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PR Perspective Part Two: Optimizing News Distribution, Posting & Placements Last month, we launched our three-part series on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. In Part One, “Why and How a Press Release Should Be Search Optimized,” we differentiated between natural and paid search and provided the first part of our “Best Practices Guide” to SEO for public relations. Although today’s news can also be communicated via RSS feeds, blogs, social media and video, this article will focus on news release distribution and those solutions which facilitate SEO. Our goal is to ensure that the news release issued reaches the targeted influencers (press, analysts, and pundits) and audience (business for B2B businesses and consumers for B2C organizations).Years ago, “press” releases were named because news was primarily conveyed via printing presses. Subsequently, radio and TV broadcast media made news distribution more readily available and widespread. The Internet then changed the news landscape, creating 24/7 opportunities to target (directly and indirectly) both global mass audiences and highly defined niches. This, in turn, has created new challenges for public relations professionals and “new rules” for news distribution. As noted in Part One, recent research indicates that Internet search engines are “the” preferred news medium for the new millennium. More than 90 percent of journalists turn to the Internet and search engines as their primary news source, and corporate influencers are now relying upon news releases as their primary source of information. More than twice as many Americans now get their news via the Internet than watch television news. Since nearly half of Internet surfers now use search engines rather than type their URLs manually, how does a professional get their news release noticed by leading search engines, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK and AOL, and, ideally, listed on the top two pages? Assuming per Part One you’ve now created a compelling, SEO-friendly news release, for better tracking purposes, before distributing it you might also want to enhance the release with one or more tracking mechanisms like uniquely-coded URLs, unique email addresses, or unique toll-free phone numbers. The very keywords and/or thumbnail images and URLs/links recommended in our first article are now integral to the success of the distribution process. Sometimes referred to as “anchor text,” linking your target keyword specific pages of your web site (ideally a unique URL) helps the search engines find and define that keyword’s relevance in their databases. There are then numerous options for press release distribution. Here are some of the most widely used and reputable options available to you and how to ensure your client or organization’s ROI. Wire Services Wire services are one of the easiest (if not economical) ways to ensure your news releases are included (“indexed”) by search engines, and they offer an excellent channel for link building while distributing your news. Contract agreements between leading wire services and foremost Internet news sites and portals automatically post wire-distributed releases to these sites as the releases are issued. For search engine visibility and ranking, these traditional wire services are also now offering “complimentary” (if you use national distribution circuits) or premium (for up to $300.00 per release) SEO tools and services to help ensure Internet placement on syndicated news sites. These SEO solutions help to ensure that the search engine “spiders” find and index your SEO-friendly news release by helping to identify target keywords or images and build anchor text links. The wires then distribute your news to the appropriate target audiences – geographically or vertically (to target markets/audiences and even pre-registered trade show media) – and even offer additional distribution means, such as faxes, email, RSS feeds. A few specialized wire services also offer additional, more sophisticated distribution solutions to expand distribution reach, including Standard Markup Language (SML), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), satellite, Short Message Service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), news syndicates and aggregators. Professional news wire distribution services also provide the added advantage of tracking and measuring the response to your release. These services issue email and web-based reports that detail what search queries were used to find your release, which search engines directed traffic to your release, the number of click-throughs to your hyperlinked web site and search engine rankings. Most savvy PR professionals will opt for quality vs. quantity. The best advice is to shop around and compare which services and solutions best meet your client’s or company’s specific wants and needs. And because search engine ranking algorithms (rules) are continuously changing and evolving, be wary of “guarantees” and assurances of high search engine rankings. As was true of traditional media relations, targeting the right message to the right audience is still the best solution for news distribution. Leading Wire Services: http://www.businesswire.com/ http://www.prnewswire.com/ http://www.prweb.com/ http://www.marketwire.com/ Public Relations Software Solutions For those who can afford the luxury of today’s public relations software programs, you now more than likely have the optional SEO tool as part of your program. Leading solutions including Vocus, BurrellesLuce, and Cision (formerly Bacon’s/Media Map) offer various SEO tools to help you in the distribution of your news release. Some are even integrated with contracted wire services. For example, Vocus software is integrated with BusinessWire news distribution. These software tools, like those offered by wire services, help increase the chances that the user’s news release are search engine optimized and measurable. With PR software, any distribution other than wire circuits requires you to create and manage your customized distribution list. Through a customized distribution, you can directly contact site editors, bloggers and other publishers who might be interested in posting your release, which will also assist your SEO efforts. Fortunately, most PR software programs get pre-approval from these various contacts, but it’s always advisable to still offer an “opt out” as part of every communication. Customized distributions can take the form of email, fax, snail mail and some providers are now offering mobile distribution to reach mobile-ready media. Like the wire services, the more sophisticated programs also offer tracking and measurement for news distribution, indicating who opened your email and when, correlation to your campaigns and overall press coverage. This will include web presence on search engine news sites. These tools can provide keen insights, such as which vertical, geographic region or demographic is responding to your messaging, which you can then use to continuously refine news messaging, lists, solutions and even identify new opportunities, all of which can help your search engine visibility and your competitive advantage. Given the assorted options for SEO for PR tools and services, it can be confusing and frustrating when shopping for the solution that best suits your budget and needs. My recommendation is ask the vendor to “help me to help you -- why should I choose your tool or service over your competitors?” You can usually test drive the solutions to see which ones work for you. Most vendors offer webinars, online tours and even trial offers. And, remember to ask for references, clients similar to you who can share their real-world experiences. Leading PR Software Solutions with SEO Tools: http://www.burrellesluce.com/ http://us.cision.com/ (formerly Bacon’s/Media Map) http://www.vocus.com Blogs & Social Networking Sites Blogs and social networking sites can help your SEO and PR efforts in a few ways. First and foremost, since search engines love fresh content, the very nature of blogs and social networking sites attract them, so being sure to submit your news release to blogs, community, opinion and/or product review sites, and shared book marking, tag-based engines should be part of your PR efforts. Some of these sites require news releases be manually submitted, whereas others permit news release distribution to editorial contacts and webmasters or bloggers via email, so don’t solely rely on wire services to get your news release noticed. With bloggers, too, we recommend submitting a brief, personalized note of introduction with a link to the full release content in order to also help build a relationship. Most leading PR software solutions now offer access to these valuable outlets, though your own research on blog aggregators like Technorati or Bloglines can enable you to identify which blogs and sites best reach your target audience. Even the wire services are beginning to offer additional, fee-based services to facilitate blog and social site placements. Since most blog and social media postings have outbound, direct links to the information sources they’re discussing, those links to your site will help your build your “link popularity” – the more popular the blog/social media site, the more value it’s assigned by the search engine and therefore, the more valuable its link to your site becomes to your own SEO efforts. Finally, the other benefit of getting your news placed on blogs and social networking sites is simple: these sites attract today’s readers, your audience. So even if a user doesn’t go to a search engine in search of news, s/he could end up reading yours by the sheer fact that you got it posted to the blog/social networking site! How you go about selecting which SEO method is right for you might not even be as important as acting upon optimizing your news announcements. The Internet and SEO are “the” driving force behind modern-day PR. Greg Jarboe, the industry’s leading SEO PR guru, advises, “As SEO PR becomes mainstream and more and more professionals leverage the power of the Internet, it will become harder to get high keyword rankings in the major search engines. To stay ahead of the competition and assure your clients’ search engine rankings, professionals need to become SEO savvy sooner rather than later.” Now that you know how to create and distribute your Search Engine Optimized news release, we’ll conclude our series in the third and final article in our series by discussing how to optimize your web site’s newsroom.
Hollis Thomases is president and founder of WebAdvantage.net, an interactive marketing, promotions, and advertising agency. Hollis was named 2007 Small Business Person of the Year for the state of Maryland by the Small Business Administration. She was also one of Baltimore's "40 Under 40" in 2003. She was sole recipient of the 2002 Bush Declaration Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit. Hollis speaks extensively on interactive marketing, having presented for ClickZ, Jupiter Research, The Kelsey Group, the American Marketing Association, the Direct Marketing Association, The Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Association, the Business Marketing Association, and The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. WebAdvantage.net's client list has included Zurich North America, Nature Made Vitamins, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore Area Convention & Visitors Association and AMVETS. Its web site was named one of Forbes magazine's "Best of B2B Sites" for media and advertising. Copyright © 2007 Hollis Thomases. All rights reserved.
If you have links, comments or information pertaining to the editorial you would like to share, please feel free to email me at info@workinpr.com. Space permitting, I'll include them in the next newsletter.
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