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.