I work frequently with my husband’s web development company, so I know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the new Atkins Diet in the world of technology. All companies want to know about it because they think it will save them tons of money in advertising. Many companies sell SEO services, and some make ridiculous promises! (Example: We’ll make you #1 on Google! they say… sure, sure! Just roll your eyes when you see that one.) We do offer SEO services, and there’s many things a company can do to improve their SEO rankings.
However, the best way to raise rankings without buying Google AdWords, is to simply have a lot websites linking to your site. This is a great differentiator for search engines like Google to be able to tell if a website is the real deal or not.
With a background in PR, I know how to get free publicity. And now, there’s even more avenues to get news published! Press releases are often published on the websites of publications, especially when they don’t have space in the print edition. This used to be a lesser thing in PR because everyone loves to see a printed clip. (The web can sometimes be a bit invisible to those leaders who like physical printed materials.)
However, now with SEO coming to the forefront, press releases offer companies with a cost-effective and powerful tool to send out a message AND raise the ranking of your website, as long as your press releases link back to your website. I’m going to using this approach with a few of my clients that I also have access to their web stats; it’ll be interesting to see if I can measure a correlation between web stats and press release distribution. It’ll be fun! I’m going to use this website as a guinea pig also.
