Formatting of Links in Direct Press Releases

[edwardlewis]

I have been looking around but not found any great suggestions.

If we send out a direct press release to a journalist, eg to their email address, what is the best format to send it in (eg word, pdf, rtf, html)?

Also, if it was to be sent out as a pdf or word doc, is there a good way to put links in there to increase the chance of them putting a keyword link in the article if it was to be published on their site? Would a hyperlink in there be confusing or is that ok?

[Jinx14678]

"A hyperlink in word can easily be stripped out by someone and then it is not clear what the link was to or what words it was on."

Personally in my opinion this is the nature of the beast... If you give good relevant links that help the authenticity of the article, then the poster, will not have as much inclination to remove the hyperlink...

But if it is obviously trying to be an SEO Anchor text link, then you run the risk of it being removed as this is not the aim of a link in a press release... A link should be informational and not self serving (or not seem self serving

w00t!

[Jinx14678]

Hi,

Just as a personal opinion placing a self serving SEO link in the first paragraph is sort of bad ettiqute, and could possibly affect your distribution, as well as readability. But of course this is an age old battle as he is correct, a link higher up has more ability to be indexed and possibly pass rank.

I would also attempt to not concentrate on "placing" SEO links, but actually find relevant and helpful ways to place anchor text, as in the future just placing random and obvious anchor texts that "sort of" make sense will loose more and more "steam"

Shane

[smokin_ace]

Yes you are right Of course on PDF file the link will be more secured, but it is not comfortable to adjust the text there. So the best option still will be MS word, the when the editing will be finished, you can convert the doc into PDF.

I am sure you know that you can't simply copy the text from PDF on website because text in MS word has hidden coding and it might mess your HTML!

Cheers, Russel

[edwardlewis]

Hi Russel,

Thanks for your help. I understand the points that you have mentioned. However, it is not easy and there is a lot of room for error when using word.

A hyperlink in word can easily be stripped out by someone and then it is not clear what the link was to or what words it was on.

Cheers, Edward

[smokin_ace]

Dear Edward,

I will suggest you to keep the docs in Word format, because this is the easiest format for adjusting the text and adding the hyperlinks!

Also make sure that your article doesn't have more than 3 links, because then your article might not bring any value for SEO. Meanwhile the recent research shows that the highest value will bring the link located in the first paragraph! So if you have for ex. the keyword "Roller skates", try to locate this anchor text with the link in the first paragraph.

Hope it will make sense to you,

Cheers,

Russel