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Before I start today’s post, I just want to take the time to offer my thoughts and remembrance to the innocent victims of the events 7 years ago today. We may all have differing political and personal views, but I think we can agree that today is a day for remembrance and reflection. God bless you all.
I read an interesting – for interesting, read ill-informed – article at leading article directory GoArticles.com recently. Entitled “What is Press Release”, it basically trashed the idea of a press release’s ability to increase traffic to your website. Not only that, but it did this by stating some of the worst examples of incorrect and false “facts” I’ve ever read. Here are just a few examples why a press release can increase your website’s traffic:
1. Using a search engine optimized press release can offer a substantial increase of traffic to your website, thanks to embedded keywords linking to strategic pages on your website. This has been happening for at least a couple of years now, with excellent results for companies using them.
2. It doesn’t matter whether you run a one-man business or a larger corporate affair. I’ve written for small clients who have been featured on national TV and radio just as much as my larger clients; I know of colleagues in the PR industry that have provided their own clients the same publicity. It doesn’t matter what size the company is – if the press release is newsworthy it will be picked up, end of story.
3. Check Google for keywords on companies or products – many of the results will come from a search engine optimized press release having been picked up by the media or news outlets relevant to the story. In fact, optimized press releases are frequently second only to blogs for search engine friendliness.
Additionally, a search engine optimized press release is one of the best ways to advance your website in the search engines for many reasons.
- Embedded links in the release act as natural backlinks to your website, increasing SEO importance.
- The sites that the press release are picked up on also count as invaluable backlinks – imagine the benefit of having thousands of news sites linking to you or your story.
- The interactivity in an optimized press release offers some of the best SEO methods available – embedded links, RSS feeds, video and MP3 and more.
Increasing traffic to your website is one of the first steps in gaining your target audience, with the added potential of new customers or sales. While there are many ways to achieve this – SEO, article marketing campaigns, blogging, etc – there’s no denying that a press release deserves a leading place in this equation.
* For more PR news and opinion from Danny Brown please visit the Press Release PR blog.
