Tips for Getting Maximum Exposure for an Online Press Release

Online press releases are commonly used to
market and promote websites and online services, and the creation and
distribution of an online press release is much easier than that of a traditional
one. Because the release is designed to be used online it allows for much more
creativity and the use of extra processes to help in maximising exposure. The
following is a guide to the techniques you can use to gain maximise exposure of
your online press release:
Search Engine Optimize
Your Release

As mentioned before, the beauty of an online press release
is the freedom of extras you can utilise to improve exposure that you wouldn’t
be able to use with a normal press release, and the most important of those
extras is search engine optimisation.
This is commonly done by ensuring there are low to medium
popularity key words and phrases throughout the press release, right from title
through to the last lines. The reason for not using high popularity key words
and phrases is due to the competition you would face, as many larger companies
will monopolise the most popular ones, meaning your press release would never
have a chance of ranking any higher than the 100th page.
Anchored Text

Place links back to pages of your website that are relevant
to what you are referring to within the main body of the press release. For
example, if the release is about your company’s new life saving product then
place a link directly to the product page as well as one to your company home
page, so people can see who you are as a company and the product in question
without having to search for it themselves.
Also ensure the anchored text (text which contains the link
back to the website) is short and keyword rich. For example anchoring a long
and stretched out sentence such as ‘X launch new Y product which will save
lives by doing Z, A and B’ is too much, and search engines will not pick up on
this as well as they would a short and keyword rich text anchored text such as
‘X launch lifesaving Y product’. In this sentence you could even get away with
putting two anchors, one from ‘X’, the company name, back to the company’s home
page and another from ‘Y product’, the new product in question, back to the
direct product page. Search engines will love both of these because they are
short and hold keywords that they can easily pick up on.
Meta Tags

Another great way to optimize your release is to not only
consider the external surface, i.e. what people will see when they click on
your release. There is also the internal, ‘behind the scenes’ area where META
tags can be utilised to further get your release noticed by search engines.
Distributing Your
Release

Once you are happy with your release and the SEO efforts
within it, you then need to get it onto as many different domains throughout
the web as possible. No doubt you will be sending it to relevant news websites’
publishers, but you can’t guarantee getting on all of those, if any.
So to ensure you get maximum exposure for your release, send
the finished article to some article libraries. These are websites specially
designed for companies to send in their content to aid with their SEO efforts.
The majority of them have various different categories that articles fit under,
so simply ensure there is a category on the site that is relevant to your topic
(some article libraries will specialise in certain categories, others will be
completely open) and send your piece in. Some top article libraries and
directories are The Everyday
Business Online
, Ezine
Articles Directory
, Buzzle,
Go Articles
and Article Dashboard to name just a few, but do some digging
as there are plenty more great ones out there.
Also, look for relevant blogs and bloggers on the web that
are popular and might be interested in posting your piece. Blogs are much  more laid back than regular news websites,
and often bloggers are more than happy to post other people’s content as ‘guest
blogs’. But be prepared to offer them something in return, such as a link on
your website to their blog, or some other form of favour to recompense them for
their kindness.
For more tips on how to maximise your online press release
and for more information on digital marketing strategies check out Evonomie,
they offer training and advice on all aspects of digital marketing.

Struggling to write your press release? Check out ‘How to write the perfect press release’. For more tips on how to grab editor’s attention and get your release published, check out ‘How to write the perfect pitch for a press release’.

Got any more tips to share with us? Please feel free to use the
comments section. We would love to hear from you!
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