Website Marketing Basics: How To Write A Press Release

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 30, 2009

I just came back from a meeting with a personnel staffing organization. They are experts in resume writing. They really know what a company is looking for and how to best present a potential employee. A resume is your one shot at the title, if it doesn’t look good you have pretty much no chance at getting hired (unless of course you father owns the company).

Last year, this company was invited by Vibe Magazine to work on Jay-Z’s resume. The proper use of press releases would be to announce this to as many media outlets as possible and of course the world. However, PR is tricky. If you were to write an article, it would not be accepted as a press release. So therefore writing a press release has to be crafted in a very specific way. At SalemGlobal we mostly use PR Web. They allow us to distribute press releases to thousands of media outlets and websites. These press releases should follow the same format as any search engine optimized web page. Meaning your primary keywords should be at the top of the press release and anchor text should be used to link to important landing pages and your home page.

Press releases help one of our clients, a NJ homeless shelter and soup kitchen (www.EvasVillage.org), spread the word about their services. Two winters ago they wrote a press release announcing their open doors for the homeless during the winter. This news was so enticing that it was picked up by the weather channel.

In conclusion, you should be writing a minimum of one press release a month, prioritizing your keywords and linking to and from your press release. Next week we will talk about gearing up for the holiday season and how you should prepare for it from a marketing perspective.

If you have any questions or would like help writing press releases email me at raphis@salemglobal.com, call us at 212-993-5828 or visit www.SalemGlobal.com for more information.

Website Marketing Basics: Linking Strategies and Interactive PR

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 22, 2009

Linking is essential to any website marketing campaign. As discussed in past weeks, content declares you the “authority” on a subject but links declare you to be “popular.” In order to get to the top of Google and other search engines, you have to achieve a certain balance of these two things. I happen to think that the Google’s chief scientist is smarter than most website marketing professionals and he can tell whether people are gaming the system or not. So though the industry has many thoughts, ideas and philosophies on the matter, I still recommend the standard building your site and links the natural slow and steady way. Don’t believe the 300,000 links for $3.00 model. It never works. Time, on the other hand, and effort and building up your site with industry knowledge will get you where you want to go.

According to Alexa.com, the top 5 sites in the world are: Google, Facebook , Yahoo, YouTube, and Windows Live. Certainly you have all heard of those top 5 sites. But check out how many links they each have: (type link:www.DOMAINNAME.com into search window)
Google (565,000 links according to Google, 255 million according to Yahoo)
Facebook (176,000 G links, 55mil Y)
Yahoo (5,610 G links, 147mil Y)
YouTube (1,680 G links, 46mil Y)
Windows Live (37,800 G links, 1.6mil Y)

Now you and I will most probably never achieve these statistics. (Unless you are a budding Internet entrepreneur and you read my tips of the week LOL!) But one strategy that has been working for us is Interactive Public Relations. Writing press releases announces to the world what you are announcing and what you are working on. But writing your piece is not a battle at all; distributing it is. We happen to use PRWeb but there are plenty of other PR distribution companies out there at different price points so do your research.

Our best example of Interactive PR is a campaign we are working on for Eva’s Village (http://www.EvasVillage.org, 48 Google links, 3,238 Yahoo links). The fact that our press releases have reached hundreds of media outlets is great. But even better is when it is picked up by local and national media as in the case when it was picked up by the Weather Channel and MSNBC. The links from any old website are good. Links from a popular and relevant website are better. But links from a local and/or national news media outlet is the best. So always strive to write something interesting about your organization and announce it to the world. You will be glad you did.

Next week we will talk about how to write a press release. If you would like to know more, please contact me for a free, no obligation website marketing evaluation, consult and assessment. Call 212-993-5828, email raphis@salemglobal.com or visit our site, www.SalemGlobal.com.

Website Marketing Basics: Linking From Marketing Websites

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 21, 2009

Last week we had a review of why linking is so important. It declares you the most “popular” website in your industry, field and niche. “Popularity,” coupled with “authority” should yield the highest search engine position for relevance for a keyword search.

Since the 90’s I always wondered why people didn’t have their own in-house marketing person or department. It seemed too natural to me to just “do it myself.” But then I matured and realized that not everyone has the skill set that one needs to drive business and fresh leads into the door. And on top of that, while some people might have those skills, they might not necessarily have the time. And a final perspective is that maybe they have the time but they are investing in product and service and not necessarily marketing.

Regardless of the above, all businesses and organizations should have a “corporate” website as well as a “marketing” website. I like to call it the webs answer to franchising. In other words, every retail store and operation started out with 1 store. Nathan’s. McDonalds. Burger King. Dunkin Donuts. And yes, even Starbucks and Duane Reade. My point is that you need to have more than one location on the web as well. And just as each Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway has to prepare its own food, serve it and clean up after themselves in the evening, the same principle applies to websites. Yes the old “location, location, location” absolutely is important, but on the web its also about Branding branding branding!

So if you are in the healthcare industry, you will want the corporate name of http://www.DrJackieSmiles.com. But at the same time, you will also want http://www.OrthodontistNYC.com. Because people will find you and hear about you and will go to your main website. But then there will be people who will search the Internet in many different ways via different popular keyword searches and you will want to be found as well. So the lesson for today is that it’s not only about relevant content, it’s also about strategic domain name with strategic keywords, as well as marketing yourself in as many places as possible. And the link juice from these marketing sites is going to be very potent as well if you build them up.

Next week we will discuss linking strategies and interactive PR. If you would like to know more, please contact me for a free, no obligation website marketing evaluation, consult and assessment. Call 212-993-5828, email raphis@salemglobal.com or visit our site, www.SalemGlobal.com.

Website Marketing Basics: Linking Strategies

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 8, 2009

As we have been talking about for most of the summer, content is crucial and it can declare you the authority in a specific industry and on a specific topic. Being the authority, however, is only half the search engine optimization formula. The other half is linking.

Linking strategies come in all forms shapes and sizes. Natural linking is when someone out on the internet thinks that what you have created is so interesting and relevant that they will place a link to you on their site. Natural links are great because they come from an unsolicited source and they are going to be hosted on a separate IP address and most likely their site is going to be relevant to what you are promoting or selling.

While a natural link from a natural site is the best thing for you, a solicited link or a requested link can be equally just as great, because you will only request a link from a relevant source.

The next level in links is random links. Meaning a link from a directory or from your nephew’s blog about Transformers will be a link, but not a relevant link. Also links from a highly trafficked site can be valuable and helpful even if it’s not relevant to your site.

Lastly, purchased links can be relevant and can be great. However in this industry we still have yet to understand the full ramifications of whether purchased links can detract from the value of the link. So use caution when purchasing a link on another site.

Next week we will talk about relevance of links within marketing sites. If you have any questions about linking we would be happy to help you, just give us a call at 212-993-5828, send me an email at raphis@salemglobal.com or visit our site at www.SalemGlobal.com.

Website Marketing Basics: Implementation of Keywords

Posted by Salem Global on Sep 1, 2009

By now, everyone should know that keywords are the basis of all search and website optimization. Keywords, as we learned in last week’s tip, are found by industry experience, knowledge and online software. But now that you have your list and you have prioritized it, what do you do with it?

First thing is place it in your meta data. Considering that your <title> and <description> are the most important places for your keywords, make sure that they are not only in your homepage meta data, but also on internal pages as well. Some people think that they can put in on their home page and maybe even replicate it on the internal pages. But this is not true. You need to prioritize according to each page subject and content.

Keywords should also be placed in the URL string. Obviously your homepage is going to default to index.html, index.php or something of that nature, but in your internal pages you should be naming the URL strings according the keyword topic as well. For example, I named one of my internal pages for my site marketing.php and for two word phrases check out website-marketing.php. Funny thing about keywords is that some people have typos and misspellings. Always be careful to spell correctly.

Content. Content must be aligned with your meta data and URL string. Obviously, whatever you are promoting or selling must be written about. Make sure your keywords are the title of your pages and also in <H1>, <H2> or <H3> tags. Be careful about keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the activity where you just repeat the word over and over even though it makes no sense. Believe me, keyword stuffing used to work back in the 90’s and that was called black hat SEO. But search engines are a lot smarter today than ever so you can’t do that anymore. Your content has to be clear and make sense.

Finally, use your keywords outside of your website as well. Use keywords for anchor text when linking from other sites. Use keywords when writing articles and Press releases or when you comment on blogs and forums.