Along the way I also tried using The Open Press (their site said that they had been hacked and hence it was impossible to retrieve a password or register a new account) and Free Press Release Center (I issued one of the releases on Wednesday, by Saturday it was still pending. The functionality of this site is also lacking in that you cannot edit a release that has already been submitted.)

The SEO service I used at PRWeb cost $200 and included the following features (at the time of writing):

• Your release on top sites like Yahoo! News and Google
• Permanent hosting on PRWeb.com
• Attach images and documents
• Track results with statistics on reads and impressions
• Two-day distribution
• Distribution on industry- specific Websites and blogs
• Premium placement for enhanced search results
• Social bookmark links for increased distribution
• Embedded news image
• SEO tools including anchor text for search optimized results
• 10 industry and 5 regional news feeds
• Advanced SEO statistics
• Next day distribution

The PRWeb was easy to use, although I initially forgot to add several images. I was able to edit to press release and re submit. It appeared that in each case the PRWeb staff scanned the press release before approving it.

Overall, apart from writing the release, it was a very easy and smooth process. I am able to check the SEO statistics to find out information such as headline impressions and full page reads. From an SEO perspective I have gained several in-links, but there is some industry debate about how useful PR generated in-links are. In this case it appears that there a lot of sites that reproduce the press release (often without the included links).

PRLog was also very easy to use, but with the added advantage of being free of charge. I could not find follow-up statistics and I do not know yet how many sites will have actually received the release. This will ultimately be the most important factor as to whether this is a viable service.

Update 03/09/09

Free Press Release Center approved my release today (i.e. 2 – 3 working days after submission) which is fine. I suspect that the reality is that unless a press release service has some review mechanism then they will put out so much garbage that people will cease to take them seriously.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on PR

Cuil’s claims to fame include a very large search index (121,617,892,992 web pages at the time of writing) and founders who (mostly) hail from Google.

The design of the site is crisp and clear with an attractive black, gray and powder blue theme. Search results are returned in a three column format and include images from the sites in the search results.

It sounds like it has got a lot going for it, but in a few tests I did, the relevancy of the results was very poor. It may look good and may have a lot of pages in the index – but if results are not what you are looking for then things don’t bode well for Cuil.

Cuil’s founders claim: “… Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.” Unfortunately the delivery of this seems flawed.

On the positive side it is great that competition is alive and well in the area of search. Competition creates innovation. It seems that Cuil raised a tidy sum of venture capital to get things moving, so there is also investment money to help create alternatives to the industry leviathan, Google.

So, in conclusion, I guess I am a little luke-warm about Cuil.

HitTail works by creating a small snippet of Javascript that its users add to their sites (on every page). Using this Javavscript snippet HitTail is able to track the searches that eple made to find a particular site. The searches can be viewed in real time bu logging into your HitTail account.

The core of the HitTail idea is to provide information on the ‘long tail’ of searches that people make to find a site. A significant percentage of visitors find a site based on a few keywords BUT the vast majority of visitors find the site by using keywords that are in the ‘long tail.’ HitTails’ crown jewels is a suggestion list.

The suggestion list is created using patent pending technology and creates a list of terms that HitTail believes would be worthwhile for you to create conetent about. They particularly recommend creating content using a blog or CMS because of the ease of use.

According to HitTail, creating new content based on the suggestions creates a snowball effect and further suggestions. The end result should be significant new traffic.

Visit HitTail to view some informative demo videos about the HitTail service.

The public relations function includes dealing with press inquiries and writing news releases. These releases are distributed to the press, television and radio (and other interested parties) and can result in free publicity.

The Internet has been a great boon in helping business make the most of public relations. With the Internet a well crafted and newsworthy press release may not only elicit some journalistic interest and hence press coverage, it can also directly help the SEO function by the propagation of your content and link rich press releases throughout the Web.

Potential advantage of Internet distribution can be summarized as follows:

• Potential inclusion of your information of major new sites such as news.yahoo.com and news.google.com with a resulting increase in traffic to your site
• The inclusion of incoming links to your site
• Potential coverage on your information on the Web. For example, a blogger may pick up your information and blog about it
• Potential pick-up of your release by the print media
• The ability to track the propagation of information through the Web by using tools such as Google Alerts and Technorati.

How to write a press release for Internet distribution

The first question to ask when creating press release is who the press release is aimed at? This should determine how the release is written. For example, if you were writing the release for the editor of a technical publication you would probably spend more time describing your product’s technical details. On the other hand, if you were writing for a general mainstream publication you would probably be better describing features and benefits is a less technical way.

Remember that a press release is not an advertisement and if it becomes one it will not be accepted by the better on-line PR services and it will certainly not be picked up by the media. A good way of determining whether your release is potentially interesting is to put yourself in the shoes of the journalist who ultimately will receiving the release. Ensure that you include any necessary information required to help those receiving the release to understand and get the most out of it.

Once you have considered the sort of information you will include in your release, you will also need to consider which key word phrases you wish to optimize the release for. These phrases should be embedded in the release similar to how you would use them in a new Web page.

Press releases should be written to make the recipient want more information. Don’t tell the whole story, but rather, leave the reader wanting more. The release should be front end loaded so that the guts of the information are included in the first paragraph.

Information must be factual, true and newsworthy and should answer the following questions:

• Who are the main protagonists involved in the story described in the press release?
• What is the release describing (e.g. a new product or service, a new staff appointment, a human interest story)?
• When and where did the story take place?
• Why is this story important and why did the events described occur?
• How does your product or service work?

Press releases should not be written in the first person and should contain active language. For example, the phrase: “the software program resulted in Acme Corp saving $10m in 2007,” is written in passive language. The phrase: “Acme Corp saved $10 in 2007 using the software program,” is active language. Avoid embellishment, exaggeration and hyperbole and stick to the facts.

A printed news release should consist of the following main components:

• ‘FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” should be added to the top left with all the words capitalized.
• headline (use headline case)
• dateline – the city from which you are releasing the news together with the date
• body
• company information
• add ‘###’ on a blank line at the end of the release to indicate that nothing further should be published.

When formatting the release, do not use all capitals (except for the FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE statement) and avoid using exclamation points. In both cases the press releases will be viewed as being over embellished. Check for grammar and spelling. You should print the release out and read it as well as asking someone else to review the release. it is often a good idea to reread the release the next day.

Press release should be more than one paragraph and ideally would be about 300 words. Small articles, that tell a story well will often be used to fill a small area in a publication.

Web based PR services often provide a format to ensure that your release is correctly formated for their service.

One of the advantages of releasing press releases on the Web is the ability to add photos and multimedia files such as video. Some of the on-line PR services (including PRWeb enable you to do this.)

Once a release has been written and submitted, you hope that it will interest a journalist who will seek more information. One of his first ports of call is your Web site. Yet another reason why an up to date and content rich site is so important.

Google News and Yahoo! News

One of the big advantages of releasing news on the Web is that the release may appear in one of the biggest Internet news services:

Google News – http://news.google.com

and

Yahoo! News – http://news.yahoo.com/

Not only do these site include press release, but they also include back links included in your releases.

Neither Google News nor Yahoo! News accept news releases directly, rather they garner information from other news sites. for USA based news releases, Yahoo! mentions

• PR Newswire (http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index.shtml),
• Business Wire (http://www.Webwire.com/default.asp),
• PrimeZone (http://www.primenewswire.com/),
• or Market Wire (http://www.marketwire.com/)

PR services

As well as providing press release submission services, many of the sites listed below provide useful information to help you develop your press releases.

PR Web – http://www.prWeb.com/

PR Leap – http://www.prleap.com/

PR.com – http://www.pr.com

I-Newswire – http://www.i-newswire.com/

PRZoom – http://www.przoom.com/

Clickpress – http://www.clickpress.com

http://www.pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_ja_submit&Itemid=94

The Open Press – Free Press Release News Wire: http://www.theopenpress.com/

Pressbox – http://www.pressbox.co.uk/about.htm

24-7 Press Release – http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

Business Wire – http://www.businesswire.com

Wire services

PR Newswire – http://www.prnewswire.com/news/index.shtml

Prime Newswire – http://www.primenewswire.com/

Webwire – http://www.Webwire.com/default.asp

Marketwire – http://www.marketwire.com/

Duplicate content issues relating to PR

With PR your hope should be that some of your press releases are ‘picked up’ by news sites or are somehow displayed somewhere else on the Web. You might, therefore, be concerned that you could be subject to a duplicate content penalty. In an interview with Lee Odden on Feb 20th, 2008, Google’s Adam Lasnik laid these concerns to rest (http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/02/adam-lasnik-video/). According to Lasnik penalties for duplicate content are very rare. Google recognizes that most duplicate content is either inadvertent or actually quite useful for the end user. He recommended that in order to work with this duplicate content to your advantage, make sure that each piece of work included authorship information and linked back to your site. This is particularly helpful in Google knowing that your site is canonical – in other words, which URL represents the original and most relevant source of the material.

An area where content duplication could have an effect within a site. In this case, while pages wouldn’t necessarily be penalized, the fact that there are duplicates could cause Page Rank diffusion. In other words, the Page Rank of a particular page could be reduced because of duplicate content.