Are you trying to generate a buzz for your product or business? Press releases can often be a great way to get the word out about your company and influence search engine results. As most of us know, Google perceives discussion about your website in other places as an indicator of relevancy, which is something that helps determine page ranks.

Not all free PR releases are made equal, however! Choosing the wrong sites can actually hurt your website in search results. Here are three things to keep in mind when you are looking for online press release services.

1. Sites That Get into Google News and Web Searches

We cam across an interesting, in depth study by Vitis Public Relations, where they tested 60 free press release sites for how successful these sites were at distributing content that consumers could find, and graded them on multiple aspects of link building. The results of the study? Online PR News, Open PR, PR Fire, PR Zoom, and Idea Marketers all managed to get their releases on Google web pages or in Google News.

2. What Google Says

Google’s page on duplicate content can offer some insight into what you should and should not do when it comes to press releases. Although Google expects syndication to occur, it makes it clear that it will only allow, in most cases, one version to appear to readers, and it might not be the version you prefer. They recommend including a link to the original article in each syndicated piece. If Google feels your site is engaging in deceptive practices, they will take it as grounds to remove your site from all search results.

3. Relevancy

We mentioned it before, but for Google to reward your site with relevancy, links need to be posted on valuable sites. The study we mentioned by Vitis found that none of thee sample content they sent to free PR sites ended up on sites Google would consider valuable. So, although these sites might enhance your brand visibility in search, in many cases they will not influence your actual website ranking. For this reason, you need to either invest in sites you pay for, or turn to an alternative rank method for rank pushing, such as SEO.

What are your thoughts on free PR releases? Let us know in the comments