Online Press Releases - SEO Food

One of the best and easiest ways to get PR is to issue online press releases. There are a number of outlets such as PRweb or PRLeap. In addition to getting the word out to thousands of news and blog outlets quickly and at low cost, SEO'ed press releases have the additional value of getting indexed almost immediately. They also enjoy the benefit of being fresh and new, and can get high rankings for the keywords it is using.

A search engine optimized press release can reach thousands of people if handled correctly. Google and Yahoo search engines and news is how today's journalists and reporters get their sources and facts. Here are some stats from PRWeb's website that press (pun intended) home this point:

• 98% of journalists go online daily
• 92% for article research
• 81% to do searching
• 76% to find new sources, experts
• 73% to find press releases

On an average day, 68 million American adults go online

• 30% use a search engine to find information
• 27% get news.

As you can see, the Internet is or is fast becoming the source for news and a properly SEO optimized press release can get you noticed far eaiser than traditonal press release outlets. This is because your release will be keyworded, so that can be much more easily found by journalists who are LOOKING for your content and news!

Online news outlets that are hungry for new content, along with bloggers who are looking for news, will quickly publish your release in the hopes of attracting visitors.

There's a modest cost for this, and in addition to get your 'news' out there, it will give your website some Google 'juice' if the content is properly linked back to your website. This will increase your website's visibility temporarily. All this will result in more traffic to your website, which usually isn't a bad thing.

Be sure to also put the press release on your website to get even more bang for your buck. More info on online press releases can be found here.

Free SEO Tools at FoundPages

With SEO and SEM becoming more common and understood, there appears to be an upsurge in interest in tools for improving Google PageRank and traffic. For most websites, most visitors come via search engines (even if they know your name) than any other way. Something we don't promote but you should use are the free SEO tools available on this website.

Use it freely, as there is no cost, but keep in mind that they are tools. Tools that can help you analyze and measure your current situation, but they don't improve your website - only you can do that! There are many other resources on this website to help you with doing that.

One of the easiest things, is to update your website regularly. Updating content and adding more pages will get your website noticed by search engine crawlers, and new pages will add to the number of pages you will get indexed by the search engines. You don't need specialists to do this, and no one knows your business better than you do.

The pages don't have to be about your product or service. For example, if you sell cargo nets (like one of our customers), it can be about the legislation and laws surrounding the requirements. Or a page on how to install it properly on a truck. All this can get indexed, and help you with the 'long tail' in search. Just remember to add unique tags to them, and to add the page to the sitemap.

The long tail refers the keywords that are not searched a lot, but the many searches for various unique phrases that are very detailed and relevant for a searcher. For example, 'cargo net law' is a long tail search, that would bring visitors interested in cargo nets regulations, that then might interested in purchasing a cargo net that complies.

I'll have more on the SEO tools in the next few blogs, on what the benchmarks mean and how to improve them. These tools should be part of every online marketer's toolkit today. If you are a small to medium size business (SMB), you ignore search engine marketing metrics at your own peril.