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Press Release + PRWeb = Top Google Rank... True or False?
I've always been a big time press release aficionado.
And up until recently I've steadfastly taken the low tech route by sending them out via snail-mail. Yeah, I'm a little old-fashioned when it comes to certain things. But long-time habits are hard to break when they produce great results.
Anyway, I was in the midst of launching a new piece of software August 2005. As I prepared to begin my press release prepatory ritual of labeling and stamping envelopes, it occurred to me that since it's the summertime, and people are always in and out on vacation, perhaps I should give online press releases a spin.
(Okay the REAL reason I wanted to try it is because I was feeling particularly lazy, and I didn't feel like labeling and stamping hundreds of envelopes. A girl has to get her mandatory poolside hours in before the leaves start falling.)
In the back of mind I kept thinking what a waste of time this online press release thing was going to be. But I decided that it couldn't hurt... I hoped.
I went through the web sites of around half a dozen press release distributors.
Major fixtures like PRNewswire didn't give me any toe curling experiences. The price was high and they tend to deal with a lot of corporate press material. My software is geared towards Joe and Jane Q. Public, so I didn't feel that it was going to be a compatible match.
There were a few press release distributors that specialized in software. And their prices were well within my targeted range.
However I decided against them because most of the outlets they'd be mailing to weren't within my target audience. I could've compiled my own little media list for a lot cheaper.
But that wouldn't work either. I had a chaise lounge with a slowly fading butt imprint. I needed to fill it up again - STAT. Compiling a list just wasn't in the cards.
That's when I arrived at PRWeb.com. I've known about this site for several years now. But I've never given it much thought, as I really hadn't heard any super stellar reviews about it.
Now in case you're wondering, PRWeb distributes press releases in a variety of topical categories. You can submit your release for free. You can contribute up to $80 and get some extra perks. Or you can use their $119 PRWeb Direct service, which gets your release in prestigious positions like Yahoo News and Google News.
I opted for the PRWeb Direct service figuring that's where I would get the best results.
I wrote my own release, submitted my order to PRWeb, then took out my Troll doll and rubbed him on the computer for good luck.
The next morning I got up and logged into my PRWeb account. They have a stat's program that tells you how many pageviews your press released has received, and I was curious to see whether I'd gotten 5 or heaven forbid 20 clicks. (I'm such a pessimist at times!)
Well you could have pushed me over with a calm summer breeze after I saw those numbers. At 7:30 am EST my press release already had 40,000+ pageviews. By the end of day, that number had surpassed 96,000.
Did that translate into thousands of dollars worth of software sales? Well actually, it didn't. But that press release wasn't my best work. It was good, but not great. Silly me.
However, I did get a nice little surprise.
Two days after the release I happened to be doing some searching on Google using one of the major keyphrases mentioned in my press release. Low and behold, there on page 1 was my press release holding it down in the #5 position.
A similar search at Yahoo showed the release in the #8 position.
The number of keyword optimized sites for my targeted phrase (which is "ebay seller software") is 24,100 at Yahoo, and 531 at Google. But that's irrelevant news to me.
The point here is...
#1 - My marketing message made it onto the coveted first page of Google for a nicely targeted phrase. No sandbox. No waiting for my brand, new site to get spidered.
#2 - My marketing message made it onto the coveted first page of Yahoo for a nicely targeted phrase. No trying to figure out Yahoo's algorithm, rhyme or reason.
#3 - The press release was delivering traffic to my web site BEFORE it even got listed in the top 10 at Google and Yahoo. In fact, the release was featured on many different auction resource and news sites.
PRWeb is what I like to call a Back Road tactic. It get's you a top 10 rank, without having to go through the usual SEO channels. And it's probably some of the best traffic you can get, short of somebody clicking directly on your site.
There aren't many reliable and consistent Back Road's. This is only the second one I've come across that fancies both Google and Yahoo. So it's definitely worth taking advantage of.
So now back to my original question... Press Release + PRWeb = Top Google Rank... True or False?
True.
Now excuse me while I soak in the slowly diminishing rays of summer. PRWeb has got my back.
Alexis Dawes is the author of "Taking The Back Road To Get On Google's First Page" an electronic report that shows webmasters how to use intermediary web sites like PRWeb to get their marketing message top Google rank. She has been successfully using these tactics since November 2004. You can get more information at (http://www.Get-In-Google-Now.com).
Google PageRank Explained
PageRank - an exclusive technology developed by Google which can have a major impact on the success of your website. This article will attempt to explain the concept of PageRank and how your ranking can be improved without spending any money at all.How is PageRank beneficial?Google refers to the technology as a way of evaluating the usefulness, importance, and quality of a website. The PR of a webpage can mean different things for different people.For a webmaster, a high PR is a sign of accomplishment. It shows that your website is moving in the right direction and has the potential to become successful. PageRank also directly effects your Google search engine listings. Acquiring a higher PR than your competition could mean more traffic for you, and less traffic for your competitors.Visitors to your website probably won't care about the page's rank (most surfers have no idea what PageRank is). However, visitors who understand PageRank may use your PR as a sign of how credible your content is. Would you rather use the information from a website with 0 PR or a website with 5 PR and hundreds of other websites linking to it?How is PageRank determined?PageRank is basically determined by backlinks. A backlink is when another page links to your page. For every page that links to you, that page is "voting" for you. The more votes you get, the better your PageRank will be. However, it gets more complicated than that because some votes weigh more heavily than others. The weight of the vote is determined by the PageRank of the page linking to you. This means that a couple links from pages with high PR could be more beneficial than hundreds of links from pages with low PR. But it gets even more complicated - each page can only transfer so much PageRank. The set amount of PR that the page can transfer must be split up between each "vote" that the page gives out. This means that a PR 7 page could actually give out as much weight per vote as a PR 3 page if it had too many outgoing links.How can I improve my PageRank?There are many different methods to obtain quality backlinks to your website. You will find that some methods work better than others depending on the subject and popularity of your site.DirectoriesSubmitting your website to directories is one of the best ways to increase your PageRank and even get some traffic at the same time. But submitting your site to just a few directories won't be good enough. You need to sit down and spend the necessary time to submit your site to a large amount of directories. This may seem like a painstakingly long process, but you'll be glad you did it when you notice results. I have taken the time to make a large list of free directories with high PageRank which you visit here. Although directories with low PR may seem like a waste of time, you should submit your site to them too because it still helps and they could eventually become a high PR site which charges money to submit to.Link ExchangesA very common practice to improve your PageRank is a link exchange. This is simply where two people link to the other person's website. It's best that you only link exchange with someone who has at least as much PR as you and the subject of the two websites are similar. If you receive a link from a website with a subject which has nothing to do with yours, you'll find that very little if any PR will actually be transferred to you.Forum SignaturesIf you are an active user on a forum or message board, it would be wise to put a link to your website in your signature. This could help improve your PageRank if the forum has a high PR, it could help improve your traffic from the forum members seeing your signature, and your site could get spidered more often because it is linking to a forum (forums generally have a lot of new content every day and search engines love new content).Buy AdvertisingAlthough it isn't the best of choices, many webmasters will buy text link ads on websites with high PR. Although this can be effective, it can be very expensive and only a temporary thing. If you purchase text links for just a couple months, after the months are over you won't have the backlinks which were giving you the "votes" you needed to keep your PageRank. So you have now spent a large amount of money on text links, but in the end you're right back where you started.ArticlesThis is a method which not many people know about. Basically, you write articles about the subjects you know a lot about. You then let other people use these articles as long as they provide a link back to your site. If you wrote a quality article, you'll find many websites will want to use it, thus giving you plenty of backlinks. This method can work well with anything which you develope and give away for free such as scripts, web design, etc.Stay On Google's Good SideThe most important thing to remember when trying to increase your PageRank is to not cheat and to always follow the rules. The people which run Google aren't fools and they have many ways of catching cheaters. Don't even think about using any of the "link farms" or trying to hide keywords on your pages. If caught, you may not get unbanned for many months.Make A Quality WebsiteIf you have a quality website which your visitors enjoy going to, then you will receive backlinks without having to do anything. Websites will link to you with the intention of informing people of a helpful resource, or showing off a cool new website they found, or any other reason other than trying to increase your PageRank. If you build it, backlinks will come...
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