Search engines increasingly charge for inclusion, and press
release distribution networks charge hundreds of dollars to
distribute your news. But I've come up with a way to
legitimately let other people shoulder the time or effort for
your news to show up in search engines.
Search Engine Optimization and Free Press Release Distribution
Here's how to profit from this strategy, in six steps.
1. Decide on a keyword phrase that ties in to the product or
service you are promoting and that people actually search for.
You can research this conveniently at Wordtracker.com.
2. Place this phrase into your press release headline and repeat
it around three times within the body of your press release.
Make sure you also include two properly formed links to your own
Web site (i.e., write "http://www.mydomain.com" rather than
"mydomain.com") within the text of the release.
3. Unless the proper name of your product or service is already
well-known, emphasize its generic description rather than its
name. For instance, write "proposal writing software" rather
than "PropWritePro."
4. Likewise, substitute keyword phrases for pronouns like "it"
or "its" to increase their overall frequency in the release.
5. Post your completed press release at sites that allow free
posting, such as prweb.com, pressbox.co.uk and dozens of others
that turn up in searches on phrases like "free press release
submission" or "free press release distribution." Through
diligent and repeated searching, I found more than 20 general
sites like that and more than 100 sites welcoming releases on a
particular topic.
6. Wait a few weeks and check your standing in search engines
for the phrases in your release. Positionagent.com works well
for this. Then repeat the whole process for another message,
another keyword phrase or another product or service.
Additional Notes on Press Release Optimization
Although these steps may appear simple, they are not intuitive
or natural for anyone with experience in writing traditional
press releases. Let's suppose you were launching a rental boat
service in Truro, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod. Tourists
would be much more likely to use "Cape Cod" as a search term
than "Truro," so the former is what should be repeated. And
particularly if you happen to know Cape Cod, if you were not
consciously writing for search engines, you would probably use
"Cape Cod" only once and then revert to "the Cape," which
wouldn't help enough when people are typing in "Cape Cod boat
rental."
A bonus benefit of this strategy is that by placing your
releases around the Web, you may also boost the rankings of your
own site at search engines that count inbound links as a sign of
popularity.
Assuming you've chosen your keyword phrases wisely, enjoy the
increased visibility and traffic that the free press release
posting sites have worked hard to obtain for you!
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