Press Releases & Search Engine Optimization
About two weeks ago was the one year anniversary of the search engine roundtable and I decided to give the much spoken about PR Web a try. As many of you know, PRWeb is known as the “backdoor to search engine optimization”, so I wanted to give it a try.
Last week, the press release for the 1 year anniversary went up under the title of Reporting Search Engine Marketing Topics for One Year on Search Engine Roundtable. That very same day, doing a search at Google News or Yahoo News for search engine marketing or search engine, brought this news-release to the top spot. Continuing reading the entry below for the screen captures for proof, click on them for larger images.
The folks over at PR Web were very helpful, and so were some friends that know how to optimize press releases. That is key, the optimization of press releases. In the SERPs, if you see the images in the extended entry, you will notice a picture included. Of course, if someone sees a picture, they are more likely to click through to the article. Great tip. In addition, the article itself, I wanted to rank for “search engine marketing” and it did, in addition it ranked for search engine and other keywords. Also, I was able to give certain pages, long lasting, relevant and powerful anchor text. All part of the optimization tactics when making a press release. If you are a large or small business and you do press releases the anchor text can be instrumental in ranking your pages over time. Be smart and utilize that option. Also, even if your not doing press releases, you probably should start thinking about doing them. This press release cost $350 because I paid for all the bells and whistles, I find it well worth while.
Here are some statistics:
139,145 reads; 494 estimated number of media outlets to pick it up, and 13 print outs. They also broke down who visited the release by location, 54% being from the US. Break down by referral chart. Here are the top search terms; search engine marketing, search engine, marketing news, marketing topics, marketing, what is a search engine, seo, “search engine”. They also break down the top search terms by referrals.
So what did it do for me? Well, I really didn’t have any call to action that I wanted them to take. A big mistake I made was not to give them a reason to click through. If I was a business, I could have said, we have this new service and as an introductory offer, get 10% off. Something to that affect, would have brought more traffic to the site. I did get 15 referrals from eMediaWire and several referrals from PR Web to this site. But I blame myself for not being more “salesy” in order to get more click throughs.
Overall, I am going to recommend my clients use this when announcing new products, services and information. The SEO side alone is worthwhile, but the potential of click throughs from the reads, with a call to action, can be enormous.
