Link Building With Optimised Press Releases
Submitting optimised press releases is a great way to kick-start your link building campaign.
Of course the primary function of a press release should be to increase publicity and awareness. But by taking the time to optimise your release for search engines you can benefit in many other ways. The back links acquired from this process can help young sites benefit from faster indexing and better brand management. More established sites can also benefit from the continued increase in the amount of link equity flowing to their domain.
Optimising Your Press Releases For Search Engines
Before submitting a press release make the effort to reread the content and insert your SEO keywords where appropriate; title, first paragraph, section headers etc. Also include a link back to your site where allowed by the PR site. As each PR site will have different guidelines on where and how you can link familiarise yourself with “the rules” and make full use of each submission.
For more information see our quick tips on writing optimised press releases. In the meantime here is a very quick example.
The Benefits Of Optimising Your Press Releases
Optimised PR submissions provide dual benefit: promotion and links. Press releases are a really effective way to reach people and promote the latest developments or new features of your site/company.
If a high quality release is picked up and syndicated by other sites (particularly ones within your niche) a nice snowball effect can build up helping to increase your brand awareness. The opportunity to appear in Google News results can help enhance the “buzz” effects even further.
As well as being an extremely useful marketing tool press releases can also be utilised to build link equity and PageRank to help improve your search engine rankings.
By strategically linking back to your site within your press releases you can build links to important pages within your site. Using intelligent anchor text wherever possible can give a further boost when targeting specific keywords.
Whether you simply want to promote your brand name or target other traffic driving keywords adding PR to the link building mix can be very beneficial if done correctly. As with the promotional aspect, writing a high quality press release that is syndicated to other news sources can yield an even greater number of back links.
How To Start Link Building With Press Releases
Press releases are great for new and ongoing link building campaigns. Early PR submissions can be used to promote your site’s launch and help spread the word about what your site has to offer; with this type of release you should look to link back to your sites homepage and highly relevant internal pages.
If you’re new to the world of press releases it is useful to practise writing and submitting press releases. This allows you to hone your skills before committing any of your marketing budget to paid submissions. Here is a selection of free press release submission sites you can use:
• prlog.org
• prleap.com
• 24-7pressrelease.com
• openpr.com
• i-newswire.com
• freepressreleases.co.uk
As your site continues to grow ongoing press releases can be used to promote new features and developments. This type of optimised press release should be written to focus on a niche topic and link to deeper, internal pages where appropriate.
When you become more comfortable with the process of writing and submitting free press releases you could consider expanding your activity to cover paid submissions via sites such as PRweb.com. Paid submissions offer a greater range of options such as adding videos or podcasts to your release and are typically syndicated to a wider audience leading to greater exposure and more back links.
Optimised press releases allow you to build good quality back links without the need for a huge budget. If you’ve not used press releases for links building before, give it a go. The process is really straightforward and the results can really help your SEO campaigns.
SEOview Top Tip
Before submitting a press release be sure you are happy with the content. After all what you write represents your brand so don’t submit a poor quality release just to get a back link.
If link building is your main reason for using press releases check that the sites you’re submitting to provide dofollow links.
Join The Discussion
What do you think of PR submission as a link building tool and does it work for you? Do paid submissions really yield better results than free press release sites? Join the discussion and share your thoughts.
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Press releases are an important tool to promote a website and getting your word out to a large audience and optimizing the press release just adds extra ammunition to the effort.