Building Link Popularity with Press Releases

The quantity of links to your site is used by the search engines (like Google) to rank the importance of your site. This measure of incoming links is called "Link Popularity". Press releases are a powerful way in which you can promote your site, service or product while at the same time increasing your link popularity.

Off-page SEO deals with external factors like the number of people linking to your page. Press releases are one way to obtain incoming links to your site.

In trying to determine the importance of a website, search engines have developed sophisticated algorithms that rank web pages for their quality. The largest factor in determining quality is the number of links to a web page. Quality websites are the most popular and
so have the most links to them. So to improve your standing on the search engine you need a higher link popularity.

Another very important factor in off-page optimization is the text used to link to your site. This is called the anchor text. Instead of using the words "Click here", you should be using your keyphrases to link to your site. The phrase "Custom Web Site Design" would be good anchor text for a link to my web site.

Press Releases

A press release is a written communication that you submit to journalists in the media. They are used to make announcements which are newsworthy. Press releaes are about NEWS. Announcing a grand opening, a new product or service, or employee promotions are news. Press releases aren't for customers or consumers they are for reporters, journalists who will use them as a starting point for a larger story or feature. Press releases written as sales pieces will be completely ignored.

How can a press release help with building your link popularity? Most of the free press release services are text-based which means you will not be able to add any HTML tags and so you can't add any links into the press release. However others allow you to also supply some keywords for that press release to make it easier to index and be found. When that page is viewed by someone, including the search engines, the keywords will be used to create links within your press release back to your website.

This means:

There is a one-way incoming link to your website
The incoming link uses the anchor text of your choice
The incoming link is within a natural context of the press release.

Traditionally, a press release is short-lived, it has a limited amount of time to make an impact on the media before it becomes old news and is replaced by fresh press releases. Some services allow you to buy a cheap upgrade, which means your press release will remain permanently in their system. This means that your "in context" links with the anchor text of your choice remain permanently for search engines to find and so help improve your rankings.

When preparing your press release you should optimize it for the keywords which are important for your site, product or company. This means that when someone searches for information in your industry, your press release will be seen as relevant by the search engine.