Scoop

Press releases are often referred to as a solid online marketing tool. They help accomplish several key promotion tactics all in one fell swoop. They help you build brand exposure, acquire links from authorities, build anchor text backlinks, and drive direct traffic.

But there’s a dark side to the rosy picture press releases present.

1. They’re not cheap
2. Their longevity is questionable specifically when they’re written about a time specific event. (ie: product launches, seminars, webinar training events, etc)

Here are a couple of really great ideas for making your Press Releases stand the test of time from my friends over at Online PR News.

On making your press release last longer in the search engines

For example, if you operate an investment advisory firm, you might use the angle, “5 Safe Investment Tips For Seniors Who Need Fast Portfolio Growth.” This is “durable” content. It does not become stale. As a result, you’ll generate longer-lasting interest, more links, and thus more exposure in the search engines.

This is obviously in direct contrast to #2 above. Writing ever green content gives you the opportunity to rank and drive traffic for a lot longer while giving you a chance to plug an event or product launch.

Re-Submitting PR’s

Here again, durable content has an advantage. Even if your press release is ignored by journalists and bloggers the first time around, they may generate interest a few months down the road. Resubmit them. If you work closely with specific individuals, let them know you had sent the PR to them previously, and thought it may be a better fit today.

See a trend happening here? Keep this concept in mind the next time you’re spending hundreds of dollars on a PR.

Consider The Journalists Reading Your Press Release

Here’s another great consideration when writing your next PR. PR’s are always about you… But it may help to consider the Journalists point of view.

Most press releases are designed to promote your company and products. They do so subtly by increasing your exposure, establishing your authority, and building links to your website. Editors and journalists will run your PRs as long as they are engaging and fit their content needs. But their goals are different than your own. They have little interest in promoting your company. Instead, their job is to provide content their readers enjoy.

Durable content meets this requirement. It dovetails with editors’ goals, providing them with information their readers will find appealing. They’ll be more likely to publish your press releases, generating more exposure for you and your company.

I like this one because it’s going to force you to do some critical thinking about who’s actually reading these things. Getting into the mind of your reader is always a good thing. Getting into the mind of your content’s distributors is another thing all together.

Thanks to my friends over at Online PR News for the great quotes.  Find one more evergreen PR tip here.

Some big shake downs in the SEO world recently.  If you do any type of organic site promotion you owe it to yourself to read this entire post.

What Went Down?

Some 700,000 + webmasters received a little “how ya doin” note in their Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) account over the last 2 months.  The purpose of the note was to inform them that they had a site(s) with “unnatural links.”

Here’s what the note looked like:

Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://example.com/

Why It Happened

We could argue and throw conspiracy theories back and forth all day about whyyy it happened.  And trust me, there are a couple that have good arguments.  But I digress…

The simple fact of the matter is Google put the kibosh on the spammy link builder’s delight known as “Blog Networks.”  And they came down hard on one in particular called Build My Rank (BMR).

Here’s a snippet from BMR directly:

Unfortunately, this morning, our scripts and manual checks have determined that the overwhelming majority of our network has been de-indexed (by Google), as of March 19, 2012. In our wildest dreams, there’s no way we could have imagined this happening.

souce – http://www.buildmyrank.com/news/its-been-a-great-run

Don’t know what a blog network is?

In short it’s a network of sites that allow you to post short snippets of text including anchor text links.  It worked a treat (til now) for quickly building decent quality (only technically speaking) and quantity of backlinks to your site.  But there’s no doubt it was the exact type of artificial crappy spam links Google doesn’t want to see.

Here’s a screen shot of a typical blog network blog

“You Worry Not About Payment As You Sell House to Denver House Buyers”

Um, what?

That’s an example of spun article title.  Complete crap.

No human in their right mind is going to want to read this stuff.  It exists solely to attempt to game the search engine rankings through the accumulation of anchor text links.  Exactly the kind of stuff Google is trying to move away from.

What’s Next

Start off by getting rid of those spammy links to the best of your ability and resubmit your site in GWT.  Hopefully your rankings will come back if they have been tarnished. Next step is to start using some critical thinking when it comes to link building.  It’s going to get a lot harder to get great links in the coming months and years.  Start thinking about how you can obtain them in an ethical white hat way and stay ahead of your competitors.

In Closing

This is a step towards making content quality more important and that’s great.  It means more sites will publish more and better content. Is that enough to rank right now?  Absolutely not.  Links still matter and they just got harder to come by. What concerns me is that Google may be punishing webmasters unfairly… giving birth to “reverse seo.”

What’s to stop your competitor from slamming your site with crap links and bam another friendly letter from the Google team shows up?  Hell you could outsource 5,000 dubious links for $5.  What’s to stop your competitor from buying 25,000 just to really jam it in your craw?

I hope time will give us the answer to that.  As of right now it’s a concern.

What do you think?  What link building tools are you using after this shakedown?  What do you think about this move by the big G?  Let me know in the comments below.

This article was brought to you by: Dustin Bow

Dustin Bow is on the cutting edge of Internet Marketing.  His 8 years of experience in SEO, affiliate marketing, teaching, and consulting combines to create a unique voice in our industry.  He writes from an “in the trenches” perspective any level of marketer could find useful in their own campaigns.