When Public Relations Equals PageRank

Optimized Press Releases:
When Public Relations Equals PageRank

Copyright 2005 Priya Shah

A while ago we got our brand new company domain up from
PageRank of 0 to a very healthy PageRank of 5 in under two
months?

Yes, we know PageRank doesn’t mean much, except in terms of
branding. But it does give some indication of how effective
your link-building techniques are. So what was so
remarkable about the way we achieved a decent PR in a short
time?

It was more the fact that we used very sound techniques to
make that happen. No reciprocal links, no link buying, no
techniques that could get you banned. Just completely
legitimate methods that you can use time and again to build
links to your own website.

Why Press Releases?

Among the most effective techniques that helped us build
quality links to our website was the use of press releases.
In fact, using an optimized press release is such a
powerful method of building links that we now recommend it
to all our clients.

Just the single press release here helped us build links
not only from high-PR press release sites, but also from
competitor sites where our news was syndicated.
http://www.seoandmore.com/media/press1.htm

Competitor Sites? How Do You Do That?

Well here’s the secret (if you want to call it that). One
of the best sites to submit your press release is on PRweb.
Using the $80 option, you can get your release syndicated
through Yahoo! News so that it gets picked up and
syndicated on a lot of other sites related to your theme or
topic.

Result: You can get up to hundreds of theme-relevant links
pointing back to your site in just a few hours after your
press release has been syndicated. Many of these sites
could be your competitors.

Imagine having your competitors working to build links to
you. What more effective link-building tactic could there
possibly be?

Of course, once your link on Yahoo! News vanishes, your
link popularity (and PageRank) could drop. But that didn’t
happen to us, because we recommend that you always build
redundancy into your link campaigns. So we use article
marketing and directory submissions to continue to build
quality links to our sites.

Why The New Google Loves Press Releases

One of Google’s recent patents states that it intends to
monitor news stories, an indication that the new Google
gives more weight to stories and links appearing on news
sites.

But building quality links to your site is only one of the
benefits of using press releases. They are an effective
tool to use in an online PR campaign and have benefits that
reach far beyond boosting search engine rankings.

A well-written optimized press release can:

· Create publicity for your company
· Draw attention to new products and promotions
· Get you in the news for the right reasons
· Boost visibility in your industry
· Boost your reach and influence among your target audience

Some marketers are touting press releases as the new “blog
and ping” alternative to getting indexed in the search
engines? We wouldn’t go so far as to call them that.

But if your business could benefit from the right kind of
links and online visibility, press releases may be just the
tool your organisation needs.

_______________________________________________

Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing
firm, SEO & More http://www.seoandmore.com and writes an
online marketing blog http://www.marketingslave.com.

How To Maximize Your Time

Given today’s ideology of fast service, fast responses and even fast food, it is surprising that everyday errands aren’t almost obsolete. Instead, however, all our modern conveniences only seem to generate a reliance on constant access and an expectation for speediness. Through email, cell phones and blackberries, we are almost always connected to work, family, and friends

– the demands on our time are ever-increasing.

The key, however, to achieving some semblance of peace in our lives is to prioritize, manage our time, delegate and relax. Easier said than done of course, but definitely worth considering. Not only will you save time but you will also be able to maximize your efficiency – it’s all about balance.

Prioritize

First and foremost, it’s important to re-evaluate your lifestyle periodically. Take thirty minutes, grab a coffee and find somewhere quiet to reflect on the direction your life is taking and the decisions you’ve made. Isolate what you are satisfied with, what your goals are, and what you are dissatisfied with. Then consider how/if you are achieving your goals.

Have your goals changed recently? Are you stuck in a rut that leaves you feeling strained and unproductive? If your lifestyle isn’t progressing toward your goals and you don’t see that changing in the near future, it may be time to re-assess your life and elements including work and family.

Maybe it’s time to look for a new job or maybe you should set goals for yourself that include growth and development in your current job. Wherever you stand, make sure that you have clearly identified what it is that you want out of life and that your lifestyle is reflecting that. Otherwise, you’ll soon find yourself burned out, irritable and depressed.

Start by making an ordered list of the most important things to you right now. Then make a list of how you would like to see those goals developed in the next five years. Comparing these elements should help you to realize where your life needs more focus.

Manage Your Time

Next, consider how you spend your time day-to-day. Are you constantly rushing around feeling like you need ten more hours to get things done? Look for ways in which you can consolidate your daily demands; a routine can help you maximize the time you spend on a specific task because you are able to devote your full attention to it.

For example, experiment with a weekly schedule where you have certain days for laundry, grocery shopping, paying the bills, etc. By devoting a little time to each task on the same day each week, your errands and simple tasks won’t build up and spill onto your daily tasks.

Also consider how you spend your “free” time – is it possible to use one or two lunch breaks per week for errands? The more simple tasks you can accomplish during the day, the easier it will be for you to set specific time for leisure activities or relaxing in the evening. These are the activities, which will help you rejuvenate and perform better.

Delegate

Once you have examined where the demands for your time lie, examine which tasks could be accomplished by someone else or as a group. For example, examine whether or not you and your partner are sharing household tasks and chores equally. Could you re-distribute some of these tasks? Be sure to include family and friends in the equation. Just be prepared to help out when they need a hand in the future!

Whatever task it is that you are struggling to get done, don’t be afraid to ask for help or delegate some other tasks to those around you. Perhaps you could hire a cleaning service once in a while or send your laundry out. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you feel balanced and relaxed in order for you to perform at your highest.

Relax

Finally! Once you have considered the elements in your life that you are having a hard time staying in control of, schedule some time for you to enjoy activities which you have outlined as being of importance to you.

Step away from the computer and turn off your cell phone. Being unreachable, even for thirty minutes a day, can help you relax, focus and re-evaluate what you’re looking for. While it’s important to spend some peaceful time alone, consider organizing a vacation with some old friends or throwing a dinner party for extended family. Even if the best you can do is schedule a simultaneous grocery day with a friend, remember the importance of balancing your schedule to suit your needs.

you'll never get time back

The bottom line is nobody else is going to look out for your time. Whether you want to get more done in your personal life or professional life, time is your most valuable resource. Take good care of it and watch how efficiently the days go by.
*********************************
More than money, the one thing most of us never seem to have enough of is time. And that's one commodity we'll never replace. Learn how to make the most of it.
by Katherine Low, TheSoko.com

10 Extreme Ways To Rocket Launch Your Profits

Here is some information I received from Denise Hall today and thought it would be very helpful to online marketers.. enjoy


1. Advertise your web site with banner ads that are animated and include a call to action. You must grab people's attention and make them click.


2. Use pop up windows or advertisements on your web site. They grab your visitors attention because they jump right out at them.


3. Buy Internet business books, ebooks, private site memberships, etc. Study and learn all the new ideas you can.


4. Analyze all your promotional efforts. Concentrate on the ones that work and drop the ones that don't work. Don't waste your valuable time.


5. Get the most from each one of your visitors. Ask them to subscribe to your e-zine, participate on your message board, bookmark your site, etc.


6. Use text links if your banner ads are not pulling traffic. Include a call to action to make them click.


7. Trade content with other ezine publishers or web sites. This is a powerful and effective way to place your links on other targeted web sites.


8. Keep your product available to your customers at all times. If you have to backorder it, they may end up canceling their order.


9. Use content on your web site so people can skim through it easily. Most people have little time so try using lists, short tips, short articles, etc.


10. Add a message board or chat room to your web site. If people enjoy it, they will revisit your web site to participate regularly.



Send your suggestions or questions for the experts: mailto:denise@home-business-on-a-budget.com?subject=ExpertAdvice

Google's Jagger Update Completing Cycles

Ever since Google introduced its latest algorithm update in September, a fair amount of column space has been dedicated to telling webmasters and small business owners to wait until the update is complete. In so much as it can be said that the Jagger Update will ever be complete, the final cycle of the immediate update appears to be playing out.

Jagger was a different sort of algorithm update for Google. Its infamous predecessors, Florida and Hilltop were generally limited shifts in the values Google assigned domains based on content and links. After the immediate punch of previous updates, the search engine results pages (SERPs) would generally return to a stable and predictable state. SERPS generated by Jagger are expected to constantly update themselves with a greater degree of flux and change.

So, what exactly happened during the Jagger Update and what might it mean to your website? Quite a bit as it turns out.

The Jagger Update was introduced for three main reasons. The first was to deal with manipulative link-network schemes, sites generated with scraped content and other forms of SE-Spam. The second was to allow and account for the inclusion of a greater number of spiderable documents and file types. The third was to allow and account for new methods of site acquisition beyond the use of the spider Googlebot.

The update made its first public appearance in late September but had its greatest impact in early October. At that time, hundreds of thousands of websites that enjoyed previously strong listings were suddenly struck and sent to the relative oblivion found beyond the second page of results.

Most of those sites lost position due to participation in what Google obviously considers inappropriate linking schemes. This was actually one of the first conclusions we came to in late September based on the experience of a few clients who joined link-networks that had not been recommended or vetted by our link-experts. This is now backed up by discussion in various search engine forums. While most of those hurt by this part of the update are good people running honest businesses, Google put out notice that irrelevant link-networks, no matter how simple or complex, are unhealthy additions to what might otherwise be a good website.

The problem Google faced was some webmasters misunderstood what links are for and how Google uses them to rank documents. For some unknown reason, many webmasters or site administrators participated in wholesale link mongering, bulking up on as many inbound links as possible without consideration of the most important factor (in Google's estimation), the relevance of inbound links.

Now, Google appears to be applying filters based on historic data it has collected about all sites in its index over time. In other words, Google likely knows a lot more about documents linking to a particular website than the person who placed or requested the link in the first place. SEOs and webmasters should brush up on the Information retrieval based on historical data patent application Google filed on March 31, 2005 for highly detailed information.

Google is judging sites on who they link to along with who links to them. Before the update, a link from your site to an irrelevant site was more a waste of time than a waste of opportunity. Today irrelevant links seem to be both. Google's desire to offer stable and highly relevant SERPS while preventing outright manipulation of those SERPS was the biggest cause of the shift.

The second and third reasons for updating the algorithm at this time is the allowance for indexing documents or information obtained through alternative sources such as Google Base, Froogle, and blogs and other social networking tools. Google's stated goal is to grow to include reference to all the world's information. That information is being expressed in multiple places using several unique file formats, some of which are difficult to weigh against others. By checking the file or document in question against the long-term history of documents linking to it, Google is better able to establish its theme and intent.

Get Top Rankings on Google & Yahoo! - Frëe Download!

Mass adoption of blogs, while promoted by Google gave the search engine a number of problems. Webmasters and search marketers will take almost any opportunity to promote their sites, by any means available. Blogs provided ample opportunities and soon issues ranging from comment spam to scraped content Splogs started to gum up the SERPS. By comparing document content with the history of other related documents in its index, Google has become much better at spotting blog-enabled spam.

Google faced problems with forms of search engine spam such as fake directories and on-page spamming techniques such as hiding information in CSS files. The Jagger Update seems designed to deal with these issues by applying Google's vast knowledge about items in its index against every document or file it ranks. A site that scrapes content, for example, might be weighed against the documents that content was originally published on and the intent of the republisher. One that hides information in the CSS file will similarly trip Google's memory of how the same domain looked and operated before the spam-content was inserted.

The third reason for the algo update comes from the expansion of Google itself. Google is now much larger than it was when the Bourbon update was introduced in the early summer. Audio and video content is spiderable and searchable. Google's comparison shopping tool Froogle is starting to integrate itself in with Google Local, just as Google Local and Google Maps are beginning to merge. There is some speculation in the SEO community that Google is preparing to integrate personalized data into the search results served to specific individuals. A strong assumption is that Jagger is part of Google's movement towards personalization though there is little to firmly point at to support this idea.

If your website is still suffering the lagging effects of the Jagger Update, your SEO or SEM vendor should be able to offer good advice. Chances are, the first thing he or she will do is a point by point inspection of your inbound and outbound links associated with your website. Next, they will likely suggest making it easier for Google to spider various document file types in your site by providing an XML sitemap to instruct Google's spider cycle. Lastly, they will likely suggest a look at how website visitors behave when visiting your site. Site visitor behaviours will play a part in Google's view of the importance and relevance of sites in its index. The introduction of Google Analytics provides webmasters with a lot of free information regarding site visitors, along with other information on how the site fares on Google's search engine. It also provides Google with a lot of information about sites running it. More on the effect of Google Analytics on the SERPS later.

About The Author
Jim Hedger is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert based in Victoria BC. Jim writes and edits full-time for StepForth and is also an editor for the Internet Search Engine Database. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. He can be reached at jimhedger@stepforth.com.

Now Anyone Can Get Free Advertising

As you know some of the best ways to get traffic to your site is through the search engines. And as you know search engines love blogs.

If you know how to use blogs you can easily get more traffic to your website just by posting your keywords in the title and having your blogs indexed.

Other ways to get traffic to your site is to use popular free traffic exchanges. They come in many forms such as start (homepage) exchanges, safelists (opt in email ads), toolbar ads such as instantbuzz.com and forums such as the free advertising forum.

If you are looking to kill 2 birds with one stone, you can advertise for free on a new BLOG that actually allows you to place your ads for free on their site.

The reason this is good because you get all the benefits of placing your ads on a BLOG and you all get to advertise for free.

Most people would look at this as a no brainer. Although most webmaster do not like people to advertise on the blogs, this site was made just for that.

It is free to join and thousands are flocking to this service to drive huge traffic to their sites in ju8st days by simply posting one little ad on their home page.

Anybody looking to increase their profits should look into

http://www.2jump2.com/x.php?147


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