Do press releases help SEO?

• Brand search results. For a new company, a search for its name may show only its own site. Release copies on news domains rank for the brand and the announcement, giving searchers more to see.
• Discovery and indexing. Links from news pages help search engines find new sites and pages faster.
• Entity understanding. Consistent facts across many pages help search engines connect your name, product and category. See entity SEO.
• Secondary coverage. Bloggers, newsletters and journalists who see the release may write about you and link editorially, which is the link value that counts.
• AI visibility. News pages are frequent sources for AI assistants. See press releases and AI citations.

Google's spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites" as an example of link spam. Google also asks that paid links be qualified with rel="sponsored" or nofollow. Many news sites apply these automatically to release pages. So:

• do not expect syndicated release links to raise your rankings on their own;
• do not use exact-match keyword anchors ("best accounting software"); link your brand name or a plain URL;
• treat claims of "dofollow backlinks from 500 sites" with suspicion.

More detail: press release backlinks.

• Make the news real, so journalists and bloggers have a reason to cover it.
• Use your brand name and product name in the headline and lead.
• Link to your homepage or the relevant product page with the brand name as anchor.
• Publish the release on your own site too, as the canonical original.
• Pitch it to a few journalists and newsletters directly.
• Add the release links to your newsroom and "As seen on" section, labeled as press releases.