18 Sep 11 5:31 pm
As someone who has done a lot of press release marketing and operating a PR Distribution site, I can give some strategies for making this work for you. There are definitely ways to do press releases that bring you no or little results, but there are some tips you can apply to make PR marketing work for you:
1.
Optimize your title and summary with keywords: On a well-optimized PR distribution site, the title and summary become the title tag and meta description of the page. Optimizing these areas for your target keywords greatly increase the likelihood of the press release appearing in a search for your target keyword terms. In the past, a release would be sent to a journalist or editor who acted like gatekeeper -- deciding whether or not to publish your news on their platform. Today, the WEB is the platform and you can publish directly to it -- and your target audience can find it when they enter in a keyword search.
2.
Include anchor text links within the press release: Look for sites that allow you to include anchor text links (the type of links that are embedded in words) back to your site. Including links that are embedded in the keywords that you want your website to rank for help create relevance and value for your site for these terms.
3.
Consider your PR a standalone sales/conversion page: Because press releases tend to rank well for their target keyword terms, utilize features available on the site such as images / videos / etc. to hook the audience right from the press release. Instead of thinking of the PR as just a boring block of text that people have to navigate through to get to your site, think of it as a page that has the power to convert.
Press releases don't have to be expensive. There are usually different levels of distribution at different price points that offer different features and wider distribution. For example, a site like
http://www.onlineprmedia.com offers different distribution levels mainly based on the extent of distribution. Among the paid packages, higher cost means the PR is distributed to more places, meaning more opportunities to be seen and more anchor text links.
Some things to look for in a press release distribution site:
* Does the release stay online indefinitely or do they take it down after a certain period of time or when you stop paying for a subscription?
* Does the release allow you to include live links?
* Does the published release "look" good and offer multimedia features that can keep readers interested (photos, videos, iFrame, social media feeds, etc)?
* Is the press release distributed in fully to other places WITH anchor text (not just the title)
* Are the page title tags and meta descriptions optimized based on the content you provide for the title and summary?
* Do press releases from the site appear in Google News (enter the name of the site in Google News to check)
Hope this helps!
