Search Engine Optimization

By: Cade Lee, Denver CO

Press Releases are a very important way to distinguish or differentiate your company in the public’s view of your company. Most companies already understand this strategy and in one way or another they have used press releases to make special announcements or they have responded to some event. Today, with the internet press releases can be used in a myriad of ways that will assist in your search engine optimization efforts.

So how can it be done? How do you compliment your Denver SEO campaign with press releases? The press release campaign online is very different than your standard press release through traditional print media sources. If I working on a press release in Denver, I would probably distribute the PR to all of the local papers of course and then issue a second wave of press releases to my local publications and neighborhood publications. None of these are really going to assist with my search engine optimization in Denver, although by making mention of my website inside the press release I would probably receive some “direct traffic” from the release. Direct traffic in this case would be short lived and not give a permanent back link into my website. So, to answer my questions in the beginning here, I would distribute my press releases online to services on the web that enable you to link the content in the press release to your website. By adding one or two useful links in the article to your website or URL’s within your website, you will be assisting your Google PageRank and overall linking strategy which will affect your keyword position in the leading search engines.

Using distribution services is important because these sources of news usually already have a high page rank. So when they release the press release, usually the article will start to show in the top of the search engines for the keyword that you targeted throughout the article. So for example, if we released a press release on “Denver Internet Marketing” and we submitted the release with this keyword to the major online PR services, our article might likely show up for this search term through the PR sites. If someone searches for this term online and finds the article before they find our site, it is likely that they will click on our site within the article or perhaps one of the hyperlinked key phrases inside the article. The nicest part of this press release is that it does not get thrown in the trash with the daily paper, it remains online pointing at our site for as long as the press release service keeps it up!

These online PR services can cost anything from $1 up to $315.00 and they all seem to offer different programs. What I mean is that some are enhanced for SEO purposes while some of the better performing services like prweb.com and prnewswire.com are a little more traditional with their services. Remember to follow Google’s guidelines when creating your press release, you will want to establish a release that has useful content and that is not stuffed with keywords. So a couple of examples of releases that might work for your business would be the announcement of a new location, a new service or product that your company is releasing or perhaps you are speaking at a tradeshow or industry event.

Preparing your release is important as you will want to target the keywords in your press release, but you will also want to make the release useful and readable. Making the release readable and useful is priority number one; however, if you can include your keyword phrase in the title or headline and utilize the keyword or phrase in the first paragraph with a link back to your web site, this will assist in the optimization of the release. You do not want to force the key phrase in to your press release; it should be an organic process (Some tips to avoid keyword stuffing).

Many companies pass the opportunity of using PR as they believe it is too expensive and does not deliver enough benefit to their marketing campaign. If they are simply looking at the short term, they are correct. If they are focusing on optimizing their site and obtaining an excellent online presence than a press release online is one of the cheapest and most ethical ways to obtain solid back links to their site. One of the biggest “pros” that an online press release can achieve for your company is that it will establish another link to your company’s website from a credible source. So for those customers that have found you online and now want to review what “others” are saying about you, this press release might come into play as they are researching your company and assist them in their buying process.

Cade Lee is a search engine optimization professional in Denver, Colorado. Working at Iniquitous, Inc. as a professional SEO, Cade actually assists companies in obtaining a larger web presence through social networking, article marketing and video marketing.

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