Press Releases and Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of fine tuning your website to get higher rankings on Internet Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Broadly speaking there are two types of optimization, "on-page" and "off-page". On- page optimization deals with the layout and format of a web page to make it attractive to a search engine. Off-page optimization deals with external factors like the number of people linking to your page. Let's look at off-page first.
Off-page
In trying to quantify 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. Links are an almost impartial method of determining how popular a website or a web page is. Or to put it another way, quality websites are the most popular and so have the most links to them. This measure of incoming links is often called "Link Popularity". 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. Adobe rank the highest in the search engines for the words ?click here?. Why should that be? The word "click here" isn't in the title of the page, nor is it in the page itself! So why does a search engine link Google rank Adobe so high for this term? Because many of the websites linking to Adobe used the words "click" and "here" many times in the anchor text of their links to Adobe. You know... Click here to download Acrobat Reader...
How can the Free Press Release Center help with building your link popularity? When you submit a press release to FPRC you also supply some keywords for that press release. 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 link to your website * The link uses the anchor text of your choice * The link is within a natural context of the press release.
FPRC offers you a simply yet powerful way to create FREE links to your website, within your press release, using the anchor text of your choice.
Traditionally, a press release is short lived, it has a limited amount of time make your impact on the media before it becomes old news and is replaced by fresh press releases.
However at FPRC if you buy the PRO upgrade, your press release will remain permanently in our system. This means that your ?in context? links with the anchor text of your choice remain permanently for search engines to find and so helping improve your rankings.
When preparing your press release you should optimize it for the keywords which are import 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.
On-page
There are several factors in on-page optimization. The first is the title of the page. This is almost the first thing the search engine reads when it visits a page. At FPRC the title of your press release is also the title of the page. So when preparing your press release try to put some of your important words in the headline, however don't force them in as then you will alienate your readers (the journalists).
After the title is the heading tags on the page. Like the title of the page, your headline will become the first heading on the page. Again you should optimize your headline.
If you prepare an optimum press release and select good keywords, FPRC will do the rest for you!
About the Author
Gary Sims has a degree in Business Information Systems from a British university. He worked for 10 years as a software engineer and is now a freelance consultant and writer. You can contact him at Free Press Release Center