Why the 2017 Press Release Debate Still Matters

Ask any marketer who was active in 2017 whether press releases helped SEO and you will get two very different answers. One camp insisted that wire distribution was dead, killed off by years of Google statements about links in press releases needing to be nofollowed. The other camp kept publishing announcements and kept seeing referral traffic, brand searches, and genuine journalist pickup. Both camps were partly right, and understanding why is the fastest way to build a press strategy that still performs today. 2017 was the year the industry finally stopped treating the press release as a link-building product and started treating it as a communications asset that happens to have search side effects.

How We Can Help With SEO at AAMAX.CO

At AAMAX.CO, we have spent years helping brands separate tactics that genuinely move rankings from tactics that simply feel productive, and press coverage is one of the clearest examples. Our team builds announcement calendars that give journalists a real reason to write, pairs each release with a properly optimised landing page, and measures the outcome in earned links, branded search volume, and pipeline rather than vanity pickup counts. We are a full service digital marketing company offering web development, digital marketing and SEO services worldwide, so we can handle the newsworthy page, the technical foundation underneath it, and the ongoing content programme that turns a single burst of attention into durable organic growth. If you want a press and content strategy that compounds, our SEO services are built exactly for that.

What Google Actually Said About Press Release Links

The core guidance has been consistent since well before 2017: links included in press releases distributed across wire services are promotional placements, not editorial endorsements, and should therefore carry a nofollow attribute. When a single announcement is syndicated to hundreds of low-quality news aggregators, the resulting links look exactly like a paid link scheme, because functionally that is what they are. Sites that leaned heavily on keyword-rich anchor text in wire releases during 2016 and 2017 frequently saw manual actions or algorithmic suppression. The lesson was not that press releases are harmful in themselves, but that the syndicated copy is not a link asset.

The Indirect SEO Value Press Releases Genuinely Provide

Once you stop counting syndicated links, the real benefits become easier to see. A well-targeted announcement can earn editorial coverage from publications that do link, and those journalist-written articles are the links that carry weight. A release also drives a short, sharp spike in branded search, which feeds Google clear signals about entity recognition and brand demand. It creates citations of your company name, address, and executive team across news sources, which supports knowledge panel and local SEO accuracy. And it produces a reason for other sites in your industry to reference you in roundups, comparisons, and follow-up commentary for months afterwards.

What Separated Winning Releases From Wasted Ones

The releases that produced results in 2017 shared a set of traits that remain valid. They contained genuine news such as a funding round, a product launch, original research, a leadership hire, or a measurable milestone. They were written for reporters rather than search engines, with a clear hook in the first two sentences and quotable executive commentary. They included proprietary data, because data is the single most linkable asset a company can publish. They were pitched directly to a short list of relevant journalists in addition to any wire distribution. And they pointed to a substantial page on the company website, not a thin summary, so the traffic they generated had somewhere useful to land.

The Press Release Mistakes That Damaged Rankings

The failures were just as consistent. Publishing weekly releases with no real news trained journalists to ignore the brand entirely. Stuffing exact-match commercial anchor text into boilerplate paragraphs created unnatural link profiles. Choosing the cheapest distribution network guaranteed placement on scraper sites that offered no audience and no authority. Duplicating the full release text onto the company blog created near-identical content competing with hundreds of syndicated copies. Perhaps most damaging, many teams treated the release as the finish line rather than the starting point of an outreach conversation.

How to Run Press Releases for SEO Today

Modern practice is straightforward. Treat every release as a public relations activity first and an SEO activity second. Nofollow or sponsor-tag any link inside syndicated copy so there is no ambiguity about intent. Build a genuinely newsworthy angle, ideally supported by original data you can defend. Create a dedicated resource page on your own domain that reporters can cite, and keep it updated so it accumulates links over time. Follow up personally with the ten to twenty journalists who actually cover your niche, because one earned article in a respected publication outperforms a thousand syndicated copies. Finally, measure the right things: referring domains gained, brand search lift, assisted conversions, and coverage quality.

Where Press Coverage Fits in a Wider Strategy

Press releases work best as one input into a broader authority-building programme. They pair naturally with linkable content assets, digital PR campaigns, technical health work, and consistent topical publishing. On their own, they produce spikes. Combined with a structured content plan and a technically sound site, they produce a rising baseline. That is why we usually position announcements inside a wider digital marketing roadmap rather than treating them as a standalone channel.

The Verdict

Did press releases help SEO in 2017? Not through the syndicated links everyone was chasing. They helped through earned editorial coverage, brand awareness, entity signals, and the linkable assets they justified creating. That answer has not changed. If your announcements are genuinely newsworthy, properly pitched, and supported by strong pages on your own site, press activity remains a legitimate and valuable part of an SEO programme. If they exist only to place anchor text, they were a liability then and they remain one now.