Press Release Submission in SEO: How It Works and When to Use It

Most marketing teams turn to press releases at an obvious moment: a product launch, an acquisition, a funding round. The release goes out, inboxes get pinged, and someone in the room assumes the backlinks will follow. Sometimes they do. More often, the release lands on a wire service, gets republished verbatim by a dozen low-traffic aggregators, and contributes almost nothing to search rankings. Understanding the mechanics behind press release submission in SEO tells you exactly why that happens and what to do instead.

This is not a case against press releases. It is a case for using them precisely. The distinction matters because the gap between what PR can do and what most guides claim it does is wide enough to waste a meaningful slice of your content budget.

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What Press Release Submission Actually Is

A press release is a formatted statement distributed to media outlets, journalists, or newswires to announce something your organization considers newsworthy. Press release submission in SEO refers to the practice of distributing those releases through online channels with the goal of improving search visibility, earning backlinks, or amplifying brand signals.

The submission itself takes two main forms:

• Paid wire distribution: Services like PR Newswire or Business Wire push your release to their syndication networks. Hundreds of sites may publish the content, but most carry it as-is with little editorial involvement.
• Direct media outreach: You contact specific journalists or editors at relevant publications with a tailored pitch. If they cover the story, they write their own version and link to you on their own terms.

These two routes have very different SEO outcomes, and conflating them is the most common mistake in how companies think about press releases and search.

How Syndication Differs from Editorial Coverage

Syndicated wire placements copy your release onto aggregator domains. The content is duplicated, the links are usually nofollowed, and there is no journalist judgment involved. Editorial coverage means a reporter independently covered your news and linked to your site from within their own writing. That second type of link carries genuine authority because it reflects a third party's editorial decision.

Google's guidance on link spam policies is explicit: links in press releases distributed at scale should be nofollowed. When they are not, they risk manual action. The SEO value of a mass-syndicated wire release therefore comes from visibility and brand exposure, not from the links themselves.

Where Press Release Submission Genuinely Helps SEO

The benefits of press release submission in SEO are real, but they are indirect. Here is what a well-executed release can actually move:

Brand Signals and Entity Recognition

When your brand name appears consistently across multiple publications alongside relevant industry terms, search engines build a clearer picture of what your organization is and what it covers. This entity recognition can improve how your site surfaces for branded and near-branded searches over time, even if no individual placement delivers a strong followed link.

Earned Editorial Links

This is where press releases can deliver real link equity. If your announcement is genuinely newsworthy and you have targeted the right journalists, some of them will write independent coverage. Those independently written articles contain their own editorial links back to your site, and those links carry authority. The press release is the trigger; the editorial article is the SEO asset.

Referral Traffic and Brand Visibility

Even nofollowed placements on high-traffic outlets drive referral visits. If a release lands on an industry publication that your target audience reads, the traffic it sends can convert at rates comparable to organic search, because the reader has already self-selected as interested in what you announced.

For more on how distribution channel choices shape those outcomes, see our guide on choosing the right distribution channels.

Why the Industry Still Uses Press Releases for SEO

Understanding why we do press release submission in SEO requires looking at how it used to work. Before Google devalued mass-syndicated links, a single wire distribution could produce thousands of backlinks overnight. SEO practitioners quickly weaponized this, pushing releases about trivial events to generate link volume. Google responded by discounting those links algorithmically and later by updating its spam policies to flag manipulative patterns explicitly.

What survived is the legitimate version: press releases distributed to real journalists about real news. The links that result from genuine editorial coverage have never been devalued, because they were never the product of manipulation. They are simply coverage. That distinction is why experienced SEO teams still incorporate PR into their strategies, but treat it as an authority-building channel rather than a link-volume channel.

At Indexed, we do not recommend paid press release distribution unless the outlet is reputable enough to earn genuine editorial pickup. The indirect effects, brand authority, entity recognition, and the occasional editorial link, are worth pursuing. Chasing wire placements for link count is not. The economics rarely work out, and the risk of link spam patterns appearing in your profile is real.

How to Do Press Release Submission Effectively

How to do press release submission in SEO comes down to four decisions made before the release is written:

Decide Whether the News Is Real

Journalists receive enormous volumes of pitches. The only ones that earn coverage are the ones that contain something genuinely new: a data point nobody has published, a funding event with market implications, a product that changes how a category works, or a partnership that matters to the outlet's readers. If your announcement is not independently interesting, distribution will not make it interesting. Write the story you would want to read, and if you cannot, consider whether this is the right moment to issue a release at all.

Target Outlets Before Writing

Identify the specific publications and journalists who cover your industry before you draft a word. A release written for a fintech reporter reads differently from one written for a regional business editor. Personalization increases pickup rates significantly. A short, tailored pitch email accompanying the release almost always outperforms a mass distribution with no personal context.

Handle Links Correctly

Include one or two links to genuinely useful pages on your site. Use nofollow or sponsored attributes on any links included in the release body, in line with Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links. If a journalist picks up the story and links to you independently, that link carries full editorial weight. Do not try to engineer the wire distribution itself into a link-building exercise.

Measure the Right Things

Track editorial pickups, referral traffic from publication domains, and any new referring domains that appear in your backlink profile in the weeks following distribution. Do not use the number of syndication placements as a success metric. A release that lands on three real industry publications with genuine readership is worth more than one that syndicates to two hundred low-authority aggregators.

To understand how press release links actually perform in backlink data, the analysis in our piece on whether press release links help SEO is worth reading alongside this one.

When Press Releases Outperform Other Link-Building Tactics

There are specific scenarios where press releases are more efficient than alternative link-building approaches:

• Funding or acquisition announcements: Business and trade media actively cover these. A well-timed release at the moment of announcement can earn coverage that would take months of outreach to replicate.
• Proprietary data releases: If you are publishing a study or index drawn from your own data, a press release is the fastest way to put it in front of journalists who cover the space. The data earns the link; the release is the delivery mechanism.
• Regulated or compliance events: Some industries require public announcement of certain events. The SEO benefit is secondary, but the coverage tends to follow naturally.
• Geographic brand-building: Local and regional media are often more accessible than national outlets and more likely to run a release verbatim or with light editing. For businesses building presence in a new market, this can accelerate brand recognition in ways that pure on-page work cannot.

Compare this to a scenario where press releases are unlikely to pay off: announcing a minor product update, publishing a release on a topic the outlet has no audience for, or submitting to wire services as a substitute for genuine journalist relationships. In those cases, the budget is better redirected toward original research designed to earn editorial links or targeted link-building outreach.

Authority Building in Practice

The indirect authority argument becomes clearest when you look at what it takes to compete in a crowded market from a standing start. One of our clients, a renewable energy business, launched with no organic visibility and no existing authority. Rather than relying on press release distribution, the strategy focused on earning relevant backlinks through a targeted acquisition campaign alongside technical foundations and local landing pages built for buyer intent. Within ten months, that approach produced more than 900% organic traffic growth and over $1.1 million in revenue attributed to SEO. You can read the full case study for the breakdown. The lesson is not that press releases would have failed; it is that authority is built through multiple reinforcing signals, and each one needs to be chosen for its actual contribution.

FAQ

What is press release submission in SEO?

Press release submission in SEO is the practice of distributing a formatted news announcement through online channels, such as wire services or direct journalist outreach, with the intention of earning media coverage, backlinks, or improved brand visibility in search results. The SEO benefit comes primarily from editorial coverage that generates followed links, rather than from the wire placements themselves.

Why do we do press release submission in SEO?

The original rationale was link volume: wire distribution once produced large numbers of backlinks quickly. After Google devalued mass-syndicated links, the justification shifted to brand authority, entity recognition, and earned editorial coverage. When a press release generates genuine journalist pickup, the resulting articles carry followed links that strengthen a site's authority in ways wire placements cannot.

How do you do press release submission in SEO?

Start by confirming the announcement is genuinely newsworthy. Identify specific journalists and publications before writing. Draft a release that leads with the news, not with marketing language. Include one or two nofollowed links to relevant pages on your site. Send a personalized pitch alongside the release rather than relying on mass distribution alone. Track editorial pickups and new referring domains, not syndication counts.

Do press release links count for SEO?

Links within wire-distributed press releases should be nofollowed, per Google's spam policies. Those nofollowed links do not pass PageRank. The links that count are the ones that appear inside independently written articles by journalists who covered your news. Those editorial links are the product of the press release, not the press release itself.

How often should a business issue press releases for SEO purposes?

There is no optimal frequency. The question to ask is whether the announcement is independently newsworthy. A business that issues releases only when it has something genuinely new to report will earn better pickup rates and protect its credibility with journalists over time. Issuing releases on a fixed schedule regardless of news value trains media contacts to ignore them.

Four Actions to Take Before Your Next Release

If you are evaluating whether press release submission belongs in your current SEO plan, here are four specific actions to take:

1. Audit your last three releases. Check how many editorial placements each one generated (not syndication copies). If the answer is zero, the distribution strategy needs to change before the next one goes out.
2. Check your existing backlink profile. Use Indexed's free domain rating checker to see your current authority baseline. If your domain rating is low, the priority should be earning followed editorial links rather than wire distribution.
3. Build a target media list before your next release. Identify ten journalists by name who cover your industry. Find their recent articles on a topic adjacent to your announcement. Write one sentence explaining why your news is relevant to their audience specifically.
4. Nofollow the links in your next release. If you use a wire service, confirm that any links in the release body carry the nofollow attribute. This keeps your link profile clean and aligns with Google's spam policies.

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