August 10, 2008
PRWEB and Press Release Sites: They Don’t Pass Google Page Rank
This topic will be old-hat to most SEO experts and consultants, but I wanted to mention it as it has come up in several client conversations recently. When you create Press Releases on PRWEB.com and other press release sites, the links that you have in the release do NOT pass Google Page rank to your website.
How do I know this? I know it from Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team:
…a legit press release can get you written up by reporters, or editors/sites may subsequently choose to link to your site. But the actual content of the press release itself doesn’t directly affect a site. For example, on http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/10/prweb296086.php those hyperlinks don’t help avatarfinancial.com (in Google).
Directly from Matt Cutts’ comments on his blog: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/
Filed under SEO, Search Engine Optimization, blog by ryannagy
Comments on PRWEB and Press Release Sites: They Don’t Pass Google Page Rank »
Hi Ryan,
If all PRWeb did was host your release, your post would indicate there is no SEO benefit to using PRWeb. Happily this is not the case and looking at case studies on our site (e.g. the Resort Quest one found behind the “Success Stories” tab at prweb.com) might give you reason to better define the exact meaning of Matt’s 2005 comment you’re citing.
Regards,
Joe Beaulaurier
PRWeb
Joe - Thanks for your message.
A well-written and useful Press Release on PRWeb could lead to more visits to a website and perhaps more incoming links as other websites find the content useful and link to it. That’s my take on potential SEO benefits. It could be thought of as using PRWeb as an effective type of link-bait. Are you referring to something similar in your post above?
My point was much smaller - simply that a link to a website, within a PRWeb press release, does not in and of itself pass page rank. That would not limit other potential uses of your service (which I do recommend to my clients on occassion).
Would you mind posting the link to the Resort Quest case study? I was able to find several case studis on the PRWeb blog, but not that exact one.
Again, great to hear from you and thanks for your response.
- Ryan
I’ve found that the online press release facilities usually do give you some significant boost in number of links. I generally attribute this to people finding the release and posting the link, though this is not always how it works.