Why Write a Press Release?

A proper press release is a pseudo-news story that is written in third person. It should demonstrate to an editor or reporter the newsworthiness of a particular person, event, service or product.

Press releases are often written as news becomes available but can also be a part of full press kit. The publicity gained from writing a press release can be much more effective than graphic ad banners and other forms of expensive advertising.

Why should I bother with publicity? Can't I just buy lots of advertising?

As important as advertising is to a marketing program, it cannot replace publicity. The reasons:

• Credibility: Advertising is clearly understood by the audience as coming directly from the sponsoring business and, as a result, is usually taken with a grain of salt. An article initiated (or "placed") by publicity efforts is viewed as the product of the reporter who wrote it - an objective, third party observer whose positive comments about your business will carry great weight.

• Cost: A big advantage - advertising space costs money, publicity space is free. Plus, publicity helps extend your advertising dollars by reinforcing ad messages.
• Crisis: In business, things don't always go as planned. Product recalls, tampering, theft, financial crises and other unhappy events do happen. An active free publicity operation allows you to respond quickly and efficiently.
• Chronic Ad Fatigue: If you're like me, you are sick, sick, sick of advertising. It's everywhere you turn, online and off. For me, those cruel ad boys crossed the line when they stuck advertising on the wall behind home plate at Yankee Stadium (is nothing sacred anymore?). Consumers have responded in the only way they can — they're tuning it out. Look at what a flop banner advertising has been on the net. Web surfers are ignoring banners in droves. Instead, they're moved only by one thing…
• Content: People don't want ads, they want information! And when you generate free publicity, you're telling your story as part of a newspaper article, a television news story, a magazine feature or a radio interview. In other words, you're in the place where people are actually looking, not ignoring.

Source: http://www.publicityinsider.com

Online salespeople need to be in front of the right people at the right time.

What good is a salesperson that is never seen or heard from?

That is what a website without search engine optimization is doomed to be. Good salespeople know that they need to be in front of the right people at the right time for sales to take place. The nice thing about search engine optimization is that your prospects are actively seeking your product or service. No longer do you need to mail 100,000 pieces of mail to 999,900 people who could careless or do not need your service. 

When you optimize your website with the specific keywords that people are looking for then you create less frustration for them to find you.

People using search engines:

1. Actively looking for you
2. Have a greater percentage of using you once found
3. Must find the information to solve their problem
4. Decide who they contact based off of web presentation

If you want your online salesperson to be found and generate revenues for your business then investing into a healthy search engine marketing strategy is a must. Today's generation will never know what a phone book is so when they go to the web will they find your business? 

 If you need help with search engine optimization in Houston Texas then feel free to call us at 281-362-9855

Press Release Submission - Free or Paid — Can it be any harder?

So my task this week was do some research on submitting a press release.  I was thinking

"Cool something that should be fairly easy to decipher." 

I thought writing it was 90% of the battle but I now realize that submitting to the right place is just as important as the writing of it maybe even more important because if you write something fabulous and no one ever sees it then who cares.

So I start my search by finding out who the top press release web sites:

prweb.com
prnewswire.com
prnewsnow.com

Of course all these cost to submit.  So of course being the frugal person that I am I decide to look for free press release distribution.  So I start my search with seochat.com to find out what maybe someone knows that I do not know.  I come across 2 lists of free press release submissions.  I will show part of one list :

http://www.afly.com
http://www.afreego.com
http://www.baygo.com/press
http://www.betanews.com
http://www.bizeurope.com/pressrelease.htm
http://www.worldcasinodirectory.com/press-release.htm
http://www.downloadjunction.com/submit_press_release
http://www.express-press-release.com

After going through these I felt the pressure that should not come from submitting a press release, so I narrowed my search to "Top Press Release Submitters"  and I found this article.

http://www.11amdesign.com/faq/index.php?sid=880316&lang=en&action=artikel&cat=26&id=1212&artlang=en

This list was based on 2 factors by Gary Logsdon on July 21, 2007:

1. Search Engine Friendliness
2. Circulation

This now became my starting point for finding the best free press release web sites.  Just so you know I will quote from Gary what these factors represent.

"Search Engine Friendliness - One important factor of a prevailing press release campaign is to gather backlinks and under anchor text, if possible. Since most press release sites do not allow backlinks, a notation has been made to the ones that do.

Circulation - The second important factor of the press release is getting your message to reach a widespread audience. Since some press release websites are visited by thousands of webmasters everyday, a notation has been made to the ones that do."

So according to the data  prleap.com would be the best choice.  And according to its web site it does tell you that you that more than likely will get your release online even in Google news if you pay the $50 Newswire Distribution fee.  But even you go the free route prleap.com, who have been around since 2003, press releases generally get included for FREE into Google News, Google, Yahoo Search, MSN, MSN Newsbot (UK) Moreover, Ask Jeeves, Teoma, News Now and many other leading sites.

Note: PRweb.com does guarantee your press release into 5 targeted industries and 2 metropolitan areas for $80 including Google and Yahoo news.

Now of course I need to submit and test to find out who does what they say and it goes where they say it goes.  Will let you know the results when they are in.

Well this is what I come up with so far but search continues to find the best places to submit to so if you happen to have a better place then please share and end my madness.

Using the Hub Detector to Find Relevant Links

So my question boils down to is it better to be submitted to 300 free directories or one directory that is considered an authority.

To the client, the wow factor is of course that 300 is always better than 1 but to the SEO professional is not about quantity but about quality.

For example, we use http://www.linkhounds.com/hub-finder/hubfinder.php created by www.seobook.com

With the hub detector which is what I like to call it, I searched for a specific keyword phrase. The hub detector then goes out to the search engine of your choice and finds out who is linked to them which pulls the data together to give you a report of the top sites that have web sites that are linked to them as well as the other top sites.

I did a basic search for "personal injury lawyer" using Yahoo & Google API for www.texastriallaywers.com and this is what it returned.

1: www.yourlawyer.com
2: www.lawyers.com
3: www.lipsig.com
4: www.totalinjury.com
5: en.wikipedia.org
6: www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com
7: www.californiainjurylawyerblog.com
8: onward.justia.com

From the list above you tell that numbers 1 through 8 correspond to the websites listed above. Now you can determine that sites 4,6,8 have the top 3 links in common because of X.  Of course the hub detector can find you more accurate results by changing the search parameters,  but this gives you a great starting point to find out who you need to have linked to your web site that your competitors also have.

Like all things you will still need use common sense.  All because it is linked to them does not mean this is final factor in determining if you would like them to link to you.  You still need to go to the directory and make sure it is legitimate by making sure it is relevant to the search term you were investigating.  And another good check is to make sure their directory pages have pagerank and I also check their alexa rating too.

Most directories you will find will probably be paid but you can still pick up a free gem of a website also.

Happy hunting for relevant links.