PRWeb’s PR Goof: Labeling the Press Release an SEO Tool
PRWeb, the most popular press release distribution service in the world, goes against its own guidelines, denying everything PR stands for with a press release without journalistic value, that also sends a flawed message to its customers.
PRWeb is one of the press release distribution services I use the most and I most admire. There are obvious advantages in using this service, cost-value being atop of the list. The company has very clear guidelines, that could serve as “golden rule” for any press release writer, and for any company that tries to promote a product, service or news about a company through PRWeb and other distribution channels.
I’d like to quote two of these guidelines:
Is your news “newsworthy?” The purpose of a press release is to inform the world of your news item. Do not use your press release to try and make a sale. A good press release answers all of the “W” questions (who, what, where, when and why), providing the media with useful information about your organization, product, service or event. If your press release reads like an advertisement, rewrite it.
Not everything is news. Your excitement about something does not necessarily mean that you have a newsworthy story. Think about your audience. Will someone else find your story interesting? Let’s assume that you have just spent a lot of effort to launch a new online store. Announcing your company’s opening is always an exciting time for any business, but the last thing the media wants to write about is another online store. This is old news and uninteresting. Instead, focus on the features of your online shopping experience, unique products and services. Answer the question, “Why should anyone care?” and make sure your announcement has some news values such as timeliness, uniqueness or something truly unusual. Avoid clichés such as “customers save money” or “great customer service.” Focus on the aspects of your news item that truly set you apart from everyone else.
Yesterday I wrote about The Creare Group – a company that, has the habit of publishing press releases no one wants to read for the sole purpose of getting an SEO advantage. My surprise was that, after criticizing an SEO company for using press releases as SEO tools instead of using them as PR tools, I read a press release titled: “topseos.com Ranks PRWeb #1 for Online News Distribution and SEO” written by no other than PRWeb themselves! We would have a totally different discourse if the authors of the release would be the folks from topseos.com: it’s normal for an SEO to believe that a press release is an SEO tool, but for a PR company to encourage and promote this misconception is frankly ridiculous. Add to this the fact that this PR company is a branch of VOCUS, one of the most popular provider of on-demand software for PR in the world, and you’ll understand my frustration.
Director of product management for PRWeb Jiyan Wei’s quote in the above cited press release makes me cringe:
“The recognition of our service in topseos.com’s monthly rankings program is validation of the ongoing effort we place to make sure that PRWeb is a key tool for search engine optimization, or SEO.”
In other words: let all ‘em spammers come to PRWeb. Press releases are no longer information tools, they are the magic wands that all SEOs need to have up their sleeves!
I will not deny the moderate SEO impact provided by press release distribution: the contextual links do have value, especially if the media outlets that pick the press release edit the content and change the anchor text. But as I always tell my customers, the SEO advantage is a welcomed side-effect, however not the main purpose of syndicating news.
The purpose of a press release should be to create brand awareness, to promote a newsworthy event, product or service, and so on. A PR who advises to “make news” out of something that is not even close to being newsworthy just to get some links that will bring you an illusory SEO advantage, is someone who is wasting your time and money. So back to PRWeb’s release and what is wrong with it.
- The headline reads like an announcement from topseos.com.
- The headline implies that PRWeb is an SEO tool.
- The leading paragraph – as the whole press release body overall – does not respect PRWeb’s own guidelines: it’s full of clichés and buzz words.
- The press release reads like an advertisement, shameless self promotion or worse. All information “sold” to us in the body has a better place in the About PRWeb boilerplate of the release than anywhere else.
- The press release is far from being newsworthy: it basically tells nothing new about PRWeb, it does not announce a new service, product or a notable event for that matter.
- The press release is also misleading: it makes the reader believe that submitting and distributing a press release via PRWeb can bring a significant SEO advantage.
For writing a press release that does not respect their own guidelines and undermines the role of the press release in general reducing it to an SEO trick, PRWeb gets today a well deserved Everything PR Goofy Award and a stupid sign. Oh, yes, and a piece of advice from someone very skilled in the industry:
If you feel that your press release contains embellishments, perhaps it would be a good idea to set your press release aside until you have more exciting news to share…PRWeb
About the Author
Mihaela Lica is senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters and others), with an experience of over 7 years in online PR and SEO. Mihaela writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. She also maintains a personal blog called eWritings. Follow Mig on Twitter or send her an email at mig [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.
The Greatest Monster Enabler Of All Time (Pope Ratzinger) Says He's "Sorry". "Scolds" His Bishops. "Warns" His Priests. Takes "No ...
Mary, just to address point 3: yes he can.
In 1983, the Vatican promulgated a revised Code of Canon Law ...
The pope does not mention "justice" along with his proposal as in "...and to propose a path of healing, renewal ...
Let's all examine something here:
1. As you rightly point out - nothing heals sexual abuse
2. So an apology ...
I am a former US Luge National Team Member. I am racing in the US Masters National championships in ...
Thank you so much Tracie, like you, we all morn the death of Nodar. So many say it is a ...
Comment by Frank Strong on 27 August 2009:
Hi Mihaela:
This is a great post and it certainly might stimulate some useful and constructive debate. It is in that spirit I offer the following.
The press release has changed. Press releases are not just for the press anymore — rather they can be used to reach customers directly. PRWeb pioneered the concept of the “direct-to-consumer” press release in 1997.
As you and I both know, the first step in any writing is to consider the audience. Since customers often first turn to search engines when seeking information, search engines in effect, become a target audience. This is especially critical to small- and medium-sized businesses because their most valuable tool in promoting their products and services – the Yellow Pages – has given away to search engine rankings. However, large organizations should and can also benefit. To this end I’d suggest that a press release is a valuable tool for SEO.
Is the press release you mention about topseos.com ranking PRWeb #1 newsworthy? It’s a good question and also a subjective, though I’d point out its not uncommon for organizations to announce an independent source awarded them a top spot, label or ranking. More importantly this question brings us back to the first point: audience identification.
We posted it to our Web site and put it out over PRWeb specifically as you pointed out for the SEO value. Customers that are looking for SEO advantages will search for such tools online, and we hope, will find this press release.
There is evidence to suggest that our target audience was in fact interested in this particular press release. To date this morning, 26 readers – mostly people working in SEO – have retweeted this release. This is to say they consciously chose to share the news with others in their social network.
PRWeb’s analytics on this release tells me that as of writing this response 1,461 people have read the release. If the goal of this release was to communicate with our target audience — people interested in SEO tools — these statistics indicate we have been successful.
Separately, do I as a PR professional believe a journalist would be interested in a story on this particular release? No, I do not. In fact I did not send or pitch the release to a single reporter or blogger. Not one. Undoubtedly, if this release were written for the media, it would have had a very different choice of words, or perhaps as you suggest, might not have been written at all. This, I believe, is in keeping with good PR principles – people that read or displayed this release chose to do so and this is a key point in the concept pull vs. push.
As a PR professional, I do believe your post raises some excellent points – it’s a useful conversation amid changing times. I’d also like to share a few other posts or articles on this topic that might be of interest:
BNET: The Real ROI of a Press Release
WebProNews: Search Engine and Social Traffic from Press Releases
FORTUNE: Web 2.0 reinvents the press release
Kind Regards,
Frank Strong
Director of Public Relations
Vocus
Follow us on Twitter @vocus | @PRweb
Comment by Mihaela Lica on 27 August 2009:
Frank, I am an SEO myself and I do recognize SEO as a side-effect of publishing press releases, as I already mentioned. But labeling press releases as SEO tools is plain wrong. Do this and all companies that are not very SEO savvy will publish crappy news through your network for the sole purpose of getting links. I think you had this problem before, when the service was free.
I understand that you are proud to see your company ranked as the best in the world – I am a fan myself, and a loyal customer – but it would be more appropriate to publish this as a “testimonial” on the homepage than as a press release. The credibility of your press release is very low in this particular case, specifically because your company is one of topseos.com sponsors.
As far as the number of SEO people who tweeted your press release… why am I not surprised? It would make a very interesting statistic to learn how many SEOs have an account with PRWeb compared to how many PRs! I bet the number of SEOs is higher.
Comment by Frank Strong on 27 August 2009:
Thanks for the feedback, Mihaela. We certainly value you as a customer and I greatly respect your professional opinion. However, as PR professionals, we’ll have to agree to disagree on the press releases as a tool for SEO. That’s okay because this conversation is constructive and useful debate.
SEO has always been a key value proposition for PRWeb and we’ve actively promoted this from the very beginning. In terms of sponsorship, you are right, but I’d also like to point out that topseos.com ranked us #1 long before we were ever sponsors and we welcome their independence. We are in fact sponsors of many, many outlets including PR trade publications that occasionally write editorial copy about the company and we make every effort to be transparent.
Comment by Phil Butler on 27 August 2009:
Hi Frank,
I have long been an admirer of PRWeb too. I used to search your releases every day when I was in the thick of Beta testing for the various tech blogs. On a bad news day, and even sometimes on a good one, PRWeb provided me, and subsequently many thousands of people with news they might not otherwise have seen. At the peak of our PR campaigns for Web 2.0 clients, we made us of, and still do, PRWeb as the primary outreach tool for reaching a very broad audience. Just recently, PRWeb distributed news for us to something over 80,000 potential outlets for a great little early stage startup – super effective. One reason I point this out is to solidify what Mihaela is saying. We deal in SEO and other aspects for clients all the time, and I can assure you the SEO aspects of these releases are a secondary consideration.
That being said, I do not think anyone could consider a press release an SEO tool. It should be classified as an “aspect” or perhaps function of good SEO rather. I know this is getting into semantics and splitting hairs, but claiming some advanced SEO benefit, when in fact any submission to ezines would suffice for links and etc, is “stretching it” in my book. I think the main contention here is not that the SEO value of a press release is in question, but that PRWeb sort of did a double take in violating its own dogma here. Whether you guys meant to or not, and whether you agree or not, where there is one perception (ours) there are others. So, this release in fact potentially damaged PRWeb’s credibility. Something none of us want. We write these critiques not to hurt anyone, but to lend our opinion and expertise to the conversation. I know many think we are trying to upstage them, but this is simply not on our agenda.
We all make mistakes. Sometimes we do not see them immediately and we react before we think about it. I know I have. I don’t personally care who sponsors whom, but I do know that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes i sdo many organizations that people are not privy to. This does not mean they do not suspect. These kinds of “signals”, whether real or imagined, are potentially bad for everyone’s business. PRWeb should be the least likely to make this sort of error, even if it is a semantic one. We hammer PR companies to death over stuff like this all the time, so why not the most accepted press release company in the world? Being the best is a big territory, and criticism is one of the things that keep the best on top in my book.
Thanks so much for taking the time to enter into this discussion Frank, we really do want our contemporaries to excel, and us too. We need to compete with ourselves more, all of us.
Always,
Phil
Comment by Mihaela Lica on 27 August 2009:
Frank, I would be really happier if some people, based on statements like yours, would not misuse the press release distribution channels just to get links. There are millions of cases – it suffices to read the press releases published on free distribution channels like Open PR for example. When SEO misuse the press release to get links, the job of the PR professional who tries to use your service to send out valuable information becomes more difficult if not impossible. The more crap you have on your network – aka press release without editorial value, with “subjective” newsworthiness – the less journalists will rely on your service to pick up news. This is very daunting for PRWeb and for its customers.