Making Your Press Releases Work Harder for You

Are you overlooking a powerful way to increase your Web site’s ranking on Google and other search engines? Press releases not only convey news, but when they’re properly optimized and distributed they can play an important role in your search engine rankings. Here’s how:

* Launch your press release into cyberspace with a paid wire service. Major search engines rate Web sites based on the number of links to them. One way to create more of them is to use a service such as PR Newswire. Your news will reach editors directly, and it places your release – and a live link to your URL – where search engines can find and rank your site.

* Add multi-media content to your releases. Scroll through just an hour’s worth of wire service news feeds and you’ll see how difficult it is to get your headline and story noticed. A logo on the wire service release will grab an editor’s attention, as will a photo or digital video. Surveys show that press releases with multi-media content are most likely to be picked up by the media.

* Be where the media seeks experts. If you have an expert, register his or her bio – with links back to your URL – in the online media expert databases.

* Get instant links from the major news portals. Another reason to send your optimized news via the wire services is that in most cases it will be automatically posted on searchable sites such as Yahoo! Google News and Factiva. This creates instant links from multiple online sources.

* Finally, make sure your ‘News’ section contains. . .news. Keeping your press center up to date creates more online links, and it also shows that you are keeping current. If the last press release on your site is dated sometime in 2005, what does that say about your company?