The Different types of Online PR for SEO
Online PR is an ideal and sometimes essential way of getting company information on to the internet and achieve links back to the company’s websites or assets for the benefit of SEO. However it is harder than it looks. You need good content and a good list of places where it can go. It is better to throw resource and intelligence at it than a few quid and hope for the world.
This article aims to breakdown the different types of online PR.
How does Online PR help SEO?
Online PR can sometimes be the only way to improve PageRank and get other sites linking to you other than using the dreaded directories.
First of all you need to create a press release. Once that is written then there are several things that you can do with that release, some with definite results others with less certain. Depending on the type of PR
Different Types of Online PR
There are different ways of getting a press release out there depending on which one you choose will have different benefits but as with anything, the ones with the most benefits will take the largest amount of experience and resource. Below are some hint and tips on how effective online PR is to SEO.
What next? Writing the Press Release:
Once the release is written you can immediately get that release out in one of many ways:
Free Article Submission Sites
There are many article submission sites where your release can go in, unedited and submitted by you. There you can put in a link back to your own website. These sites are the very bottom of the food chain. Many SEO companies advocate this practice of getting multiple articles out onto these types of sites. They are the PR equivalent of Directories, and like directories, some are good some are little more than spam. But if you have the time and resource – and not other outlets then these can be good for piling the releases out.
Tip: you can always tell the quality of the site by looking at other releases that are there. If your release is neighboured by “muscle pill” releases or multiple product releases claiming to be the best thing since sliced bread, then you know it is a dodgy site.
Multiple-blog media
I have had many emails from companies that claim to own 10,000 blogs and they say, for a sum they will put my press release on all their sites. Again it isn’t the best example of online PR benefitting SEO, but it could be ok depending on the types of Blog, but unlikely. These guys are preying on people desperate for links. Do not accept them – they are directories dressed up as blogs.
Infact I have seen SEO companies offer similar services. Give these companies the Red Light.
Tip: Instead of trying to get your content in multiple blogs in one quick win. Why not contact separate blogs and see if they will publish your content. Blogs are desperate for fresh content. Maybe there is something you can offer a few.
Paid Press release Submission
There are a few companies out there that offer press release submission to a list of journalists, plus they will publish your release on their site. The mere fact that it is a paid service gets rid of the lesser quality press releases and the freebie companies out there shouting about Muscle pills.
Some of these Paid PR submission sites, like PRweb can be effective. If you have a budget for submission then they can prove relatively effective for small business SEO. I have seen websites on page one of Google for certain keywords with only a few links to their site, those links coming from these types of sites. So they must be doing something ok.
Other types of Press Release Submission service like Targetwire offer to email your Release out to “hundreds of thousands” of journalists, though I have seen mixed results for such a service.
Tip: Don’t try and get everything for nothing. PR is a difficult thing to get right, why therefore should you get the full service for £30? Put the effort in, do your research.
Conventional PR – as online PR.
There is nothing like getting a news release in an industry magazine site or better still a mainstream press site. This requires hard work, contacts and a degree of knowledge in how PR works. The benefits can be huge: There is the readership for one both in size and the type of reader can add Kudos to the brand. This can increase traffic to the site. But best of all, if you get a link, then that can help no-end with SEO. But for the SEO professional just your release published in the magazine is nothing unless you have the link going back to your site.
The benefits of getting one link in the Guardian, The Telegraph or Wired Magazine in six months, far out weigh submitting 500 articles to article submission sites. It is therefore a question of resource and focus. Can you hold out that long for such an article? It is a question of what you are certain of getting – like advertising, the results or Article Submission sites are calculable though minimal. Mainstream press is not. But if you work hard enough and make a story good enough, results will follow.
Tip – put a “hyperlink” in your word-doc linking back to your site. Some journalists will put that directly in.