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The Power Of Online Press Releases
Posted on May 8th, 2010 No commentsYou’ve probably heard about online press release services like PRweb.com and am wondering why the heck would people pay hundreds of dollars just to post an article. The fact is a online press releases can be a very powerful marketing tool if used correctly, and they even have the ability to generate natural inbound links, which are essential for SEO, through syndication.
But first, what exactly is a press release? A press release is simply a written communication to the news media to publicize something that can be claimed as news-worthy. The principle goal is usually to garner good news reviews that may provide positive publicity meant for products described inside the news release.
Media releases were initially intended as a communication tool between an organization’s PR staff or PR companies and the media. Nowadays, you will find media release submission companies on the internet that help disseminate your press release online. The more established players can even get your news release syndicated at widely-used news sites , including Google News.
To have a perception of just how popular online news search might be, comScore has reported that half of internet users visit an online news site every month. Hence, it is not suprising that online marketing experts highly recommend using media releases to drive targeted visitors to websites. This method is becoming increasingly popular with increased awareness, and a query on Yahoo discloses a variety of creative companies offering optimized media release assistance for individuals and businesses seeking to get publicity for their products and services.
Having said that, media releases are not only great for marketing but also presents a good opportunity for obtaining inbound links, that happens to be important for Search Engine Optimization. SEO refers to the website optimization process, necessary for obtaining higher rankings in the search results.
To start, most of the news release submission sites possess high trust factors and so, any one-way link from these websites will be invaluable. PR sites like 24-7PressRelease.com are evidently aware about this and feature an SEO plan, that allows the use of anchortext links, due to this fact.
Furthermore, a good number of blogs and websites re-publish content material from news release and internet news sites, giving your news release even more publicity and letting you reach a wider audience on the internet. If anchortext links were embedded in the press release, there is a fair chance that these blogs and websites will also include them together with your news release, hence, producing many inbound links to your site in a single day.
To that end, listed below are some pointers to help you get the most out of news releases:
1. The trick towards producing a great and impressive news release is to systematically prepare and check your press release before submitting. Begin with something worth announcing and focus on a particular subject. Too much information and focusing on many keywords will probably weaken the message for both search engine spiders and readers.
2. Just about all good press releases abide by a certain structure. Search for news releases online and examine the top ones you discover. Compose a good heading and write a teaser inside the summary, to motivate the reader to read further. Attempt to write 450-500 words in the body of the media release and ensure that you include the relevant particulars, including contact information.
3. Include anchortext links within your press release to maximize the SEO value, if allowed by the news release provider. Certain providers charge a fee to enable this particular feature, while others may only permit using the website URL as a hyperlink or even add a “nofollow” attribute to the outgoing links. As a rule of thumb, try to maintain a proportion of 1 link for every 250 words to be able to avoid your press release from looking too spammy.
4. There are various wire services that provide press release distribution like PRweb, Prlog and 24-7 Press Release. List down the ones that are affordable to you and at the same time, provide features which can satisfy your marketing objectives. There are free , as well as, paid distribution services, PR release websites that Yahoo and Google favour for news syndication and even ones that include social features.
5. If you distribute the same press release through more than one wire service providers on a single day, it is very likely that Google News will exclude the duplicates. Therefore, if your press release has several angles, you need to make an attempt to re-write the content for the different newswire provider to make them appear unique.
6. After your news release has been reviewed and published, you could help publicize it through various means. This includes publishing the press release on your business website, writing about it in your blog , as well as, submitting it to social media websites like Twitter.
7. Last but not least, check your site’s analytics to gauge the impact of your news release marketing work.


