PR Wire / Press release SEO
Press release SEO: what actually helps
Updated 19 October 2026
The honest answer to “do press releases help SEO?” is: sometimes, and not in the way most people hope. A press release creates a dated, indexed page about you on someone else's site. That helps people and search engines find and describe your company. It rarely moves rankings on its own, and no distribution service can promise otherwise.
What a press release can do for search
- Get new pages indexed that name your company, people and products.
- Create third-party mentions that search engines and AI assistants can read and quote.
- Support your own pages by giving journalists and readers something to link to.
What it cannot promise
- A ranking, traffic or any response from Google.
- That a page stays online. Links on networks like these do drop away over time, so we never promise permanence.
- Link equity from nofollow links. Our UK network is nofollow, and we say so before you buy.
Dofollow press release options
If links matter to you, there are networks built for them. We sell three, and we tell you the trade-offs:
- SEO Wire US, £1,495 + VAT: one release on 624 US news sites with a dofollow link on each, published on the homepage and filed in the relevant category. We measured the network in Ahrefs ourselves: 188 sites at Domain Rating 60 or above and 86 at 70 or above. It is syndication, so the copies are near-identical, and many of the sites block European visitors. See SEO Wire US.
- SEO Wire UK, from £455 + VAT: one release on msn.com and 20, 30 or 40 UK news sites (£455, £625 or £785 + VAT), with a dofollow link on each UK placement.
- UK regional network, £395 + VAT: nofollow, for reach and recognisable titles rather than SEO. See UK distribution.
How to use press releases for SEO without harming your site
- Write about something that is genuinely news. A release with no news value is just a paid link.
- Use your company or brand name as the link text, not a keyword phrase.
- Run one release at a time, not a stream. Google treats manipulative paid links as a policy breach.
- Measure what you can: whether the pages are indexed, the domain rating of each site and the link type. Our coverage report lists every placement.
Frequently asked questions
Do press releases help SEO?
They can help visibility: a published release is a new indexed page that names your company on a third-party site. But most distribution links are nofollow, so they pass little or no ranking credit, and nobody can promise a ranking.
Are press release links dofollow or nofollow?
It depends on the network. Our UK network of 65 regional titles is nofollow and labelled as an Ad Feature. SEO Wire US and SEO Wire UK carry dofollow links.
Can paid press release links get a site penalised?
Google treats paid links that pass ranking credit as link spam when they are used to manipulate rankings. Use a brand name as the link text, keep to a single link, and do not run a stream of keyword-stuffed releases.
How many links will I get?
One link text and one address are applied to every placement on a dofollow wire, so a release gives you many placements of the same link, not many different links.
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