Press releases can be a great way of boosting your online visibility and ranking in search engines. The use of online press release distribution services is part of a link building strategy for your website. Search engines see external links as an indication of relevancy and a signal that the content of your website is of interest and value. However the value of a link varies depending on several factors, one of which is the Page Rank of the site that is linking to your website.

A Page Rank is a quality score assigned to a website by Google. Although the exact factors that determine Page Rank is a guarded secret by Google, the higher the page ranking the more reputable, relevant and popular the site is deemed by Google. As a consequence links from pages with a high page rank are viewed by search engines as good quality referrals for a website and an endorsement if it’s content. Many online press release distribution services have high Page Ranks usually in the region of 7 or 8. This is a ranking much higher than is currently held by many Irish websites.

Creating one directional links to your website through online press releases can be relatively straight forward, although time consuming, once you are familiar with the process. However, if you are not familiar with the process of online press release distribution, you may come across some difficulties, namely, creating an interesting and news worthy press release, inputting html code within the body of the press release and deciphering the high quality, free distribution channels from those which are not.

In order to shed some light on the different aspects of the process, the following is a brief outline regarding creating, optimising and submitting press releases online.

The Content of your Press Release

Although it is important to optimise your press release, don’t forget the press release must be written to be read by humans rather than just spiders from search engines. In short this means that it must contain interesting and news worthy content. The content must be information that others would like to read, maybe discuss and ideally create a link to.

Optimising the Content for Search Engines

By creating your own press release you can optimise the text of the press release to enable you to rank higher in search engines for certain keywords and phrases. The keywords and phrases that you choose for inclusion should obviously be relevant to the topic in the press release while also reflecting the terms and keywords used by users to locate your website.

To optimise a press release you need to create anchor text in the body of the press release with links to dedicated landing pages of your website. For example, if you are announcing a new airline route from Dublin to New York, you can optimise the body of the release to contain words such as cheap flight, Dublin, New York and include links in html code to the relevant landing pages of those keywords. Google in particular is suspected of placing a heavy emphasis on anchor text.  

Submitting your press release

There are many free press release distribution services available online such as prleap.com and pressreleaseireland.com. It is important to asses the quality of the link each online press release service provides before submitting your press release.

Another important consideration is whether the press release will be archived once its shelf life has expired. If a submitted press release is archived, it means that a permanent link is created to your website which is an important in terms of a long term link building strategy.

Submitting press release to social book marking sites

To further increase the visibility of your press release, you can submit the link of the press release submissions to social booking sites such as dig.com, del-ic-ious and reddit. Many of these book marking sites have high page ranks on account of the large number of visitors they receive to their site every day.
By submitting your release to these sites, other members can vote on the value and interest of your press release. In addition to increasing your websites visibility, it could be the start of an exciting viral marketing campaign for your product or service.

So far online press releases have not received as much attention as other search engine optimisation tactics, however with the increasingly competitive nature of ecommerce and marketing online, this is bound to change.

For more information on online PR as part of your search engine optimisation strategy, please call 00353 1 855 8860 or email info@continuumonlinemarketing.ie.