Press Releases: Watch Your Rankings Drop and Get Deindexed
Google, Press Releases, Search Optimization October 14th, 2007Submitting press releases is a small part of an overall SEO campaign. Usually beneficial, especially if you opt for some of the paid services from more popular sites like PRWeb.com or PR.com. If you’re generating new, unique, and original content, you’ll want credit for it in one of two ways. You can either post it to your blog or post it through the press release and article networks but not both. I used to think both was ok as long you posted the content to your site first and allowed it to be indexed and then syndicated it throughout the PR and article sites. I was wrong. Duplicate content and authority enter into this indexing equation. Even if you post the content to your site first and allow it to be indexed, not only will Google display and give credit to the site with the most authority but it will also deindex your site’s URL that the content is on.
Here is a timeline of content generation, publication, and syndication:
- Generated press release
- Posted to corporate blog
- Release is now indexed in Google
- Submitted press release to 4 free press release sites (Backlinks included)
- Press release sites have been indexed for content
- The Release’s original URL on the corporate blog has been deindexed
- Overall site rankings dropped for two keyword phrases found in the title of the release
This obviously stinks but all may not be lost here. There are Backlinks that are contained within the content of the release on the PR sites. These have not been processed yet by Google so I’m not sure if the presence of these will hurt or help. So even though we’ve been hurt content-wise we may still gain rank from the anchor text in the links. I’ll have to return with an update on this.
To spread the word and get indexed for your content, post to your site or the press release sites but never both. Where and when you post first doesn’t seem to matter.
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