Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

When you should—or shouldn't—send press releases over the wire is a popular topic.

We found that Monday, Tuesday and 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern were the most popular times to send a press release. Our advice was to publish releases later in the day and week so your news didn't get lost in the commotion. Remember, all this is from 2013.

This year, we took our research a step further. First, we analyzed the distribution of more than 100,000 press releases published via Marketwired, PRWeb and PR Newswire in 2015. Second, we determined how many times each release was shared across nine social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn....

Google now calls links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. Even though Google took away the anchor text links in press releases (and guest posts and articles), there are still press release optimization opportunities.

Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEO and online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists.

It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?For brands publishing a press release or an article on your site and distributing it through a paid wire service, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or through an article site, you must first make sure to nofollow the links if those links are "optimized anchor text."

Is This a Big SEO Deal? Yes. No. Maybe.

Google has been slowly squeezing the SEO life out of press releases for a while now.

"In 2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much," said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator. "Online press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining. However, I still thought it was a good part of a large organic link building strategy until the new guideline changes."...

It can be difficult to get a news release approved internally—even without thinking about search engine optimization.
However, if exposure, disclosure or page views are your goals, you must heed content discoverability and make your release SEO-friendly.

A list of search engine violations and penalties shows ways your content can fail to attract attention online. This applies to all your owned media content—including your website and news releases.

What makes some releases more successful than others in terms of drawing traffic? They’re written with healthy SEO features. These successful news releases appeal to Google’s latest algorithm, which rewards high-quality, unique and non-spam content.

Follow these five simple steps to create releases that can rank high in search results....

Google likes to keep us PR pros on our toes.

Last year the big update to search results came through the “nuclear bomb” that was Panda 4.0. The age of the keyword was essentially over, and proper storytelling blogs and press releases were in. Many claimed that SEO was on its way out completely.

Recently, Google made even more changes. Though the advent of Panda 4.0 made press releases seem borderline useless, the search engine has now revalued them. There’s one big alteration, though, that changes the way savvy PR pros should use press releases....

10 Yetis Vents - Google update has not killed press releases or PR Agencies its just killed crap content and spammy writing.

Right now the interwebs are full of "Google has killed PR Agencies/press releases" stories. These all relate to big G's latest update that talks about its crack down on keyword optimised press releases and the need to use no-follow links in stories that PRs push out.

Whether it is emails from nervous clients wanting clarification on the situation, or people on Twitter sending me DMs asking if I have seen various stories (because we set our stall out around being very SEO savvy), it is really up in my grill right now.

Not many public relations professionals have put their head above the parapet and come out with their take on this, so I thought I would give it the first shot....