Something we’re often asked is where do you send a press release and what are the best free press release submission sites and press release distribution services.

So if you’re reading this, the chances are you’ve already written one and now need to find out how to do a press release submission. That’s why we’ve fully updated our guide to the best press release submission sites for 2021.

If you’re still yet to actually write one though, you can learn everything you need to know about writing a press release in our Ultimate Startup Press Release Guide. You can also download our press release template and examples here, to make the process super easy.
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First things first, we need to talk about SEO

As we were writing the updated version of this page, we did what all good copywriters do and reviewed the other page-one search results on Google. To our surprise, a lot of the advice around backlinking for SEO was way, way out of date. Some of the pages were dated as far back as 2009, and as SEO years are similar to cat years, the advice was from another era.

The general consensus^[3] within the SEO industry is that press release submission sites are no longer an effective means of earning beneficial backlinks^[4]. Long story short, a few years ago Google got fed up^[5] with people abusing these platforms to gain backlinks.

As a result most reputable press release submission websites now set all backlinks placed in press releases as nofollow^[6] by default. This means no link equity^[7] is passed onto the site that’s being linked to. While some paid and free press release distribution services still offer follow backlinks, the benefit is going to be negligible in 2021.

However, all this talk of using press release submission sites to earn backlinks slightly misses the point. If this is what you’re after, then these websites should just be seen as a means to an end. They provide a platform for journalists to look for stories. And if a journalist writes up one of these press releases as an article in a news publication site, the backlink in this article will pass link equity. So it’s through earned media wins that you can combine PR and SEO^[8].