Optimized Press Releases: When Public Relations Equals PageRank
Priya Shah

A while ago we got our brand new company domain up from PageRank of 0 to a very
healthy PageRank of 5 in under two months?

Yes, we know PageRank doesn¡¯t mean much, except in terms of branding.
But it does
give some indication of how effective your link-building techniques
are. So what was so
remarkable about the way we achieved a decent PR in a short time?

It was more the fact that we used very sound techniques to make that happen. No
reciprocal links, no link buying, no techniques that could get you banned. Just
completely legitimate methods that you can use time and again to build
links to your
own website.

Why Press Releases?

Among the most effective techniques that helped us build quality links
to our website
was the use of press releases. In fact, using an optimized press
release is such a
powerful method of building links that we now recommend it to all our clients.

Just the single press release here helped us build links not only from
high-PR press
release sites, but also from competitor sites where our news was syndicated.
http://www.seoandmore.com/media/press1.htm

Competitor Sites? How Do You Do That?

Well here¡¯s the secret (if you want to call it that). One of the best
sites to submit your
press release is on PRweb. Using the $80 option, you can get your
release syndicated
through Yahoo! News so that it gets picked up and syndicated on a lot
of other sites
related to your theme or topic.

Result: You can get up to hundreds of theme-relevant links pointing
back to your site in
just a few hours after your press release has been syndicated. Many of
these sites could
be your competitors.

Imagine having your competitors working to build links to you. What
more effective link-
building tactic could there possibly be?

Of course, once your link on Yahoo! News vanishes, your link popularity (and
PageRank) could drop. But that didn¡¯t happen to us, because we
recommend that you
always build redundancy into your link campaigns. So we use article
marketing and
directory submissions to continue to build quality links to our sites.

Why The New Google Loves Press Releases

One of Google¡¯s recent patents states that it intends to monitor news
stories, an
indication that the new Google gives more weight to stories and links
appearing on
news sites.

But building quality links to your site is only one of the benefits of
using press releases.
They are an effective tool to use in an online PR campaign and have
benefits that reach
far beyond boosting search engine rankings.

A well-written optimized press release can:

¡¤ Create publicity for your company
¡¤ Draw attention to new products and promotions
¡¤ Get you in the news for the right reasons
¡¤ Boost visibility in your industry
¡¤ Boost your reach and influence among your target audience

Some marketers are touting press releases as the new ¡°blog and ping¡±
alternative to getting indexed in the search engines? We wouldn¡¯t go
so far as to call
them that.

But if your business could use benefit from the right kind of links
and online visibility,
press releases may be just the tool your organisation needs.

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Priya Shah is a partner in the target="_blank">search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and
writes an target="_blank">online marketing blog.