Value of Press Releases for Digital Marketing
Websters’s Dictionary defines a press release as “an official statement that gives information to newspapers, magazines, television news programs, and radio stations.” This is the purpose of a press release in its simplest form. When you have a newsworthy item, you write a press release to let the media know.
For businesses, press releases can be a tool that can be used to spread the word. Over the years, the value of press releases has changed slightly, but they are still a valuable tool. Here is more information about this:
Press Releases and SEO
Press releases are not an SEO tool, but they used to be. When digital marketing, particularly SEO, was first becoming a marketing practice, people were using press releases for more than just giving media information that they could potentially report on. Press releases offered a way to generate high quality backlinks to your website. The end result of this is that people were overusing them and sending out press releases on a constant basis. By doing this, they began to lose their real impact, the action was considered to be spammy, and the practice lost its clout.
Google began to caution press release writers about sending out releases for SEO, and it even made its way into he Link Schemes section of Google’s Webmasters guidelines. However, besides this, note that there are several practices mentioned in the Link Schemes section that could also pertain to press releases if they are not done correctly. They state:
- Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites. For example:
There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.
Using Press Releases Correctly
When press releases are used correctly, however, they are considered to be a powerful and valuable tools that can help your brand. Above, we shared the definition of a press release from Webster’s Dictionary: an official statement that gives information to newspapers, magazines, television news programs, and radio stations. A press release can be a valuable tool for your business, but only if you have something valuable or newsworthy to share. These include:
- Launching a new website, or redesigning your old one
- Hosting or contributing to a charity event
- Moving locations
- Adding a new product or service
- When first launching your business
You get the idea. You need to have something that is considered newsworthy in order for this to benefit your business. As long as they share newsworthy items they can really help the business. The could lead to some high quality backlinks, they could boost traffic to your website, help with branding, and the press release itself could even experience decent rankings in the search engines. However, you won’t experience these benefits if you misuse them. It is best to want to write one for when you actually have news.
Categorized in: Digital Marketing
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