Press Releases & Linkbuilding

Today, you may read about the numerous advantages of online press releases, which are SEO articles written in the style of a news story.  Indeed, you can expect a number of advantages, namely in the way of reaching targeted Internet viewers and perhaps even circulating your story to news aggregators.

Why Linkbuilding is So Important

However, even if you don’t reach millions of people with your press release, or sell a high volume of product, you can always fall back on one great advantage: you build important links with each press release you release.  Linkbuilding is one of the most important factors in SEO today.

Today, search engines are paying closer attention to the quality of a website and the reputation its name has.  This means that sites with an editorial process will be taken more seriously than sites that simply publish any content.  Press releases on the web are either hosted by article directories (who have a submissions and editorial process) or are posted on high ranked news sites, courtesy of a news wire service (and usually for a period of 30 days, to keep the content newsworthy and timely).  In either event, these are valuable links that will help increase your SEO.

What About That 30-Day Rule?

You may be wondering how are you building valuable links if your story and URL eventually goes away when the news becomes dated?  Of course, you could opt for a directory that permanently publishes your press release, but even so, don’t give up on “premium press releases” just because they’re temporary.  The URL itself is of secondary importance to the fact that your website is being linked, and that link or “vote” as the search engines call it, is being counted for your search ranking.

Remember that when you distribute a press release, you are distributing the story to a huge number of news reporters, bloggers and other industry experts.  You are also benefiting from sites that legally “scrape” your content (not plagiarize entirely but link to you with a blurb), since they are creating more links for you.  You will also benefit from their anchor text, which is important for searching.

You can also benefit from appearing in Google news and Yahoo! news for your selected keywords.  Prospects with Google alerts for your keywords will receive your content in their personal inbox.  This is all relevant traffic that you would not ordinarily receive.

Encourage Linking Through Legitimate Online Publicity

Remember lastly that online press releases help you boost traffic, promote your brand, and encourage people to link to you.  So it’s not just a matter of “buying a link” for $250 or so.  In actuality, what you are doing is getting the attention of other important people—members of the online media.  That’s what makes a press release very powerful.

If you want to boost the link popularity of your site, invest in press releases.  These are premium links you need to capture the attention of a larger audience.