Monday, August 29, 2011

20 Free Best Press Release Distribution Sites!

We write press release to disclose and spread a news amongst readers. Press releases are becoming a successful way of Internet advertising. These not only provide valuable inbound links, but also increases traffic and thus your chances of getting located by search engines. But, all your efforts will get waste if the press release is not newsworthy or if it is distributed via a non-credible PR distribution site. There are only a few PR services providers who can provide you maximum visibility and credibility on the Internet. Follow these guidelines while choosing a press release distribution site:
  • You should use a site that has a Google pagerank of 4 and above because sites with no pagerank will lower the credibility of the PR.
  • Approach a site that allows you to optimize the press release for search engines by using header tags, tagging, anchor text and other SEO techniques.
  • Keep away from sites that use NoFollow tags. These tags are inserted into website code in order to stop the search engine from finding the site.
So, here are a few press release sites that provide both free and paid distribution services. The list will help you in finding a reliable PR distribution service provider who will get you maximum visibility on the World Wide Web.
  1. PRLog.org – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 16,551- It is an ordinary and functional looking site but results are good. It gives free distribution service for Google News and other search engines. Inbound links are allowed and the site is also properly optimized for search engines. You can schedule the press release.
  2. Free-Press-Release.com – Pagerank 5/ Alexa 3,547 – Good Alexa ranking makes this not so good looking site really good. The best part of using it is that you can place banners on the press release that will point to your website. The paid service offered by this website has better ranking and many SEO benefits.
  3. OpenPR.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 42,088 – This service distribution site is based in Germany. It provides free submission and distribution along with SEO benefits.
  4. PR.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 27,482 – The domain name is superb but you can say the services are not so appealing. The site has one free basic service and two paid services of $199 and $499. You can give full company profile by taking paid option.
  5. NewswireToday.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 51,449 – The design of website is not good and you will difficulty in navigation also. It offers common free distribution tools and the premium service will enable you to give logo, product picture and insert other features in the press release.
  6. EcommWire.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 107,600 – This site has low traffic but it is really good for e-commerce related press releases. You can add three keywords, image and pass a link with the anchor text.
  7. 1888PressRelease.com – Pagerank 5/ Alexa 58,760 – The site has good page rank and also gets good traffic. Active links are allowed. If you opt for their paid service, the placement will be better and you will get features like image galleries & permanent archiving.
  8. PressMethod.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 66,727 – The site gets good traffic. There is a limited list of features for free PR distribution. There is no point in spending additional money to get paid service.
  9. PR-Inside.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 17,995 – The only reason for which you can use this site is that it is one of the few PR distribution sites that are focused on Europe.
  10. I-Newswire.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 69,619 – You get free PR distribution option to sites and search engines. If you opt for premium membership, the only difference is that you can add graphics on the PR.
  11. 24-7PressRelease.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 46,460 – This free press release submission site provides limited distribution service. Active links are allowed.
  12. Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 56,516 – It is a clean looking site and the increasing traffic level will increase the pagerank soon. You can do PR submission and distribution, include one link with the anchor text while availing free service. The paid service enables you to give three links, permanent archiving and has many more features.
  13. TheOpenPress.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 64,691- You will get free distribution service in plain formatted releases. If yo want HTML-coded release, go for paid option.
  14. Merinews.com – Pagerank 5/ 49,687 – It is more of a online news journal that also provides press release distribution service.
  15. PRUrgent.com – Pagerank 3/ Alexa 80,402 – You will surely get some useful advice on writing press releases. This site is good looking and poor Alexa rank.
  16. Press-Base.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 389,117 – If you want a press release distribution site where you can get on the front page and under the category of your choice, go for this one.
Paid Press Release Distribution Sites
  1. BusinessWire.com – Pagerank 8 / Alexa 16,730 – It is mostly used by bigger companies to meet SEC full disclosure requirement. Prices are not disclosed and can be known via application.
  2. PRWeb.com – Pagerank 8/ Alexa 9,822 – This site has a good reputation when it comes to distributing local news in a single region. The prices for service start at $80 and go up to $360, depending on the visibility you want to get.
  3. PRNewsWire.com – Pagerank 8 / Alexa 7,508 – This not so good looking site is used by many journalists. The annual subscription price is $195 and you will have to pay additional price for more exposure.
  4. PRLeap.com – Pagerank 6 / Alexa 55,935 – The site is said to deliver reasonable results. It is nice and clean. The price of press release starts from $49 – $149, depending on the level of service you have opted for. The distribution is done on search engines, RSS feeds and newswires.
Getting media coverage is the best form of marketing, but you need to make efforts to get good coverage. Choose the press release distribution site carefully, especially when you are paying for the service.

Source: http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/20-press-release-distribution-sites/6839/

Google Announces The Retirement Of The Google-News Bot!

Google has announced that they will now crawl news sites with Googlebot instead of Googlebot-News. For those wondering about Googlebot, it is the same bot that crawls sites for web search.

google-news-logo

If you are wondering if you can still block your content from being indexed in Google News; you can opt to do so. David Smydra from Google confirmed the same by commenting,“Google News will still respect the robots.txt entry for Googlebot-News, our former user-agent, if it is more restrictive than the robots.txt entry for Googlebot.”

So, what are the implications of this announcement?

Well, as a Google News publisher if you want Google to index your content in both the web search and the News, then you won't have to do anything. By default Google will continue crawling like it normally does, however your server logs will only see entries for Googlebot as opposed to the previous separate entries for both the Googlebot and Googlebot-News. So basically if you wished for Google News to keep your content, you can continue using the Disallow directive in robots.txt or meta robots tag in order to block the Googlebot-News.

However if you are using data to understand how your website is crawled and make improvements this change is likely to make things much more harder to comprehend.

For instance, if you were to spot that your news writings are not being indexed in the Google News and you check the news-specific crawl errors in the Google Webmaster Tools and fail to notice any issues, apparently you will no longer be able to verify your server logs to see if the writings are being crawled for the news index. Whilst you can only see if the pages are being crawled in general, it does not help in troubleshooting problems on the whole.
Furthermore, if you are generating a news-specific Sitemap but missing the specific URLs, until now you could review your server logs to make sure that Googlebot-News is crawling a particular URLs, and varify the URLs that were not crawled in the Sitemap. However now, the only information the server logs will give you is if Google is crawling the URLs at all. Whilst, whether they are being crawled for web search and not News, that detail is now lost.

Also, with this announcement you will now lose vital insight for web search too. So, if you were looking to tracking down why specific pages on your site are not being indexed, previously you were allowed to review your server logs to see if they were being crawled, but now it will appear as though they are being crawled for Google News.

However it is not all bad news, you can still get News-specific and web-specific crawl errors from Google webmaster tools, so you will certainly get some available insight for checking if your website is being crawled and make improvements. Also the most important reason for this is the ability to block and allow content from Google News separately from web search, and that functionality remains.

Whilst, this in-depth insight was useful for many of us it is indeed unfortunate that Google has now retired the Googlebot- News.

Source: http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/google-announces-retirement-googlenews-bot/10190/

Friday, August 26, 2011

Facebook Updates Advertising Guidelines!

Facebook has announced the release of their new version of Advertising Guidelines and Help Center resources in their bid to make them “simpler, better organized and more intuitive.”

This new version now allows the offline casinos, legal gambling establishments and state and national lottery commissions companies to advertise on Facebook. However, they are required to strictly adhere to the proposed guidelines of targeting appropriately and ensure they are not violating the laws. Whilst online gambling in the U.S. is still not allowed to be advertised, but when secured the required authorization they may be accepted in other countries.

As for the pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industry Ads they are still not allowed to advertise for sale, distribution of prescription pharmaceuticals and online pharmacies. Meanwhile, the advertising of legal dietary supplements that do not consist of any banned substances are permitted to publicize their ads as long as they adhere to the proposed guidelines.

The Facebook Help Center updates' main goal is to compliment the Advertising Guidelines as it now consists of “examples of acceptable and unacceptable ads along with more detailed explanations of the reasoning behind those examples. The layout closely resembles that of the Advertising Guidelines and now contains many of the specific requirements we once included in the old Advertising Guidelines.”

Facebook makes it very clear that all it means is, the examples and restrictions previously listed in the Advertising Guidelines are now located in the Help Center and you are expected to check both sources for compliance.

This new version has created some buzz amongst the Facebook users, however like every change Facebook makes its not all good news with many users criticizing them. Following image reveals how the Facebook users have reacted to the announcement:

 
 
Source: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/facebook-updates-advertising-guidelines/10183/

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Being Tweaked To Let You Input 2500 Terms!

As spotted by Hobo SEO, Google seems to be experimenting on updating it's AdWords Keyword Tool which will allow its users to input 2500 keywords into the search box. Currently, the word limit is caped to a mere 100 in order to come up with new keyword ideas.



However, if you try it now it might not work for you as they are still working on it. While there is enough buzz hinting the same, the official word is yet to come out from Google.



Source: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/google-adwords-keyword-tool-tweaked-input-2500-terms/10160/

Thursday, August 25, 2011

How To Get Links From Major Industry Associations!

External Links are one of the major contributors towards getting a better placement in the search engine results. Link Building with major industry associations will go a long way to improve search engine rankings. But more often than not, a simple link exchange program with a leading website of your niche will not work. They are already the industry leader, hence, they really don't need a link from you. So what can you do in this case? It is to understand and then implement these steps.

Why Are Authority Sites Important?

The most important thing- these authority websites are trusted by the search engines- they believe that where these sites are pointing, it is a good and relevant page. The absolute authority websites are mostly '.gov', '.edu', '.org' etc. They have gained their authority status over time and are well established and several years old. With time, they have many backlinks from other sites.
In the case of relative authority, or niche authority websites, they belong to the most important sites for a particular niche. Like maybe a trusted android forum may be an authority website for a mobile retailer.

How To Find High Authority Sites?

Well, the PageRank (above 7) can be considered in deeming a site as authority or industry major in your niche. When these come first in search results, it shows that they have great links to them, and are interlinked-also they're well-known names (trusted and not spammy). Here is how you can find them:
In a country specific Google home page- a search for "www" displays the local authorities. Like in the screen shot, you can type in '.gov' and get a list of authority government sites.

How To Get Links From Authority Sites

For sites in your niche, you can do a search like- “Big companies in health care, electronics etc” “popular news sites and media houses” “top universities”, “top government agencies, and charity”. See the screen shot for better understanding.

How To Get Links From Authority Sites

If your linking campaign needs more, then you can link to sites that have been linked to by the authority sites- and then you can link to these second tier sites. For this you can use the Bing operator "linkfromdomain:authority.com" to find out what sites is the niche authority site linked to.
The more authoritative your domain is, the more damage it can sustain
.
How To Get Links From Authority Sites

How To Get Links From Industry Majors?

If you have a link from a government site or an educational site, your site's weight increases considerably for the search engines. Even with the leading sites of your niche linking to you, your domain will gain credibility. But these sites have offers to link to a hundred sites, why should they do that  with you? To ensure linking from industry majors, follow the strategic steps below-

Offering Them An Affiliate Program:

Yes, you have to part with your money here. To gain a link, you will have to pitch in some cash. However, this will be small investment, seeing the amount of traffic and higher ranking you will get on linking with the authority site. As a part of your strategy to get links from the biggest names in your niche, you can offer them an affiliate program that pays the company a percentage of any sales resulting from the link. Government sites, military websites, News sites and educational institution & universities, are of high authority. So, if it seems possible, you can choose from the numerous affiliate programs and services on the market to offer these websites.

Now, some may take up the offer, but some, including esteemed publications, may not take a share in the sales, as it goes against their image of unbiased reporting. There are ways around such non-profit modules too. You can provide the sites with yearly dues etc., and in return get those precious links.

Offering Discounts To Their Users:
This strategy could work. If you approach an authority site in your niche, like-Bloomberg News, if you are an online retailer, and offer their members or readers a discount on your products. Moreover you can also pitch them the idea of creating a special web page on your site for their members/readers only, that will feature special discounts. So, in exchange of the link to your site,  you'll provide this discount for free. Authority sites or organizations may take this offer, as it will put them in a positive light for being so concerned in bringing down their employees' expenses by offering them discounts.
If this also doesn't work, then you may go further by offering them a share of the profits in addition to the customer discounts. The industry major will like it if you offer it or its users some kind of 'exclusive' bonus or benefit that they can pass on to their customers.

Write Content For Them:
One of the best ways to get them to link to you is- great and unique content. When writing the content for the authority site, make sure that is is well written and original- only then will they will publish it. Send them the piece for free and get a link to your domain from somewhere in the write up. A link in the reference box always helps. Apart from articles, writing tutorials for them will also work. Tutorials- as in how to do a thing- is something that these sites appreciate and so do the users. So write an understandable tutorial and garner authority links. See in this screen shot of how the USA.gov has linked to interesting articles on prescription drugs.

Source:http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/links-major-industry-associations/10114/

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Top 5 SEO Mistakes To Avoid!

You are doing everything by the book, but still there is always chance of an error. So just pause. Think for a while. You might be making some mistakes, that can prove to be death traps for your site. Listed below are the Top 5 SEO Mistakes, that many commit unknowingly.

1. Not Doing The Proper Keyword Research- You may be targeting the wrong keyword. You may have picked up on a keyword that may not be what the average user will pick up. You SEO campaign can shoot up or go completely for a toss, depending on the choice of your keywords. Tip: use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool – to help you find keywords best suited for your site.

2. Lack of keywords in the URL or the content – You have done your research and know what your targeted keywords are. But, the entire effort is gone waste if your URLs are not search engine friendly and the targeted pages/urls don't have keyword rich content. Getting your keyword on your URL (the domain itself, or the file names that may be part of the URL) will rank you better with Bing, and often also with Google.  As for the content, make sure you put the keywords keeping users in mind and not the search engines alone. It is also advisable to highlighting them or making them bold.

3. Empty Title tag – The title of the page is one of the most important place to use your keyword. Having a keyword rich title tag helps you in getting better rankings. It is understood that with your keyword in your title, the search engines will show the same in the page title in SERPS

4. No use of header tags -Header tags : <h1>, <h2> — are of primary importance. Why? Because they highlights what are your web page is all about. Remember that Search engines always scan the header tags for important keywords, so always use them to highlight the main points of your text. You may also use your chosen keywords in header tags.  

5. Ignoring Social Networking – This is one of the most common mistake. Social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are huge traffic sources. Sharing your posts on these sites, will drive huge traffic to your sites. Focus on Social Media too, while optimizing your site. Check out recent presentation by Navneet on Slideshare.

Stay away from too many backlinks as well, as too many of them may lead to your site being penalised or worse, banned. Remember, the real task is not getting heavy traffic only. Its the conversions. You need to focus on the kind of traffic you are getting too. Question yourself- Is this the kind of traffic I want on my site?

Keep these pointers in mind, the next time you set to work on optimizing your site, and see the better results with time.

Source: http://www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/top-5-seo-mistakes-avoid/9462/

Now Bing Webmaster Tools To Show Integrated Data From Yahoo!

Bing's Webmaster Tools now shows integrated data from Yahoo Traffic in some reports and areas.
The integration began on the 12th August, however, September will the first month that will see complete merger of the combined data. Justifying this amalgamation, Bing's Duane Forrester commented, "Given the combined effort the Search Alliance represents, it makes sense to showcase relevant data from both engines within a webmaster account."

The good news is, most areas and the data within your accounts itself are not going to be affected with this merger.

Following are the noticeable changes that are seen in the Traffic Tab's, Traffic summary report and Page Traffic reports:
  • Impressions- will increase as a result of showing combined impressions for the listings across both search engines
  • Clicks- will also increase because of the integration of the two data numbers
  • Click Through Rates (CTR) will also either rise or fall as a direct consequence of the above two
If you are worried if this will affect your actual ranking, rest assured as these changes will only reflect the numbers shown and not your actual rankings.

yahoo-bing

Also note that, at the moment the data is combined by default and is updated in all the markets wherein Bing powers Yahoo search.

Source: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com/bing-webmaster-tools-show-integrated-data-yahoo/10085/

Use Local Listings To Rank Higher in Mobile Search

Mobile Search Is Becoming Standard:

Searching the Web from a mobile phone is increasingly part of everyday life. Looking for some new sports equipment and not sure where to go? Just type it into your smart phone, and you’ll get a list of businesses eager sell you their products.

One thing you can be sure of: If you like fast and easy information, your prospective customers feel exactly the same way. So if you own a business dependent on local traffic, you’ll want to be right there on people’s phone screens when they’re searching for what you sell.

Getting there is pretty simple: Claim your business listings on all the major search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing. Each of these search engines returns local results when someone searches for a product or service. You’ll have a much better chance of appearing front and center in mobile search results if you claim and optimize your business listing.

Google business listings
You should create your Google Places listing before your Yahoo and Bing listings for several reasons. First, Google is the most widely used search engine, and its local listings – called Google Places – include a mobile app.

Second – but no less important - Google recently rolled out product listings, which help searchers find products available in their area. If you provide Google your product availability data, your Google Places page will display products available at your store. It’s a great way to introduce what you’re selling to people who don’t know your business yet.

How To Optimize Your Google Listing


  • Claim your business listing using a business email address. Don’t use a @gmail.com address – instead, use a @mybusinessname.com address. This helps strengthen the trust Google has in the authenticity of your listings.
  • Make sure you list business categories that are relevant to your store. For example, if you sell sporting equipment, use some variation of “Sporting Goods Store” as one of your categories.
  • Use the city and state where your business is located in the description.
  • Use a page from your website that includes the address and phone number of your business on it as the website link on your listing – for example your “Contact Us” page.
  • Keep all important location information, such as business name, address and phone number, consistent across all local listing platforms. This sends a strong signal to search engines that your local listing is legitimate, and that the information is accurate. Your consistent information creates greater trust in your listings and site, and that ultimately helps your rankings in search results. 

Click to Call


iPhone Screenshot

If you decide to use Google’s pay-per-click advertising program - called AdWords - be sure you add Click to Call. People using their phones to search often want to locate something quickly, and Click to Call offers them a one-step option to get in touch with you.

Click to Call lets you set up ads that allow someone to simply click your business number and call you directly from your ad. It’s so easy that a shopper is much more likely to call you than a competitor whose number isn’t as readily available.

Click to Call is easy to set up in the AdWords campaign settings. All you need to do is set up location extensions and provide your phone number.

Don't know how to set up AdWords yet? Read Google AdWords Guide for Beginners.

Location Extension Set Up


Connect your Google Places with your AdWords

To make things even easier, you can link your Google Places listing directly to your AdWords account, and your location and contact information will automatically be included in your ads. Next, make sure you’ve chosen to show your ads on iPhones and other mobile devices that have full internet browsers.

That’s it – once you complete these few easy steps your customers will be able to call your business with the click of a button.

Source: http://www.aboutus.org/Learn/Use-Local-Listings-To-Rank-Higher-in-Mobile-Search