - essentially "bought" links - you pay by giving the site content and get backlinks in return). While they don't appear to now I'd certainly advise against relying on these kinds of sites solely for links, or for a significant portion of your site's incoming links. The number one thing though is to only publish a release if you have real news. Otherwise, you're just a press release spammer of one variety or another, and folks (especially bloggers) have been getting wiser about those things in the last few months.
Much of it, yes. Press releases are far from crap when they're done well though, with coverage as the primary motivation - those are the releases that benefit the most from good SEO. If your only purpose is building links, and you have no real news to share, they're not your best option. Remember, PR tools all contribute to image building and image maintenance - not just exposure, links, and traffic. If you publish nothing but search engine drivel without news, in the long run your site or company looks bad, and you'll find it harder to get any serious coverage when you finally do have something newsworthy that you want to get "out there."