Part of Link Building Strategy For Beginners Month at Hobo – remember to check out our free seo guide!
Some traditional companies create Press Releases and don’t think for a minute how these could be used to successfully promote their website when syndicated online.
If you do a lot of these, don’t just send out your press releases without considering a link-to strategy for your company. Every time you send out a press release, you should be ensuring you’re getting a few things right. For instance, you should know by now you should always include your web address. It’s amazing the press releases I see and I see no web address!
Example:
If I were sending out a press release to a third party and relying on them to publish it (which I don’t but hey!) I’d ensure my web address is in it! I’d ensure my website address was written in the correct manner ie http://www.hobo-web.co.uk (with the http:// because on some sites they’ll automatically make this a link.)
Your web address appearing just like www.hobo-web.co.uk won’t help in Google rankings today i don’t think.
These “citation links” with your domain name in a clickable fashion are all well and good, and they will help you if published on a really good trusted site like the BBC (like that’s gonna happen), but what’s better is to get the anchor text in the link you want your site to rank for.
So why not at the bottom of the article give them the actual HTML an editor needs when publishing your press release?
For example:
Published by The Hobo <a href=”http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/”>SEO Blog</a> which will look like this
Published by The Hobo SEO Blog
Even better, why not write your press release article with HTML links embedded in your actual press release text content? Google loves that!
Sort out your press releases – your PR company probably knows didly squat about how to make your website rankings improve.
- Do keyword research and determine the keywords you want to rank for!
- Have a Link-To Policy for all PR communications (you never know when it’s going on the web)
- ASK if they accept HTML formatted articles and ensure your website appears as a clickable link
- Try and get the words you want to appear in Google for in that link
- Mix your anchor text up every few articles to ensure you have keyword diversity and a growing link profile because that’s the keywords you will rank for!
- Remember and keep anchor text descriptive to the page your targeting (it doens’t need to be your home page all the time) and keep anchor text length to max about 55 characters (ie don’t make whole paragraphs links)
Pretty much every “press release” I get goes straight in the trash can. 99% of them do not want to build relationships with you, where you might get a link or some publicity in the future. They just want to take what they can via their email spams. Heres one I got yesterday: I work for a new website, xxxxxxx.co.uk , which i think you would be really interested in. The website allows UK retailers to upload their end of season clearance products, at discount prices, on to the site. It is already becoming a popular destination for people searching for great designer menswear pieces without the expensive price tag. The website offers the ultimate bargain from well known retailers such as; It would definately be worth you having a look at the website and possibly giving it a write up. Please do email me if you have any questions or queries. Many Thanks, xxxxxxx. Spelling mistakes aside, the press release is total junk. It is no way link worthy, its a store selling clothes – at least put a bit of effort in and produce a link bait that I might be willing to link to… Is anyone else getting lots of low quality releases like that in their inboxes?
No outing Phil :) Yes I think PR releases via email are total junk too.