Online Marketing Blog

PRWeb announced today that they are now offering a service that will allow their press release distribution clients the ability to map the company domain name to the RSS feed of the release hosted by PRWeb.

When you submit a press release through PRWeb and associate that press release with a RSS Group in the PRWeb control panel, the release is then published as part of an RSS feed. This feed url can be pinged to the RSS search engines and also used in an auto discovery tag for RSS feeds in the company web site. That way RSS enabled browsers and feed readers can automatically detect the company press release RSS feed and subscribe to it, even if they do not have a blog.

PR Newswire recently tipped me off to a test press release service that promises SEO benefit:

“Off-peak press release with SEO via PR Newswire Reach news sites, portals, search engines, media”.

Apparently it is to be a 5 day listing on the home page of PR Newswire. There are 10 releases to start and they are being auctioned off over at eBay. If my bid wins, I’ll post about the process:

“Winner of this auction may distribute one news release of 400 words or less via PR Newswire’s US1 Newsline. Distribution timing will be at PR Newswire’s discretion, Friday through Sunday.”

Traditionally, PR Newswire has been the go-to source for investor relations and similar announcements as well as a channel for corporate PR news announcements. The test offers a press release of 400 words or less to be distributed at a time of PR Newswire’s choosing.

PRWeb is at it again with a new announcement on the addition of Technorati and PRWeb tags to the PRWeb news wire and press release distribution service. The press release, “Holy SHIFT! PRWeb Plays Tag with Social Media” comments that the new features will make it easy to add Technorati and PRWeb specific tags to your press releases.

The SHIFT Communications’ social media release was in part a motivator for the new services as the release from PRWeb states:

“If you spend the time to create a press release following the template
outlined by SHIFT Communications, all you have is an electronic
document unless you have a distribution platform that supports its
features. PRWeb is that platform,” said David McInnis, CEO and Founder
of PRWeb.

PRWeb has announced today the launch of their SEO Wizard toolset to help users create and distribute optimized press releases.

“The SEO Wizard will guide members in structuring their press releases in a way that will give them optimal results within news and search engines. The idea of search engine optimization, or increasing a company’s value in search engines by using specific keywords, has gained popularity in recent years. PRWeb’s SEO Wizard quantifies keyword traffic, so users can focus on the keywords that are popular search terms and valuable to their PR and marketing campaigns.”

This is a tool that PRWeb staff have been using and now is being made available to all PRWeb users. Here are a few screen shots:

PRWeb has announced a viral, direct to consumer powered press release that offers $1000 to bloggers that find all 10 of the new features PRWeb has added recently. Rather than offering a single or multiple press releases announcing all the features, PRWeb is experimenting with having bloggers blog about the features, then have them trackback the press release. It’s a clever way to get attention and links I think. Here are the details:

To participate, bloggers must:
1. Successfully identify all of the new enhancements made to the PRWeb platform since June 10, 2006.
2. Create a blog post that identifies these enhancements and discusses their impact.
3. Post a TrackBack/PingBack into this press release.

PRWeb has announced the launch of their Evangelist affiliate program. Currently in beta, the program is available to a limited number of participants to start. The program offers a comission on services ordered from PRWeb via affiliate links and ads.

“Evangelists and power-users of PRWeb can now receive an agency-level referral fee for their word-of- mouth efforts.”

At the last Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC I talked with David McInnis about the idea of an affiliate program (he brought it up, not me) and I thought it would be a great idea. The type of product/service PRWeb offers should be very conducive to a successful affiliate program. At the same time, some affilates can get pretty aggressive and quality is an issue of prime importance for any wire service. To that end, PRWeb is limiting the initial participation of the program and then expanding to ensure quality.

Spotlight on Search – Interview with David McInnis of PRWeb.

Undoubtedly one of the companies that has had a major impact on the convergence of public relations and search engine optimization is PRWeb. David McInnis and his talented team have created more innovations surrounding press release distribution than any other wire service.

While I’ve used PRWeb in one way or another since 1999, it wasn’t until 2003 that my company impelemented press release optimization for both our SEO and public relations clients. In the past 2 years PRWeb has grown immensely and has led the way as a Web 2.0 wire service. Many new online wire service companies have sprung up trying to emulate the services of PRWeb and a good number of “old school” wire services have added the kinds of services to their mix that were originally pioneered by PRWeb.

My co-worker and public relations goddess Karen Sams has posted a nice list of press release optimization tactics over at Media Relations Blog. She covers:

• Keywords
• Headlines
• Text links
• Landing pages
• RSS feeds

A question that often comes up when I talk to public and media relations professionals about optimizing press releases, is whether or not an “optimized” release can actually perform double duty as an effective communicication tool with journalists as well as search engines.

My response is that a really good writer can optimize a press release that does TRIPLE duty. What I mean by that is, a release can use keywords in the right places and frequency and form on a press release in a way that is engaging and effective for the journalists and bloggers that will receive them in their inbox or find them as they search for story ideas.

Today PRWeb officially announced the launch of their support of trackback functionality with press releases. While press releases have traditionally been used to announce news to the media, PRWeb has pioneered a direct to consumer model that allows companies to announce news to a broad audience using PRWeb’s distribution channels.

The addition of trackback functionality creates a link between bloggers and press releases in a way that is not found elsewhere. Now when a blog comments and cites a press release distributed via PRWeb, it can send a trackback to the release, which will in turn create a link back to the blog.

I just got off a conference call with David McInnis, founder of PRWeb, where he announced several recent and brand new services.

PRWeb has been diligent in creating the leading direct to consumer press release distribution model to-date. Currently, around 1000 press releases are sent out a day.

PRWeb has positioned themselves as the first Web 2.0 press release distribution platform and has hired a new Web 2.0 content manager.

New PRWeb Services:

301url.com launched Dec 2005. Different than other url shortening services because it permanently redirects. Helps to avoid breaking urls. Good for bookmarking by making easy to recall urls. Also, free.