Use Your News to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Sophie Shiatis

sshiatis@prweb.com

Agenda

• Channels to drive traffic• Online news - before and after• The power of social media and how they relate

to your news releases• The new rules for online news releases and

content ideas from everyday events• Format and structure the perfect news release• Measure results

What Are You Doing to Drive Traffic?

Source: 2008 Elliance, Inc.

An Integrated Channel Strategy is Ideal

Source: PRWeb Customer Research 2009

Nowadays Having Your News Online is Essential

• The Facts:– 80 million people get their news online every day– 64% of journalists use Google or Yahoo! to follow the news

Source: 2008 Pew Internet Research

News Releases Have New Life and Purpose

Newspapers and Magazines are in Decline

• More than 250 newspapers went out of business and more than 40,000 journalists have lost their jobs in the last 18 months. (Source: Papercuts 2009)

• The top four news sites —Yahoo, MSNBC.com, CNN.com and AOL—saw unique visitors grow 22% to 23.6 million visitors a month. That was 2X the rate of increase of 2007 and more than 5X the rate in 2006.Source: The State of the News Media 2009

The New Relationship - Direct

Blog Readership Takes Off133 Million Blogs Today

• Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US (Source: comScore Media Metrix Aug 2008)

• 77%% of active Internet users read blogs (Source: Universal McCann March 2008)

• Twitter users grew by 1192% in 12 months • Facebook: 104 million members (Source: Mashable April 2009)

• In certain categories, social media is becoming the de facto industry press

The opportunity: Figuring out how to engage with influential social media networks will help you

increase traffic, generate leads and increase sales

The Growing Blogger Community is an Excellent Place to Generate Interest

• Best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, content• Creating good content pays off: Links are usually editorial votes and the blogger community is an excellent place to generate interest

Source: Technorati: State of the Blogosphere 2008

Source: 2008 Elliance, Inc.

The Impact of Social Media on Search

The Rules for Online News Releases & Optimization

The Rules for Online News Releases

1. Don’t just send news releases when ‘big news’ is happening; find good reasons to send them all the time

2. Instead of just targeting a handful of journalists, create news releases that appeal directly to your buyers

3. Write releases replete with keyword-rich copy

4. Create links in releases to deliver potential customers to landing pages on your web site

5. Optimize news release delivery for searching and browsing

6. Drive people into the sales process with press releases

Source: David Meerman Scott, The New Rules of PR

Making the Most of Your News Today

Start thinking of news in a different way:• New hire or staffing change• Product launch• Award announcement• Anniversary• New client or partnership• Additional office or territory• Participation in a charitable/community event• Receipt of additional funding• Investor news• Profitability• Client success story

News Release Types

Source: PRWeb Customer Research 2009

So What Now? Use News Releases to Tap Into The Power of Search

• Conduct keyword research to find 2 or 3 relevant terms your target audiences are likely to use for a news search

• Edit your press release – make sure the headline and first few sentences actually include your target terms

• Add hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable

• Use one of the press release distribution services crawled by Yahoo! News and Google News

• Measure results – an optimized press release can increase traffic, create publicity and generate leads

How Optimized News Releases Impact Visibility

Source: Elliance, SearchEngineLand.com 2008

Keyword Research

Source: Elliance, SearchEngineLand.com 2008

The Average Search Query is Growing Longer, so Look for Multi-Word Phrases

Source: comScore Blog 2009

You Don’t Need to Identify Thousands of News Search Terms, Just Two or Three

• Who: Company name or description

• What: Brand name or product category

• Why: Problem or benefit• When: Season• Where: Location• How: Call to action

Source: Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR

News Release Advice from PRWebNews Release Advice from PRWeb

• Start strong

• Proofread

• Identify yourself

• Write professionally

• Pick an angle

• Answer the tough questions

• Utilize anchor text and features

• Stick to the facts

• Use active voice

• Economize your words 

• Limit the use of jargon

• Don't be afraid to toot your own horn

• Don’t give away all the secrets

Use Google Trends to Check Search Volume in Google and Google News

Source: www.google.com/trends

Keyword Discovery Has Searches From CNN, Google News and Yahoo! News

Source: www.keyworddiscovery.com/

Users See 120 Characters of Headline in Yahoo! News, 60 in Google News

Sources: Yahoo! News and Google News

Yahoo! News

Google News

News Release Distribution

The Online News Release

Online Videos, Images, RSS Feeds and Podcasts Extremely Sticky

Source: PRWeb.com

Create a Landing Page that Contains Information That is Valuable to a User

Source: PRWeb.com

Measuring Results

Most Important Success Indicator is Driving Traffic

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Links

Search position

Reads/Impressions

Sales

Inquiries

Pick-up

Traffic

Source: PRWeb Customer Research 2009

Pillar Generates $20k From a Single Press Release

Source: PRWeb.com

The Challenge• New product launch

• Needed an effective way to create buzz and build its brand

• Small staff , small budget

• “While tight budgets and difficult economic times had others shying away from investing in PR and marketing, I saw it as an opportunity to take advantage of the quiet and leapfrog past the competition,” said Richard Lee, founder of Pillar Consulting Corp.

PRWeb Solution• Sent an online news release to (Media Visibility package) announce the

company’s newest web tool

• Worked through the guidance of the PRWeb editorial team,

• Created a compelling news release with a dynamic headline to entice both customers and reporters who would want to learn more about his business.

• Read the release at http://www.prweb.com/releases/keyword_friendly/pillar_consu lting_corp/prweb2267214.htm.

The Results

• In just one day, that one online news release attracted more than $20,000 worth of business for Lee’s company. A significant return on his initial investment!

• Pillar also saw his search engine rankings climb and successfully raised his company’s online visibility—generating both buzz and business for his company.

“I sent the release out in the morning and that same afternoon, I had someone call me who had read my news release and wanted to learn more about our services” ~ Richard Lee

ResortQuest Secures Better Search Engine Rankings

Source: PRWeb.com

ResortQuest Now Appears in Top 5 Rankings with 100s of Quality Keywords

Source: PRWeb.com

In Summary

• Conduct keyword research

• Include terms in headline and first few sentences

• Add links• Use news release

distribution service• Measure results of

campaign

News Release Optimization Generates PR Outputs and Business Outcomes

• Higher ranking

• More press mentions

• More blog mentions

• Enhanced awareness

• Increased site traffic

• Qualified leads

• Additional online sales

Source: Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR