Press Release Marketing – Day 11
July 29, 2008 by Antony
Writing news as a public relations traffic building strategy is relatively new in regards to internet marketing. Today’s guide is going to teach you how to market your website/blog successfully via press release marketing. Advertising a website or blog may get your word out although it may cost you time or money. Press release marketing is a free way to capture traffic while creating the possibility of viral traffic.
Press releases, when managed correctly, can be used to introduce a website or idea as ‘news’. This is a very cost effective way to tackle public relations and soft marketing strategy, and the results are typically very effective.
Let me clarify something here though, the press releases that I’m referring to here are online press releases. Not press releases that you notify newspapers about, there are actual online press release websites that you can submit to for free. I will have a list of them below.
Press Release Tips and Info
Search Engine Optimization experts say that press releases not only help in link popularity but will also help increase your search engine rankings. When a press release is distributed online, they are syndicated to hundreds and if not thousands of websites, each containing a back link to your website.
It’s all about visibility and backlinks. Press releases accomplish both of these feats extremely well. If your press release is real news and is distributed to hundreds of press release directories and you have made sure that you have created a keyword rich press release more people will naturally come to your website when they are searching for a related topic.
Press releases aren’t a short response type of marketing, press releases last for a very long time! That is a great thing, you don’t want the short burst type of advertisements. It’s all about the long term.
Additional Reasons to Use Press Releases
- Search Engine Optimized Releases
- When you write your press release you are able to create it however you want. Allowing you to include keyword rich terms in both the title and the body of the article. Thus when your website becomes syndicated to these hundreds of website there is a higher chance that someone will come across your selected keyword. Google loves press release websites and they usually have a high ranking on search engines, why not take advantage of that?
- Quality Backlinks
- As stated above, Google appreciates Press Release websites + the syndicated distribution of your release means alot of quality backlinks.
- Long Lasting Visibility
- Typically online press release websites are archived by Google. Whats that mean for you? Well that means that Google keeps record of your website for a long time and cache’s the site. Meaning that your online press releases will come up on Google and other search engines for a long time to come.
- Fresh Content
- Not only do you have the ability to submit your press release to other websites but you can also add it to your website for some additional content that Google should appreciate.
Press Release Directories
[tags]press release marketing, press release help, online press release, pr online marketing[/tags]
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work 🙂
I’ve never looked at press releases in this fashion, interesting. I always made them tailored to actually receiving press. I guess it’s different for everyone
I am thinking of submitting my articles to pr sites but I’m still trying to find out the difference between article sites and press release sites?
Hey Lee – some really useful advice here! We have this week opened a new free press release site to the public which is entirely ad free too, and is fully RSS ready etc. The site runs on WordPress to keep it free and easy to use.
We’d appreciate your comments and advice too!
I am thinking of submitting my articles to pr sites but I’m still trying to find out the difference between article sites and press release sites?
“If you distribute the same release through more than one wire service on the same day, it is very likely that the news search engines will filter out the duplicates.”
According to the above mentioned comment (no.3), is it best to choose one PR website to distribute press releases (i.e. prweb.com) or simply spread the press releases over different days on different websites.
I certainly don’t want to “spam” our press release, so was wondering if anyone had any suggestions, thanks!
Thanks for the tip Justin!
The compilation of tips is also cool!
Definitely gonna help me in Press release!
Excellent article. We too have found press release distribution to be an integral part of our marketing strategy. Something that we did find interesting though was we tried two different types of press release service. A large name brand and a smaller company http://www.24-7pressrelease.com that we had never heard of (they showed up fairly high under press release service, so we thought we would go with them). The interesting part is that for the “name brand” service, we paid a fair amount, the 24-7pressrelease.com site we paid $45. I don’t know if it was the subject of the release, or timing, but we found the 24-7pressrelease.com site to give us better results! They also gave us image attachments, and keyword linking. Have you (or anyone else) heard of them? I am also keeping my eyes out for clipping services if anyone has any recommendations.
You said that Squidoo has added nofollow to tag pages. How does that effect my lens? I receive good traffic from tag pages that are listed in the search engines.
I was wondering how you deal with the fact that even after seo’ing the release, most of the links get stripped out, rending it a brand builder rather than a seo tool.
I am trying to use our press releases more intellegently by including links to relevant pages of the site, but the link stripping is driving me nuts; to the point where I am looking at the Shift Communications Social Media Release and thinking that I may get more mileage out of something like that.
I have used some of these tips and they worked pretty well for me. I am glad I stumbled onto this blog of yours.
Now that’s weird, I never consciously ticked that box to protect the updates. I opened the account immediately. Thanks so much for bringing this to my attention.
Thanks Lee, these are great. I was on a panel in Portland just this past Thursday, and many of the attendees (PR folks) had no idea of Twitter. I will make sure to point some to your post, thanks.