Is a Press Release Still Good for SEO? (2026 Guide)

A press release is still worth sending for SEO, but not for the reason people used to send them. Links inside a release you distribute yourself won't help your rankings, and Google's spam policies name links with optimized anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites as link spam. The SEO value comes when the release leads journalists to write their own stories about you, which earns real coverage, brand mentions and links that Google and AI assistants both pay attention to.

This guide is for e-commerce and Shopify brands deciding whether a press release belongs in their SEO plan. You'll see what Google says about press release links, the difference between wire syndication and earned coverage, what journalists say they want in 2026, newsworthy angles that work for online stores, a step-by-step process for writing a release built for coverage, and how to measure whether it worked.

Are press releases still good for SEO?

Yes, as a way to get coverage. No, as a way to get links. That one distinction answers most of the question. A press release is a tool for telling the media something newsworthy. When it works, reporters cover the news in their own articles, and those articles can send traffic, mention your brand and link to you because it helps their readers. When it is used as a link-building shortcut, the links it produces either don't count or put you on the wrong side of Google's policy.

What Google says about press release links

Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate search rankings. One of the listed examples covers advertorials where payment is received for articles with links that pass ranking credit, and links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites. Google even gives a sample of what it means: a paragraph stuffed with keyword anchors like "wedding rings" and "best ring".

The reasoning is simple. A press release is written by the company it promotes. A link you wrote into your own announcement is not an editorial vote from someone else, so it isn't the kind of signal links are meant to be. If you paid a distribution service to place the release on other sites, the links are also effectively paid placements.

How to handle links in your release

• Link with your brand name or a plain URL. Never a keyword phrase like "best organic dog food". Our guide to anchor text for SEO explains why brand and URL anchors are the safe default.
• Qualify links you control. Google says paid and sponsored links are fine when they carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". If you are paying to distribute the release, it is reasonable to treat its links the same way.
• Use fewer links. One link to the relevant page (the product, the report, the newsroom post) is enough for readers. A release with a dozen links reads like an ad.

If you want to understand the difference between followed and qualified links in more depth, read our guide to dofollow backlinks.

Wire syndication vs earned coverage

The old version of this post described how companies once flooded newswires with releases about trivial news to collect links, and how that stopped working. The useful lesson today is to separate three very different things a press release can produce.

The SEO work is all in moving from row one to row two. That happens through relevance and relationships, not distribution volume.

How press releases help SEO indirectly

When a release does lead to coverage, the SEO benefits stack up in ways a single link never could.

Earned links and mentions

A reporter who covers your launch and links to your product or report gives you a genuinely editorial link from a site with an audience. Even when the publication doesn't link, the mention of your brand name has value: our guide to PR and SEO looks at the data on brand mentions and AI visibility in detail, and our post on unlinked brand mentions shows how to turn mentions into links later.

Branded search

Coverage puts your name in front of people who didn't know you. Some of them search for you afterward. A lift in branded searches in Google Search Console after coverage lands is one of the clearest signs a campaign reached real people.

AI citations

AI assistants lean heavily on earned media, not on content brands pay to place. Muck Rack's May 2026 analysis of more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini found that earned media made up 84% of citations, while paid and advertorial content made up 0.3%.

The same Muck Rack analysis found press releases show up mostly in responses to industry trend questions, at 3.5 times the rate they appear in "best of" queries. So a release that announces real data or a real shift in your category has a better chance of being cited than one announcing a product as the best. Write releases that answer "what is changing in this market?" and you give both journalists and AI systems a reason to use them.

What journalists want from a press release

The good news for brands: PR content is still a main source of stories. The bad news: most of it misses. Cision's 2026 State of the Media Report, based on a survey of 1,899 journalists across North America, EMEA and APAC fielded in January and February 2026, put numbers on both sides.

Two-thirds of journalists rely on PR-provided content such as press releases, pitches and media kits for story ideas. But 72% say fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant to their work, and 53% oppose AI-generated pitches. Cision's release says original research, expert access and embargoed information are the most valued elements of a pitch.

Muck Rack's State of Journalism 2026, based on nearly 1,100 journalists, adds a practical detail: 69% prefer pitches under 200 words. The release can be longer, but the email that carries it should be short, personal and clearly matched to what the reporter covers.

Newsworthy press release ideas for online stores

The fastest way to waste a press release is to announce something only you care about. A new office chair or a routine hire is not news. These angles give reporters a story their readers want.

If the news doesn't fit any of these, it is probably better as a blog post, an email to customers or a social update than a press release.

How to write a press release built for coverage

This process keeps the release useful to journalists and safe for SEO.

1. Confirm the news is news. Ask: would a reporter who covers this beat care if a competitor announced it? If not, rethink the angle.
2. Write a headline that states the news. Plain and specific beats clever. Include your brand name and the core fact.
3. Answer who, what, when, where and why in the first paragraph. Reporters skim. Everything they need to decide should be in the first few sentences.
4. Add proof. Data, a methodology note if you ran a survey, and one or two quotes from a real person that say something specific, not "we are thrilled".
5. Keep links few and clean. Link once to the most relevant page using your brand name or URL. Qualify links in any paid distribution.
6. Publish it on your own newsroom page first. Give it a permanent URL on your domain with the full text, images and contact details. That page is what reporters, and AI tools, can cite as the original source.
7. Prepare assets. High-resolution product images, founder photos, logos and any charts, in one place reporters can download from.
8. Pitch individual reporters before or instead of a wire. Build a short list of writers who covered similar news in the last few months. Send a short, personal email under 200 words that explains why this matters to their readers.
9. Follow up once, then make it easy. One polite follow-up with something new (a data point, a customer, an image) is fine. Beyond that, move on.

Should you use a wire service?

A wire can help when your news is legitimately market-moving, when you need a timestamped public record, or when you want the release in databases journalists monitor. It is not a substitute for personal pitching, and it isn't a link-building tactic. If you use one, keep the links branded and qualified as described above.

How to measure press release SEO results

Judge a release on what it produced, not on how many sites republished it.

• Earned articles. Count stories written by journalists, separate from syndicated copies of your text.
• New referring domains. In your backlink tool, look for new links from editorial sites in the weeks after coverage. Note which are followed and which are qualified.
• Brand mentions. Track mentions of your brand name, including unlinked ones you can follow up on.
• Branded search. Compare branded query impressions in Search Console for the weeks before and after coverage.
• Referral traffic and revenue. Use tagged links where you control them (our UTM builder helps) and check referral sessions and orders from covering sites in GA4.
• AI mentions. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode questions about your category and note whether coverage of your news is cited.

For the bigger picture of how coverage fits into a link program, see our guide to what link building is.

Where to start

Before you write another release, list the last three announcements you made and ask whether a reporter outside your company would have written about any of them. If the answer is no, spend the next month creating something worth covering, such as customer data, a genuinely new product or expert commentary on a shift in your category. Then publish it on your own site, pitch it to a short list of relevant reporters, and measure coverage, mentions and branded search rather than link counts.

If you'd like help connecting PR, links and AI visibility to revenue, our SEO team can show you how your brand compares with competitors on Google and in AI answers. Talk to us.