| LED Digest 2368: Marketing with Press Releases |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 15, 2007 Issue no. 2368 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Vote for the Best Discussion List --== Design Change Shortcuts ==-- ~ Richard Graham "Or is there some magic super easy other way that I haven't found?" --== Microsoft Hunting Down Cybersquatters ==-- ~ GJ Berg "Some companies & individuals 'owe' Microsoft damages." --== The Bull Enters the China Shop ==-- ~ James Miller "...the fact that [BBC] have struck a deal with YouTube...is highly significant..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Marketing with Press Releases ==-- ~ Andy Benkert "We use PRWeb exclusively as they allow embedding keyword links..." ~ Nathan Holley "Have a story worth writing about." --== Moving Sites ==-- ~ Veronica Yuill "...I did exactly this about ten days ago." <Moderator Comment> --== Figuring out Google Rankings ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "Get the page indexed, de-optimise, and there is every chance it will rank well." ~ Nancy Cardinali "I have a replicating site and am doing some marketing..." ==== BULLETIN BOARD ============= --== New Book Published ==-- ~ Shel Horowitz ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Alright... put on your voting gloves and head over to Lee Odden's blog, 'cuz now's your chance to give an LED shout-out! Lee is running a survey: The Best Marketing Email Discussion Lists http://www.toprankblog.com/2007/03/reader-poll... Cast your vote LEDers! Adam ----------------- From: Richard Graham Subject: Master menu files Hello, OK, here's a really basic question... What method do you all use for separating the content and navigation of your pages? ( i.e. so you don't have to re-edit every page if you want to change the left hand menu. ) - Having an external .js file? (Easy, but adsense can't be included) - Frontpage extensions? (comes with all the frontpage hassles) - Wordpress or blog format? (doesn't seem to work locally) - Server side includes? Or is there some magic super easy other way that I haven't found? I'd be most grateful to know! Be genki, Richard Graham www.genkienglish.net -------- new post - new topic --------- From: GJ Berg Subject: Microsoft aggressively pursuing cybersquatters Microsoft has been protecting it's trademark by suing companies that have cybersquated on domains (similar) to their trademarked terms (and also misspelled variations, "typosquatting"). Some companies / individuals "owe" Microsoft damages. In defending it's actions, Microsoft spokesman says: "There is a business model of profiting from the traffic generated by popular brands and domains, and we have to remove the profitability of this business," Le Toquin said. http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/14/cybersquatters/index.php Microsoft owns more than 21,000 domains. GJ Berg -------- new post - new topic --------- From: James Miller Subject: The Bull Enters the China Shop The BBC probably has more serious non-fiction content than any other broadcaster or filmmaker. So the fact that they have struck a deal with YouTube about distributing clips of this video is highly significant, both for the YouTube and the BBC. The BBC may back out of the deal, as there is an element in the corporation who feel that anything commercial is to be frowned upon. I've met a few BBC staffers and they can be a bit weird. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6411017.stm Does this mark the start of the change of YouTube from a wacky fun area to a serious media distributor? James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Andy Benkert Subject: PR services > Do you use PR campaigns? If so, what success > do you have? What PR services do you like using..? - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2367 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1768/55/ Hi Adam, We have recommended using press releases as part of our clients' marketing strategy for a few years with excellent results. Our clients who do so on a regular basis see marked improvement in website traffic and sales leads, particularly when done properly with landing pages and good analytics. Additionally, many have seen good results in SERP rankings for important keywords. We use PRWeb exclusively as they allow embedding keyword links and the other online newswire services do not. Andy Benkert http://www.hrmarketer.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Nathan Holley Subject: PR services This is actually something I've been researching for the last several weeks. It's easy to put together a PR and shoot it out, but results can vary pretty dramaticaly between professional work and amateur. Here are a few things I've found that will hopefully save you some time. First of all, crafting the actual copy and getting editors attention. Creating Press Releases ==================== - Pay careful attention to the headline and the initial paragraph or sentences. - Keep it short - 1-2 pages is probably sufficient. Remember, journalists are lazy creatures wanting to do no extra work. Write it for 'em! - Include a note to the editors w/ bio information or a link to a specific page with more. - Have a story worth writing about. Keep the fluff, buzz, and marketing-speak to a minimum. Have something interesting to share and it'll do far far better. Distributing Releases ================= - Start to build your own list of contacts! This is very important. It's PR, yeah, but it's not really - it's just common sense. Do you have contact info for influential bloggers, list moderators, site owners, etc? Ping them w/ a quick shout about some content you've written (the content will be a Web-based form of your PR built to publish on *your* site). - Try to contact specific media folks in your niche and give them a heads-up about the PR. - Track the campaign Top Services to Use ================ The main players are PRWeb, URLwire, PR Newswire, and a few others. The main differences are as follows: - PRWeb is best for consumer content and increasing backlinks. Content from this distributor gets indexed quickly by the search engines. You can create custom anchor text at their highest level price point. - PR Newswire is more expensive and more formal, mainly catering to business media. One cool feature of PRWeb (you can tell I like the service) is the podcasting option - allows you to add soundbytes for journalists reviewing the release. Links: PRWeb: http://prweb.com PRNews: http://prnewswire.com URLwire: http://urlwire.com BTW, I haven't used URL wire which is why I didn't comment. It's run by Eric Ward, so maybe he'll update us with some tidbits....? Cheers Nathan Holley ============ Sponsor Message =========== Will the real King please stand up? Sit down Content, you're no King. You're pictures, logos, imagery ... all kinds of stuff Google and the other SEs totally ignore. You, copy! Stand up! You're the Real King! You're words. You're the only page elements SE bots even look at. For the best search-engine-optimized website text in cyber- space, see the Copy Kings at www.GetWebContent.com/LED ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Moving sites > Is switching domains a simple matter of utilizing a proper 301? Or > is it more complicated, and will your rankings suffer long-term? - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2367 Hi Adam By sheer coincidence I did exactly this about ten days ago. I had a recipe collection on our main website, which I originally set up as a demo CMS. Embarrassingly, it was drawing more traffic than all the rest of the site -- it was well up in Google for many searches for specific recipes. So I decided to move it to its own domain. I made life more difficult for myself by also completely changing the back-end; it was running off a home-grown CMS written in ASP with an Access database (eek!), and after a little experimentation I decided to use MovableType instead. That meant that not only the domain, but all the page names and the entire structure of the site changed. On the other hand, the traffic this application gets isn't actually worth anything to me in monetary terms -- quite the opposite, it just uses bandwidth ;-) -- so I wasn't hugely bothered if it lost rank in Google for a while. I started off by buying a brand new domain name, setting up MT, importing all the data, fixing up the design, and testing it to see that it all worked OK. At this stage it was a secret from Google. Once I was happy, I wondered just how I was going to keep all that precious traffic to the old site. I didn't want to devote a huge amount of time to it, so I decided I'd just use 301 redirects. Thank goodness for dynamic pages! The old system used a single page called ShowRecipe.asp which took the id of the recipe and displayed it. So I just recoded this page to take the id, look up the recipe title, and convert it into the new URL (MT uses "search-friendly" URLs constructed from the recipe title). Then it does a 301 redirect to the URL on the new site. I removed / renamed the few other pages on the old site. I added the site to my Google webmaster tools page and monitored the results. Google came and spidered a few pages from the site within a couple of days, and I was soon seeing almost the level of traffic I'd had on the old site. As of now, there are 23 pages in Google's index, which seems not bad for a brand-new domain registered less than a fortnight ago and with no incoming links yet, apart from our own site. The process is evidently not finished yet though, as old redirected pages are still showing high up in Google (#6 for "pitta bread recipe" for example). Of course if anyone clicks on those results they will end up on the new site anyway because of the redirect. I'm probably not going to bother going after links to the old site and asking people to change them, but I would if this was a commercial site. Otherwise old linked-to pages seem to hang around in Google forever. So at present just doing the 301 redirect looks as if it is going to work pretty well. If you completely change the structure of your site it's well worth doing a specific 301 redirect for every page I think, for the benefit of human visitors rather than search engines! Regards Veronica Yuill http://www.larecettedujour.org/ <Moderator Comment> Great post, thanks Veronica. There's another write-up on this subject by Lisa Barone and it's well worth a read: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2007/03/how_to_properly.html Looks like a proper 301 will suffice much of the time. -Adam -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Rankings > First of all, my page was nowhere in the first three > pages of results on a search for peace & calming. - Tom Anson, LED Digest 2367 Hi Tom, I'd say the basic problem is that Google doesn't appear to have indexed that page. It's quite deep in your site structure, and even though you've done the right thing with your site map it's often difficult to get these sorts of pages indexed. Have you tried creating a Google sitemap (xml) and adding it to Google Webmaster Tools? For a large site with a deep site structure it can be a necessity. Here's a tool for creating one: http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/ Of course building some external links to that page will help as will some more direct links from within your own site. Try adding a direct link from one of your article pages. You could also submit an article to EzineArticles.com which contains a direct link to that page. Articles published on EA get indexed without fail and will often rank well themselves for keywords you are targeting. You might also have a problem with over-optimisation. There isn't a lot of content on that page but for what there is "peace & calming" appears in just about every heading and paragraph. Reduce the keyword density, preferably by adding new content. Get the page indexed, de-optimise, and there is every chance it will rank well. Of course, for any of this to be worthwhile I'd first determine that if potential customers are actually searching for "peace & calming." Cheers Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: Rankings Tom, I hope this post will address your concerns. I have a replicating site and am doing some marketing directed at the home page. I am rather new at this marketing thing, so I'm using this replicating site as my playground. I was unable to place the java tracking code on the home page, the only page I want to track. And I want to add a few other links that will open in a new window. The tech help told me to host the home page at mydomainname.com (or whatever). When I do that, I can add whatever I want to the code for that page. All links on the home page are full urls (can't think of the word)... so all links will work; sending any requests to the replicating site. Tech explained how to get all the code and images for the home page so I can upload them to my host at mydomainname.com. I'm sure there will be a flurry of comments over the duplication of content etc. etc. I have yet to get around to this project, but it is high on my list. If there is interest, I will let you know the outcome, or you can contact me. Maybe someone else is doing this and can add some info. So, someone goes to ansonoils.com. The home page at youngliving.org/anson appears, but www.ansonoils.com is in the address window. As soon as the visitor uses a link on that page, they would be taken deeper into youngliving.org/anson and that name would appear in the address window. This may not solve your problem, but if it does you'll want to make sure Young Living has no problem with it! I hope this makes sense. If not, feel free to contact me off list. Nancy Cardinali Baby Boomer Travel! www.boomertravelcenter.net P.S. This is not the site I refer to above. ==== BULLETIN BOARD =============================== From: Shel Horowitz Subject: New Book It took me a lot longer than I'd thought it would, but finally, book #7, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, is published. You're welcome to preview it at http://www.grassrootsmarketingforauthors.com (It's so new it's not even set up on Amazon yet -- a couple more weeks for that). I'm also pleased to announce that the Business Ethics Pledge campaign http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org has signatures from 30 countries on six continents (anyone know an ethical business leader in Antarctica who'd like to sign?<g> Shel Horowitz ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved." - Erich Fromm |
