Can Sending Press Releases Actually Improve Your SEO Rankings?
Included below:
- In the “old days”: SEO skyrockets results
- First: Google’s Panda clobbers “SEO-Enhanced” pages
- Next: Google confirms importance of PR in SEO
- Google patent reveals it’s time to think outside the link
The Old Days of SEO
Way, way back in the pre-2000 days of Google and Yahoo, Search Engine Optimization was the surest, fastest, and easiest way to skyrocket your way to the top of a search. Some lucky 49ers even managed to pan a few good hits to their site, and struck it rich.
SEO hucksters loved this situation (and still do), because they could promise that their ‘Search Optimized Releases’ would deliver near-instantaneous visibility to whomever would pay them top-dollar for the privilege.
For those willing to pay, search status was gained and quickly forgotten while the SEO cardsharps and costermongers lined their pockets. Meanwhile, the internet quickly grew flush with poorly vetted, high-keyword, low-content junk.
First. Enter Google’s “Sheriff” Matt Cutts and his giant Panda.
A serious bear of an algorithm with a taste for hucksters, 
Panda quickly went to work hunting down and killing intentionally SEO-enhanced content.
What Panda leaves alone are quality, content-rich posts and sites that have derived their position from organically grown attention — attention garnered from the site being awesome and useful, not from some hack stuffing it near-bursting with backlinks and ‘searchable’ keywords.
Next. Google Reveals New Method of PR Enhancing SEO
Google was awarded a patent that is widely believed to be for the Panda algorithm. In this patent, Google confirms that if a brand is mentioned on a web page, even if it is not linked, Google considers such a mention as an “implied link.” What this means to you is that the simple mention of your brand on a web page signals to Google that your website carries additional authority and interest.
The New SEO – Time to Think Outside the Link
We’ve all been trained (brainwashed?) to believe that accumulating high quality follow links is the path to search engine ranking. But Google’s recent patent reveals that’s just not the whole story.
We know that nofollow links don’t pass Page Rank to your site, but we now know that nofollow links (as appear in our online press releases) may actually carry some value. And, of course, these links can still drive traffic to your website, so they should not be discounted.
The biggest news to come out of this patent is that brand mentions matter, even if not linked. In other words, if others are mentioning your brand, those mentions will convey added authority and influence, and will affect your search ranking positively.
In Summary:
Panda devours all the junk, leaves the healthy stuff for the rest of us, and, what’s better, pushes that naturally good stuff up to the very top.
This is what customers want to find, and what you should want to deliver — which is where eReleases comes in.
Press Releases That Deliver Results
Gimmicky methods of search-engine tomfoolery may briefly earn you a place above the salt, but nothing, absolutely nothing can put you on the pages of The New York Times, or on the waves of NPR, or grant longevity at the top of Google — nothing except a reader-focused (not search-engine focused) press release placed in front of the right journalists at the right time.
Which is exactly what eReleases has been doing for 26 + years.
Don’t be fooled. Our competitors may promise “30,000+ journalists and bloggers,” but nobody can compare to 
eReleases’ 100,000+ hand-picked journalists and editors in hundreds of industry-specific categories.
These are professional reporters who expect your release, read your release, and most importantly, want to share it with the world.
And that’s something SEO will never be able to touch. Thanks, Panda.
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