Online PR and press release to reach foreign markets

Many people today recognize that search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations (PR) have much to offer each other. However, gone are the days of SEO “press release” strategies of write it, optimize it, distribute it and receive a number of incoming inks. With Google’s Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, we now have to put a real emphasis on high quality, unique content that is linked to by quality sites. And this is where real public relations – as opposed to poor news release distribution – can play such a crucial role for launching your website at an international level.

At Openvalley, we believe that PR should be part of International SEO best practices. Here is why:

The PR industry is definitely ‘getting it’

Public relations professionals are skilled storytellers and content generators and should be a part of every SEO effort. The future of SEO is not in the technology, it’s in the ability to tell stories that readers and Google will find interesting… and that’s public relations. Media will be more likely to link to content that is compelling and provides information that goes beyond the original reporting.

There is a tremendous synergy between SEO and PR

Putting it simply, SEO enhances a press release. And the editorial links the press release generates bring direct click-throughs and lead to higher rankings in the countries you are targeting.
Public relations enhances SEO by focusing on what’s newsworthy, crafting a great story, finding local editorial opportunities, getting coverage and building relationships with reporters and editors.
PR helps SEO directly by increasing branded traffic. Indirectly, PR helps SEO generate inbound links from quality sources that not only gets first-touch exposure to new audiences, but credibility in the eyes of search engines.

It is possible to measure PR results

SEO grounds PR with hard, measurable data. PR has always been notoriously difficult to pin down, but SEO adds hard numbers to the equation. SEO helps PR connect their work to the rest of the company’s business goals and make it possible to measure the return on investment

Editorial links bring a big SEO Boost

Most PR links are extreme quality links. Because getting them is not a free for all – you have to earn your media placements, But the rewards are worth the effort. PR makes it possible to get local backlinks.

There’s a big cascade effect

Journalists will often quote, comment or enlarge upon other journalist’s work. Bloggers are also constantly citing other stories. So if you get your story covered in one prominent media outlet in the country of your interest, you’ll quickly see a cascade of similar stories and links spring up. You’ll get local links you never even asked for.

Here are some recommendations we follow in our international PR campaigns:

• We stick to higher end distribution services in the target market for issuing the press releases over a true newswire such as Marketwire, PRWeb, PRnewswire, BusinessWire, e-Releases and social PR hybrid services such as PitchEngine.
• We work with content partners and sites Google considers to be good information sources.
• We remember that a traditional press release has the main purpose of garnering the attention of a journalist that can tell your newsworthy story to his or her audience.
• Write for the journalist, the search engine, the customer, the prospect and the social media news networks. This might require several versions of the same press release.
• We avoid duplicate content by having multiple versions of a press release: press version, website blog version, wocial media version. Each version should be at least 20-30 percent different from each other and ideally contain different links.
• We don’t add to many links in the press release. We also try to include different links in the blog/web versions. We avoid systematically inserting several links, always using the same anchor text. We don’t have no more than one link to the same URL. Avoid using the same anchor text more than once in any release.
• We try to use different distribution services.We mix it up so the content is coming from different sources – not always the same. The real win in link building for PR is a constant flow of new links from new sources.
• Instead of just using exact match anchor links, we always diversify anchor text by using branded and non branded keywords

At Openvalley, we carefully take into account these aspects when creating effective strategies to develop your international presence with press relases. Call us today.