haven't done PRs in ages (12-15 years maybe), so I don't know much about today's PR but I'm posting this to get the conversation going and hopefully someone knowledgeable will see this and chime in with some pointers
This being said, what I can say about PR is 2 things...
1) I've heard someone say on the forum earlier this year that google now treats PR backlinks as spam, which is absolutely insane to me since site promotion should never be considered spam as long as there is at least 1 person seeing it. But that's what you get with monopolies: tyranny...
So anyway, if this is true and google do indeed penalize your site for PR backlinks then you probably want to focus on high quality PRs only (you know, the Reuters, CNN, AP type of PR, but those will probably cost you $1000, but at least you know what you're paying for... oh, and you also need to promote a news-worthy piece of content too as these big media outlets don't publish everything). Which brings me to the next point...
2) there's been a few months around... hmm, 2011-2012 I believe (but long ago anyway) when I've obsessed with buying PRs and I've wasted so much money on different PR services at that time (well, money that I could afford wasting, I'm pretty sure that what I've wasted on testing this method out is peanuts for you, guys, but I've rolled with what I had so yeah, let's overlook this detail for now
)
So anyway, I tried various things back then as I did have a bit of money to throw away and I noticed that the best services were those that guaranteed placement in whichever online newspaper or ezine or whatever.
I've found a few services that were offering placement in whatever, one of them I remember it was $250 for one syndication to I don't remember how many 100s of online newspapers and ezines. I didn't have money for this (and I also had to provide my own PR, which I couldn't do since I was a newbie and didn't know how to craft a high converting PR)...
But the 2nd service that guaranteed results - oddly enough - I have found on Fiverr and for $50 they were going to write the PR for me and then submit / syndicate it to several dozens sites / magazines / whatever the hell those were...
I bit the bullet and bought their PR service and - to my surprise - I really did get about 1300+ visitors from that one PR campaign, on my site. But I don't think the traffic converted into anything, I don't remember whether or not I got any sales / leads from this PR, not gonna lie. But I do remember that I've been pleased with the traffic (it kept coming for days after the PR was sent out)... And yes, it was real traffic, I tracked it and they were staying on the site and even clicking around, so it was good traffic....
So, the main takeaway from this is that PRs can work, but good PRs probably cost a lot of money, but the trick to a successful PR campaign is:
- the PR syndication service you'll use needs to guarantee you placement and eyeballs
- you need to have news-worthy content (gossip and politics are perennial hits for PR campaigns) or - in case you are targeting niche-y stuff, you need to know how to craft a PR that converts...
