Where/should I post my press release/articles on my own website?

[echo1]

I have started a long-term article marketing campaign and press release distribution. I will have about 4 articles and press releases in total every month. Although the press releases will not be self-promotional, sometimes they will be talking about a certain product that we unveil.

The question is, due to the high quality of these press releases, should I put them on my website as well as publish them on third party websites? If so, because they target a specific service/product which we already have a dedicated page on our website, wouldn't that put Google in the position of choosing between the two pages?

I was thinking to put them on my blog and link internally from there with the keywords that I target on those pages as anchor text. The same question for articles. Any suggestions?

[echo1]

Thanks again for everything!

[ShaMenz]

Glad to help

Just another thought on using video on-site...if it were possible to grab very short video reviews from actual clients while using your services, that could be gold in terms of converting visitors to your site.

Not entirely sure about the detail of how to make it happen, but I'm imagining a happy, smiling bride and groom shooting a 30 second video snippet while in the back of the limo being driven to the reception..."the limo is gorgeous, our day has been wonderful and Joe our driver even brought barley sugar candy to help settle my butterflies on the way to the church!"  these are the type of videos that will engage your audience and tell the story of your business.

Best of luck with it,

Sha

[echo1]

Thank you, that is the answer I was looking for!

[ShaMenz]

Hi again,

I would say that both approaches are valid, as long as you are very strategic about targeting your content.

My personal preference is to work first on building better content on-site (I am a member of the "why help someone else when you can help yourself" movement :), but if there is an opportunity to use the domain authority of another site to improve your own site, then that can obviously be of value too (especially if you are trying to build the strength of your own domain).

The key is to target the content you develop for each and NEVER use the same content for both.

When it comes to targeting, I follow two basic rules - articles on other sites should be aimed at an audience seeking "how to" assistance, while on-site content should be the type that will help to "engage" your audience with your company or brand.

For example:

An article on an external directory might be "How Early Should I Book My Wedding Limo", while a new page of on-site content might be "Why You Can Trust Us To Drive Your Daughter To Her Prom"

Hope that helps,

Sha

[EGOL]

In this situation I would become an Adwords expert while I continue an attack on organic SEO.

[echo1]

We did make a couple of videos. I took your (Seomoz) advice and started shooting some short clips. They are already on Youtube for a few months know and we are working on several ideas to create a long term plan for releasing at least 1-2 videos per month. This is how it looks: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxCiPV17s0Y&feature=feedlik).

About ranking in local search, I talk to Rand about it on a private question and my opinion is that unless I have an exact match domain and tens/hundreds of local reviews, I'm not going to be able to outrank my competitors. Google seems to rank companies based on their listing address without checking the facts and this is so frustrating. For example, I know for a fact that NONE of my competitors have an office downtown Chicago but they do on their Google listing and that counts a lot because the closer you are to Downtown Chicago the better you rank. Also, they use very strong keywords as their listing Title instead of the name of their company as per Google guidelines. It seems that not only they are not getting penalized for that but they are even being pushed at the top. When Google still puts so much weight on exact match domain, when business are taking advantage of the system by posting  fake reviews and using other shady tactics to rank high in local search, there is not too much I can do. Everybody here is preaching a white hat approach and I fully supported but for smaller companies like mine is not that easy to put up with spammy websites because Google doesn't do enough about it. I don't want to lead this discussion somewhere else; I just had to say something about it.

Your thoughts are always greatly appreciated.

[EGOL]

Have you thought about making a few videos?  I believe that opening a youtube channel and getting a few videos up and one on your homepage can help your rankings.

How about a video on "renting a limousine - how to get what's right for you"?  This  would not be promotion of your service and would not contain any chest thumping... just explaining and showing all about limousine rentals to people who have never rented before.

Also, have you gotten your site ranking in local search?

[echo1]

I kind of knew you gonna say that...when I see my competitors ranking so high up using spammy techniques, all my patience goes away and all I'm thinking about is is how to gain back my position in Google. The problem is that I need results fast, 70% of my company's revenue is coming from our online presence. We don't do ANY paid advertising which means that if we go down to page two in Google, the phones stop ringing.  You see, it's not always what you should do but what you can do. I need time and money to find very good writers to create that kick-ass content that you talk about and when I do find them and have the articles ready it is very hard not to publish them online where the results will appear much faster.

[EGOL]

If you are creating strong content for a weak site then promote that content where a one-sentence post about it will capture a lot of attention.

Promoting it on sites such as slashdot or reddit or digg can be valuable.

If you give away great articles and they are posted on other stronger websites then those other websites will outrank you, steal your traffic and get all of your link, like, tweet, etc attention.  This is feeding your competitors and creating new competitors.

Be patient as your site accumulates power and don't be so tempted to give away your most important assets for a small and short-term gain.

[echo1]

Egol, I saw your response after I submitted my answer above. Although you gave good advice most of the time, I am not sure if your answer is wright more me. As I see it, you create awesome content most of the time, the websites that you put your content on are very strong or at least strong enough to rank for the keywords that you target on those articles. I understand that but if my website is not as strong as yours, shouldn't I have to use, even temporarily, other means to get the word out until my website grows stronger?

[echo1]

Sha, I like your response, a very professional approach. My press releases are going to be submitted to major online Release sites. It was just a question if I should put them on my website or not. It does make a lot of sense because the whole idea of a press release is to generate the attention of journalists who then use your contact information provided to call you and get a conference for information that they can write about. They want things that are of general usefulness for the public, not just simple promotion, that's what advertising pages are for.

The thing is, I have been doing SEO for about a year now and it seems to me that there is no wright answer. What works for you might not work for me and vice-versa.  I am not going to have my press releases on my website. I read that the articles SHOULD be put on your website although even the best content guys on Seomoz have different opinions about this. What’s your take on this subject? Do you publish your articles on your website before or after you submit them online?

Although I agree with people like Egol or Ryan who supports the idea of having the articles published on your website first ("why give it away to somebody else if it's that good")__, this approach is not for everyone. For me, it makes sense to have them pushed through bigger article publishing websites because I get much more exposure. My site is not as powerful as I want it to be to get the most out of those articles.

[EGOL]

It all depends on the quality....

... if this content is best-on-the-web then publish it only on your site but promote it everywhere

... if this content is really good then publish it only on your site, promote it there conspicuously, promote it to your closest allies

... if this content is low quality then offer it to your competitor to post on his website

[RobertFisher]

I would do either. Also, Sha makes good points around press releases and what they are for. Unfortunately, with most of the PR sites, what ends up happening is they try to stuff it with the name of the company over and over and they overuse old stale info so that a release around the site can be made. (I see this a ton with attorney sites: The John Doe Law Firm states that often when it rains there are clouds in the sky!....John Doe is here for you in the event of a flood caused by that cloudy rain.)

To me, they should have never released it if that is the approach. But, that is simply my opinion. A new product or an update, actual news around a flood and something newsworthy about the company, etc. are all reasons to do a press release. Make sure it is newsworthy in some way to who you target.

[ShaMenz]

Hmmm...

Hi echo 1,

My view of Press Releases is quite different. The sole aim of a press release is to provide writers/bloggers/journalists with the key information they need to research and write stories or articles of their own which will promote your site (or your business, products & services).

A Press Release that is likely to be successful in achieving its aim is by necessity quite structured, following a pre-determined format and containing particular facts and information ordered quite specifically to make the prospective writer's job easier. So, by its very nature, a good Press Release is not what I would consider suitable page content for my site. For this reason I would never consider adding releases to my on site content.

Of course, the other natural conclusion from this is that if my Press Release reads like great page content for my site, then it does not follow the basic principles of a well constructed release and should be looked at closely before it is submitted.

If you are submitting to the major online Release sites, they all have resources which will basically teach you the format that you should use for your releases.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[ASOS]

I would definitely put them on your own site as well and have a few keyword rich links back to the areas you want to push on your site.

We are looking at doing this to support the main areas on the site. We will also still host them online in other places too.

Nothing wrong with doing this. The few links back from these will pass link juice across to your key areas.

[echo1]

Robert,

Your assumption is correct, I do have dedicated pages to those keywords. Our site has only a blog, would you recommend creating a new page "In the press" or build a new category on the blog with that name? I would have all my press releases hosted there, what do you think?
I am using some companies recommended by Seomoz.

[RobertFisher]

Echo1

I would approach it this way. If you are releasing them as articles and press releases, I would have them as a blog for the articles and not as a part of the content (assuming you already have pages devoted to these keywords) so you do not split the power of a given keyword term. With the press releases, if you have an "In the Press" type page, you could put them there and, yes, use internal links.

I would make sure that all have links back to the appropriate keywords (good anchor text, etc) on pages for all. This will insure if someone posts them, that your links are most likely to be there and come back to you.

A caution is that with press releases, if you are using a company that does that, be sure they are not already hit with Panda issues. I read that the Berkshire Hathaway site with "Patented SEO" was hit by Panda and lost some of its ranking.

Best