Put your press release on news sites you choose

What you are actually buying

A press release placement on SerpMarket is simple: you choose one specific website from the list above, send your finished release, and that site's publisher posts it as a page on their domain. When it's live you get the URL, and you can check it yourself before any money moves.

That sounds obvious, but it is not how most press release buying works. Traditional distribution services send your announcement into a network of partner sites and newsrooms. You get a report afterwards listing where it was picked up. Some of those pickups are real, read publications. Many are automated pages that copy the same text across dozens of small sites nobody visits. You have no say in which one you get.

Here you see the site's reported Domain Rating, Domain Authority, monthly organic traffic, country, language and usual turnaround before you order. The price is fixed and listed, so there's no quote request and no "starting from" that grows on the invoice. The domain itself is visible once you have a free account, so you can open it, read what else it publishes and decide whether your company belongs there.

What a press release can and can't do for SEO

We would rather lose a sale than have you buy a press release for the wrong reason, so here is the plain version.

Google's own spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as an example of link spam. The same policy says that buying and selling links is "a normal part of the economy of the web" and is not a violation as long as paid links are qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored". Google's guidance on outbound links asks sites to mark paid placements as sponsored, and says nofollow is still an acceptable way to flag them.

Put those two statements together and you get the honest picture. A paid press release is not a tool for pushing a keyword up the rankings, and a publisher who lets you stuff it with exact-match anchors is doing you no favours. That's why most press release sites on SerpMarket mark their links nofollow, and why each listing tells you which attribute it uses before you buy.

So what does a release actually do? Quite a lot, as long as you measure the right things:

• It gives people something to find when they search your name. A launch, a funding round or a new location covered on a recognisable news domain is far more convincing than the same claim on your own blog.
• It sends real readers. A site with genuine organic traffic puts your announcement in front of people who were already reading news in that market. The traffic column in the list exists so you can judge this before paying.
• It builds a public record. Journalists, partners and investors checking your company often look for third-party coverage. A dated, permanent page on an independent site answers that question.
• It can help a new page get discovered. Even a nofollow link is a path that people, and often crawlers, can follow to your site.

If those outcomes are what you need, a release is good value. If your only goal is a ranking boost for one keyword, a press release is the wrong product, and we'd point you to well-matched editorial guest posts on news sites or to improving the page itself instead.

When a press release is worth publishing

A release earns attention when something has actually changed. Ask yourself whether a stranger reading it would learn a fact they didn't know yesterday. If the honest answer is "not really", hold it until you have a better story. These are the occasions that tend to justify one:

A simple test we suggest to buyers: could you write the headline in under twelve words without using "leading", "innovative" or "solution"? If you can, you probably have news.

How to choose the right press release site

The list above can be sorted by authority, price, traffic and speed. Each of those matters, but not equally, and not for every release. This is the order we would look at them in.

1. Audience and country first

A release about a store opening in Texas belongs on a site read in the United States. A fintech launch aimed at Indian customers is better placed where Indian readers already are. Check the country column, then log in and read a few recent articles on the site. If none of them would interest your customers, the metrics don't matter much.

2. Real traffic over a big score

Domain Rating and Domain Authority describe a site's backlink profile. They are useful for spotting weak domains, but they don't tell you whether anyone reads the site. Monthly organic traffic is a better signal of whether your announcement will be seen. A site with a slightly lower DR and ten times the traffic is often the better buy for a release. Our guide to DR vs DA explains what each score does and doesn't measure.

3. The link attribute you can live with

Once you're logged in, every listing shows whether its links are dofollow, nofollow, sponsored or UGC. For press releases, nofollow is normal and expected. If you specifically want a followed editorial link, that's a different product with different rules: look at the news site guest post listings instead.

4. Turnaround that fits your date

If your announcement is tied to an embargo or an event, sort by "Fastest" and leave a margin. Turnaround is counted from when the publisher accepts your order. Place the order a few days ahead, and say in your notes if the release must not go live before a certain date and time.

5. Price last

Prices differ for good reasons: bigger audiences, stronger domains and faster publishing cost more. Once the first four points are right, choose the price that fits your budget. Several smaller, well-matched placements often do more than one expensive placement on a site your customers never visit.

Writing a release that gets accepted

Publishers can decline an order, and the most common reasons are avoidable: the text reads like an advert, it makes claims it can't support, or it is missing basic details an editor needs. A release that follows the shape editors are used to is far more likely to go live quickly and unchanged.

1. HeadlineState the news in plain words: who did what. Keep it short enough to read at a glance. Save the adjectives.
2. Optional subheadlineOne sentence that adds the most important detail the headline couldn't fit, such as a figure, a date or a place.
3. Dateline and opening paragraphStart with the city and date, then answer who, what, when and where in two or three sentences. Many readers stop here, so the first paragraph should make sense on its own.
4. BodyAdd context in order of importance: why it matters, numbers that support it, and what happens next. Write in the third person and keep paragraphs short.
5. A quote that says somethingA real person, named, with a view a reporter could quote. "We're thrilled to announce" tells the reader nothing. A sentence about why you made the decision does.
6. BoilerplateA short "About" paragraph: what the company does, where it's based, and one or two facts that set it apart.
7. Media contact and end markA name, email and phone number for press questions, then "###" to show the release has ended.

Length matters less than density. Most good releases land somewhere between 300 and 600 words. If yours runs longer, check whether the extra paragraphs are news or marketing copy. Include one link to your site, usually on the company name in the first paragraph or in the boilerplate, and avoid repeating it.

Before you submit, run through this list. Your ticks are saved in this browser only, so you can come back to it for your next release.

How ordering works on SerpMarket

Every order, whatever the site, goes through the same protected flow. Here's what happens from the moment you choose a site to the moment the publisher is paid.

1. Create a free account and add fundsOrders are paid from your SerpMarket wallet. Wallet top-ups are currently arranged through our support team.
2. Choose a site and send your releaseOpen the listing, check the domain and link attribute, then paste your release or attach the file. Add any notes, such as an embargo time.
3. Your payment goes into escrowThe price is reserved from your wallet and held. It is not sent to the publisher at this stage.
4. The publisher accepts and publishesThe site owner reviews your release, accepts the order and publishes it within their usual turnaround. If they reject it, the reserved amount returns to your wallet.
5. You review the live pageThe live URL appears in My Orders. You have 3 days to accept it, ask for a revision or open a dispute if something is wrong.
6. The order completes and stays coveredOnce you accept, or the review window passes, the publisher is paid. The placement is covered by our 365-day live-link guarantee from the delivery date.

The full details are on our buyer and seller protection page and in the refund and dispute policy.

What drives the price of a press release placement

Every listing has one fixed price set by its publisher. You pay that price. There are no setup fees, distribution tiers or charges per word. The live list at the top of this page shows today's range. The differences between sites usually come down to four things:

• Audience size. Sites with large, steady organic traffic charge more because your release is more likely to be read.
• Domain strength. Higher DR domains tend to be older, better known and more widely referenced.
• Speed. Same-day or next-day publishing takes editorial time, and some publishers price that in.
• Link policy and placement. Sites that allow a followed link, or publish in a news section rather than a dedicated release area, are usually priced higher.

If you're testing the channel for the first time, start with two or three mid-priced sites whose readers match your customers. Track referral visits and brand searches for a few weeks before scaling up.

Direct placement compared with other ways to publish

None of these options is wrong. They solve different problems, and many companies use more than one.

A pattern that works well: publish the release directly on two or three relevant sites so there is a solid, findable record, then use those live pages as a reference when you pitch journalists for earned coverage.