Advantages of an Online Press Release

By George McKenzie
Former TV News Anchor and Radio Talk Show Host

Did you know that the public relations "game" is now just over 100 years old?

Yep, the first press release was sent to newspapers by snail mail a little over a century ago, aimed at helping control the public relations damage a railroad company sustained when one of its locomotives crashed. The company offered to transport reporters free of charge to site of the accident to witness the scene themselves. The company hoped squelch rumors and exaggerations that were spreading about the severity of the wreck.

Things are a little different now aren't they? 

And maybe the biggest PR development in 100 years has been quietly taking place fin the last 3 years or so.

Do you know what it is?

It's the marriage of public relations and the Internet.

Public relations in general, and press releases in particular, have become the "stealth strategy" in the highly competitive battle for search engine ranking.

Greg Jarboe, President and co-founder of SEO-PR recently did a comparison study for one of his clients, WineZap.com

The results were verrrry interesting.

Jarboe writes online press releases for companies seeking publicity and search engine positioning for their websites.

He can show you side-by-side views of a "before-and-after optimization" press release for WineZap.com, an online resource to research and price wines.

The changes to the press release were relatively minor, but he made several significant changes to the headline, and he added some wine-related search phrases.

The "optimized" release, submitted through PRWeb.com also included a call to action and a discount coupon for those who clicked through from the press release to a special landing page. The landing page offered a newsletter sign-up form qualifying the visitor for substantial discount on wine purchases.

Jarboe showed ranking results from both Yahoo News and Google News, where the release turned up in the top 5 rankings.

Such a ranking is stunning in the highly competitive wine industry, especially since WineZap is a new site. Jarboe says WineZap had paid for tracking, and results showed the release got more than 90,000 views on the PRWeb.com site alone, with 1400 views by journalists!

Jarboe pointed out that his research shows 98% of journalists go online daily, that 92% go online for research purposes, and -- maybe most remarkable of all -- 73% of those journalists go online to search for press releases, which are typically indexed within three days because they're considered "time-sensitive." That's much faster than a standard web page gets indexed.

It beats the daylights out of those press releases that were distributed to journalists by snail mail 100 years ago doesn't it?

And it's also a good way to beat the daylights out of your competition when it comes to getting the free publicity you need to take your business to the next level.