@OnlineprBook Twitter Updates of the Week

Published on March 22nd, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }

@OnlineprBook Twitter Updates of the Week

Published on March 15th, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }

@OnlineprBook Twitter Updates of the Week

Published on March 8th, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }

Dramatically Increase Traffic by Adding a Photo to Your Press Release

Published on March 5th, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 3 comments }
Image representing Google News as depicted in ...
Image via CrunchBase

This is from a discussion on LinkedIn…from Phil Davies of BigNews.biz I’m impressed with his knowledge and will use this in a future webinar along with some stats I got from PRWeb. I was wondering how Google chooses images to go with news stories in Google News.

I could tell that it wasn’t usually the image I submitted with the story. I also wondered if adding an image had much of an affect on the results.

Now I have some answers…this is quoted from Phil. Like most things Google, it’s a popularity contest…

Google news and Bing news both include photos from press releases in their search results. Including a photo with your online press release has the potential to more than double your traffic. In most cases, a good, well optimized photo will drive much more traffic than your headline. Here is a quick tutorial to help you optimize your photos to get maximum exposure online.

  1. Select a photo to accompany your press release that is interesting. Google news seems to actually test photos to determine which one is clicked on the most by readers. The most “popular” photo then becomes the default image for that story.
  2. When publishing your press release online, be sure to use a press release distribution service like http://www.BigNews.biz that is optimized for photo distribution. Here is a list of some other free PR distribution sites you might like to try: http://www.shrinkpictures.com/ . In the resize images box…

a) select the file on your computer that you want to upload to BigNews with your press release.
b) Select New Maximum Image dimension by clicking “Custom” and enter 300
c) Do not check the special effect box
d) Set the resized image quality to “good”
e) Click the resize button

The page will reload, then select “Download this picture now” and save the file to your computer. BE SURE TO RENAME THE FILE USING AT LEAST TWO KEYWORDS THAT PERTAIN TO THE PRESS RELEASE! Do not use more than two keywords. Use this photo when you upload your release to Bignews.biz or any of the other sites on the list.

Another important thing to keep in mind when selecting a photo is that Google news is going to convert your photograph to an 80×80 pixel thumbnail on their system. So when selecting a photo remember to pick one that will look good at that size.

Believe it or not, many people use Google images to search for things online. One of my press release distribution sites actually gets about 40% of it’s search referrals from Google Images. That’s a huge number and represents more referrals than this particular site gets from either Yahoo! or Bing search.

So if the topic of the release has visual impact, that’s even more of reason to include a photo when distributing it.

If you are uploading a press release and a photo to the Web and it is for a unique topic that does not appear to have any other competition in the Google news search results that day, there is a very good chance that your photo is going to show up as one of those left column photos you see in Google news search results.

The problem is the above scenario rarely happens. Google news currently indexes press releases and news stories from over 25,000 sources. Most of the time your release is going to be competing against news and other releases.

So, if the NYTimes, Chicago Tribune, LA Times and AP are all covering the same story as your press release on that day, Google news is going to have a choice of images to run in that one left column position that will represent ALL of those stories. The result is a mini photo contest hosted by Google news where the photos from each story are tested by Googles algorithm to see which one is more popular with their readers than the others.

If your photo wins this “contest” it’s going to end up as the featured image for that group of stories and probably drive a ton of traffic to your release. So optimize your photos whenever possible.

Note from Janet: I bet this applies to blog posts as well – they’ll get more traffic if you include an image. I like Zemanta because I can take a bunch of pictures and then easily insert them into blog posts.

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Drawbacks of PRLog.org

Published on March 1st, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 2 comments }

Last time I went over the many benefits of using the free press release web site PRLog.org Today I’m going to go over the drawbacks.

  1. The stats are new and need some work. Let me tell you what I mean. They track my own clicks to view and manage the press release. They need to not count those administrative clicks. Minor issues because hey – it’s free – but one I hope they fix.
  2. No click throughs to web page. When I look at my stats I can see only 1 time that someone has ever gone from my press release to my web page. That means they are going to the press release and stopping there. Perhaps my press release stinks. But compare that with PRWeb where I have gotten over 100 visits from a press release directly to my web site. I credit this to not having an editorial staff and probably having a lot more garbage than gems. Which means people mostly tune it out.

My top press release is getting over 200 clicks. That’s not that high. Of course my news value is lower too. When I have higher quality news I pay for distribution. The jury is still out on if this is improving my keyword rankings. My site traffic is up over 150% too – so it may be that people are still finding me because of the press release.

Or, it may be using Zemanta, which I just started testing…

Have experience with PRLog.org? Please share by leaving a comment.

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@OnlineprBook Twitter Updates of the Week

Published on March 1st, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }

Blog carnivals, memes, Mr. Linky’s? – Oh my!

Published on February 25th, 2010 by Tristen   { 2 comments }

Lesson number one in the OPRApprentice world, never take the bloggosphere world for granted! I first became introduced to the terms, “blog carnivals,” “memes,” and “Mr. Linky’s” during the first week of my internship. If I thought I was blog savvy before but I can certainly say that this changed that thought instantaneously. Call me old-school, but I wasn’t too sure what they were, who used them, why people used them, and how they worked. I’m only now at the beginning stage of learning about these useful tools.

The world of blogging is so incredibly comprehensive, and the the blog carnivals, memes, and Mr. Linky’s only help in trying to get your blog out there. The website 5minutesformom.com gives us beginners a glance at the meaning of these terms. Utilizing these three tools will help any blogger get more exposure, so I’m going to attempt to break down the meaning of each tool for all the beginners out there!

Blog Carnivals

They’re sort of line online magazines – each has a particular topic of interest (philosophy, cats, progressive politics – you name it, it’s there). The carnivals are published on a weekly/monthly basis depending on who’s hosting them.

The name is derived from the fact that each carnival moves around from blogger to blogger. There isn’t only one person responsible for the publication of the blog carnival, which is beneficial for all of those involved because it helps drive traffic to their respective sites.

The benefits of contributing to a blog carnival are the same as hosting one – exposure, exposure, exposure!

Look out for outdated carnivals. Make sure the topics you are searching are up to date!

Memes

These are tools that bloggers can use to help generate story ideas. A blogger, like myself, can post a series of questions, say about online public relations, and people who search for a meme of this topic would post their answers onto their blog and then link back to my own.

Bloggers that start a particular meme can tag others so that they can get an automatic crowd interested. The people who they tag are generally bloggers who follow the initial blogger. The bloggers who are tagged in a meme also generally respond.

Memes tend to have fun themes like Freebie Friday, Tacky Tuesday, and so on.

Mr. Linky

A rather beneficial application (or widget for the web-term savvy) that one can put onto their site so that others can leave their links to show their interest in the blog topic.

Using a Mr. Linky on your page not only helps you gain exposure, but it helps you gain more followers. For those of us who use WordPress for your site, know that there’s also a plug-in available for you!

If you have more of an insiders definition of these terms, please feel free to add a comment below!

Don’t Make these Mistakes on Your Next Press Release

Published on February 25th, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }
For Immediate Delete

Image by newspapergrl via Flickr

When it comes to online distribution, here’s a mistake a lot of PR pros make. They write the words FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE at the top of their press releases. In most cases they write the words FOR IMMEDIATE DELETE.

I cringe when I see this on press release templates. You won’t find it on mine.

But if you have a killer press release that you want to get great coverage on – here’s what you should avoid doing.

2 Things to Avoid if you Want Clicks on your Press Release

1. Omit the words FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – online you don’t need this – in fact you rarely need it unless there’s an embargo and time sensitive nature of your press release. This is a relic of the past to most.

2. Putting your PR contact info at the top of the press release. Instead put it at the bottom. If the story is good they’ll read and they’ll find you.

Yahoo News is one of the biggest online news aggregators. I found this perfect example of what I’m talking about. Click the photo to get more detail. Since many people scan online, the first paragraph should be about getting the click. That’s where you put a call to action. It’s a totally different approach than traditional press releases.

What other mistakes do people make on their press releases?

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9 Reasons to Use Free Press Release Site PRLog.org

Published on February 24th, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 10 comments }

I’ve become a big fan of PRLog.org for the incredible amount of value the site offers free. Many businesses don’t send out press releases – but should. Why not get some free publicity? PRLog plays out well in Google News (google.com/news). It’s not a fancy site but it’s powerful.

The home page has a PageRank of 6 and as far as I know you get a permanent link. I’m convinced that right now there is not a better free press release distribution site.

9 Reasons Why You Should Submit your News to PRLog.org

  1. You can embed a YouTube video into your press release (follow the instructions given in the link).
  2. You can schedule your press release up to 2 weeks ahead of time or have it go live immediately (can take up to 24 hours but I’ve been seeing very fast turnaround – within minutes).
  3. Gives stats about how many clicks and where they came from. Shows what words or phrases brought traffic in search engines. This is pretty amazing that you get this free.
  4. Gets your news on Google News (not every single press release makes the standard but they are submitted to Google News.
  5. Feeds to over 40k RSS feeds so headlines show up on partner web sites.
  6. You can include an image in your press release + a logo.
  7. You can go back and delete or edit your press release after its live.
  8. Your URL links will be live links (no anchor text).
  9. Can include up to 3 categories (use all 3)

Now, for some screen shots so you can see what I mean.

PRLog.org in Google News

It’s free to Submit your News:

Submit a press release free to PRLog

Here’s the submission page:

Here’s the page where you can manage all of your press releases:

Here are the free stats you get on each press release (this is new). On some of our press releases their are multiple peaks for weeks after the news goes live. Note: the Facebook Page is not for WebMarketingWeekly.com but for my cohost Nigel of SEO by Swaby.

Notice that beyond PRLog.org many of the clicks are coming from social media sites. This shows the importance of promoting your news online on sites like Twitter and Facebook – which I talk about in my online press releases book, “I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??” and the Killer Press Release Book and DVD Combo

The reason you have to get links to your press release is because Google News, Yahoo News and others aren’t permanent link and most people won’t click through to your site. However, if you’re linked to and covered on other sources you’ll see better results long term.

PRLog press release stats

More stats:

For really killer news I suggest using a paid service too, but every press release you send out should also be included in PRLog.org. It’s just too good right now not to.

Related:

Getting Started with Google News (seomoz.org)

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@OnlineprBook Twitter Updates of the Week

Published on February 22nd, 2010 by Janet Thaeler   { 0 comments }
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