PRWeb Trackbacks: Loophole or Great Strategy?

A while back, thanks to Andy Beard and David Olsen I was introduced to PRWeb Trackbacks and have tried to explore this feature both as a blogger and as an author of press releases. While I initially thought of this technique as a possible loophole where you acquire an inbound link from PRWeb (PR 7), I am convinced now that it is not a loophole but indeed a great SEO/SEM strategy.

Before you read the rest of this post I highly recommend to read David’s post which will help you to understand the technique. David explains that if you reference some press releases you may be able to get a trackback from PRWeb to your post. David says that this technique is often overlooked by blogger, I may add that this feature is often overlooked by the authors of press releases as well. These trackbacks do not have “nofollow” attributes and therefore can help your blog’s PR in a long term, but also, if you are an author of a press release, you can benefit from these trackbacks.

In my quest I have tried to reference press releases that were relevant to the content of my blog. The results varied from getting a trackback right away, to never receiving trackback. Sometimes I would receive a trackback after few days/weeks after referencing a press release on my blog. Needless to say I found no particular pattern which made me think it was not loophole and I needed to put on the shoes of an author of press release to explore the issue further.

PRWeb Tarckbacks: Automatic Or With Your Approval

When purchasing a press release at PRWeb at $120 you get an option where your release will give trackbacks to blogs and websites that are able of sending pingbacks and trackbacks. This option can be implemented automatically and the trackback appears as soon as your pres release receives ping from website or blog on which your press release was mentioned. You can also set to approve manually these trackbacks- a feature, in my opinion, to prevent “splogs” to benefit from these trackbacks. Having said this I wonder if PRWeb cares about “splogs” and “spammers” exploring this avenue on the press releases where trackback is given automatically? In any event if you have set the trackbacks to be approved manually, do not forget about your press release and visit your PRWeb account frequently at least first few days since your release goes live. Here is why. When your press release goes live the initial PR is 0 even though the PRWeb domain ranks at 7, and while your press releas will benefit down from PRWeb domain’s page rank, if there are other links poiting to your website or press release is even better. There are different ways that a blogger can attempt to get that trackback, but generally you will find out that a post will contain at least a link to your website and maybe even both, a link to your website and to the URL of the press release. In either case you get benefit of an incoming link so approving the trackback is a way of saying thank you to those webmasters and bloggers. Chances are that once a blogger gets the trackback from your press release he or she will keep an eye on your company’s future press releases and may feature another article or review of your company again in the future. Also you can keep track of the bloggers who wrote about your press release and contact them in the future to see if they will be willing to generate some extra “buzz” about your company.

Advise to Bloggers

I personally found this feature to be of great value. PRWeb is a great resource for news, and you can probably find news relative to your blog no matter what is your niche. If you use WordPress like I do, all you need to do is to fill in the trackback URL provided by PRWeb. This URL can be found in the bottom of a press release (if you can’t find it most likely the press release was purchased at less than $120). But if it is all that you do, and your post or article contains no link to either advertiser’s website or to the press release itself, chances are your trackback will not be approved by the author of a press release. I personally cover all angles and when referencing a particular press release I link to both the press release and advertiser’s website as well as sending a trackback by the provided option in your WordPress. If you do so and see no trackback few days past, e-mail the author or person resposible for the press release pointing out that you were generous with your links and hope that they will approve the trackback. I had a chance to explain to few advertisers and press release authors how the PRWeb trackback works and how each party can benefit from it, and they all agreed that it is indeed a great feature. Now the problem is that some many advertisers after publishing their press releases releases do not pay attention to this feature and visit their PRWeb account only to check on statistics when it comes to “reads”, “pickups” and “prints”.

Again, I can’t stress enough how much I appreciate Andy’s and David’s advise in this respect. I also hope this article sheds more light on the benefit behind PRWeb trackbacks for both bloggers and advertisers alike.