Press Releases are an often overlooked method for creating authority and high value backlinks to your site. I think the biggest reason that press releases are overlooked is that they require special attention and effort in order to get them accepted and published.
Plus, now that Google is shifting emphasis to Authorship, press releases are an excellent way to increase your authorship authority.
First Things First... Be Smart About Keywords and Everything Else
The first thing to remember when crafting your press releases is that they are read and vetted by human beings who have very specific ideas about what they want to see. So being smart about keywords doesn't mean trying to work them in as much as possible. It means writing for people in a natural way. Keywords in the title, keywords in the first and last paragraphs, and Bob's your uncle. Even more important than that... make it interesting.
Tease, Not Please and Above All... Do Not Sell
Press releases are not sales letters. The goal of a press release is to generate interest... they should be very good teasers and nothing more.
I could go on forever about writing press releases but I would just be repeating a lot of what is already out there.
Voice
One of the main differences between a press release and a blog post, for example, is the "voice" you use for writing. What that means is how you talk to people. In this blog post, I am speaking directly to you. That means I am speaking in the voice of the "first person." For a press release, the proper voice is the "third person" for both you and your audience.
For example, on a blog I might say, "If you want to get the word out, my Handy Dandy Press Release service is the way to go!"
But for a press release, that becomes, "Press releases are a great way for anyone to get the word out on their newest project."
Enough from me... I'm no expert. But here are some great resources from those who are !
This series is from a pro blogger named Terry who is the husband of pro blogger Forever Amber. It's really one of the best resources on writing press releases that I've ever found and it's a shame he hasn't done more with it. It was actually pretty hard just to find the whole series as Amber's blog doesn't have a search feature.
Are you listening Terry?
Anyway.. here it is:
How to Write Perfect Press Releases
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
And another good source is this HubPages Hub by Christine OKelly
SEO Press Releases How to Write Them and Where to Submit Them
Now go out and write up a press release!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
SEO Consulting - Track & Report
I am looking for a simple way to analyze where the client's site and ranking is currently and how to effectively measure and track the results for the strategy I implement, so that I can deliver some sort of report to the client.
Let's not forget that there is only one thing you can "rank" for and that is keywords. So the first thing you have to do is identify the keywords the client wants to rank for or should be ranking for. Find out who the market leader is and run their site through the Google keyword tool to find out which keywords Google likes for them and use those keywords as a guide. Run your client's site through the tool and see how many of the same keywords Google finds them relevant for. Develop a list of keywords to target and a plan for creating engaging content around them.
Once you know which keywords you want to rank for, Market Samurai does all the rest.
Plug those keywords into Market Samurai, add your client's URL to the competition module for each of those keywords and track your progress. The competition module will show you exactly where you need to be with backlinks, optimization, etc., etc.
You're not ranking in isolation, you're ranking against the competition so they are your guide of where you need to be in terms of how many backlinks you need to have and mechanical stuff like that. As I told of of my clients... "The top site in your market has 20K backlinks. You have 200. They have 800 pages of content. You have 50. There is no magic here, you simply have to do better than they do at everything if you want to beat them."
I always try to demystify this stuff as much as possible to keep their expectations realistic.
I like screenshots. I love to show people how they went from green to red in Market Samurai's competition module. "Green means you can be beat. Red means you're a force to be reckoned with."
As for keyword analysis, there are a couple of things to do. Load the keywords from the competition's site that have the highest number of searches and use them as "seeds" for keyword research to see if you can find any keywords of opportunity they (or you) have been missing. Also look to see which of the keywords they're doing well on represent the best opportunity for you to target first. In other words, if they're doing well for decent keywords that they aren't specifically targeting (you know that's true if those keywords are poorly optimized) then you have an opportunity to go after those keywords specifically and beat them by doing it all better.
I also look for Challenge style keywords of opportunity and I especially look for easy pickings long tails that you can rank for really fast. Always nice to be able to say that three weeks ago you didn't rank for these keywords at all and now you're number eight.
I hope this helps!
Let's not forget that there is only one thing you can "rank" for and that is keywords. So the first thing you have to do is identify the keywords the client wants to rank for or should be ranking for. Find out who the market leader is and run their site through the Google keyword tool to find out which keywords Google likes for them and use those keywords as a guide. Run your client's site through the tool and see how many of the same keywords Google finds them relevant for. Develop a list of keywords to target and a plan for creating engaging content around them.
Once you know which keywords you want to rank for, Market Samurai does all the rest.
Plug those keywords into Market Samurai, add your client's URL to the competition module for each of those keywords and track your progress. The competition module will show you exactly where you need to be with backlinks, optimization, etc., etc.
You're not ranking in isolation, you're ranking against the competition so they are your guide of where you need to be in terms of how many backlinks you need to have and mechanical stuff like that. As I told of of my clients... "The top site in your market has 20K backlinks. You have 200. They have 800 pages of content. You have 50. There is no magic here, you simply have to do better than they do at everything if you want to beat them."
I always try to demystify this stuff as much as possible to keep their expectations realistic.
I like screenshots. I love to show people how they went from green to red in Market Samurai's competition module. "Green means you can be beat. Red means you're a force to be reckoned with."
As for keyword analysis, there are a couple of things to do. Load the keywords from the competition's site that have the highest number of searches and use them as "seeds" for keyword research to see if you can find any keywords of opportunity they (or you) have been missing. Also look to see which of the keywords they're doing well on represent the best opportunity for you to target first. In other words, if they're doing well for decent keywords that they aren't specifically targeting (you know that's true if those keywords are poorly optimized) then you have an opportunity to go after those keywords specifically and beat them by doing it all better.
I also look for Challenge style keywords of opportunity and I especially look for easy pickings long tails that you can rank for really fast. Always nice to be able to say that three weeks ago you didn't rank for these keywords at all and now you're number eight.
I hope this helps!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Easy SEO - Authorship
This is huge.
It looks like the days of people hijacking your content are over, but that's just the tip of the iceberg and this really is as big as an iceberg, with much of it below what you can easily see.
Google is now implementing, "the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content."
This means that when we publish to the web and the Google spider crawls that content, Google is going to try to identify and verify who the author of that content really is. If they can, then they will display the author's thumbnail image next to the listing in search results! Here's what it looks like:
Pictures Have the Power!
Pictures are incredibly powerful. We are basically visual creatures. Trust me, SERP results that have friendly faces attached to them are going to get clicked on way more often than those that don't and that act alone (more clicks) will boost your rankings. Plus, Google has said that being able to verify authorship is a ranking factor in itself.
If you don't jump on this, you're not a marketer!
OK, so how does it actually work? Here's the basic run down straight from Google:
To identify the author of a blog or article, Google checks for a connection between the content page (such as an article), an author page, and a Google Profile. Authorship markup uses the
You didn't get that?
Not to worry, because WordPress, as usual, makes the implementation of this fairly easy and I've got it all here for you.
The first step is to create a Google profile for your author, if you don't already have one. I'm assuming that you already have a Gmail account associated with your blog that you use for managing all your niche related email needs, right? If not, then you need to start one and use it to set up a Google profile. Log into your Gmail account and look to the top right where it shows your account name and click on that. In the menu that opens up, you'll see "Create Profile" and you click on that. Walk through the prompts and then when you get to where you can edit your profile be sure to be as interesting as you can and don't forget to add that profile picture! The more stuff you say in your profile, the better. Google likes "rich" profiles.
Here's what they say:
Here are some tips for creating a rich, useful Google Profile:
That having been said, after reading "Crush It" I'm a firm believer in building a personal brand and I strongly advise you to do the same whenever possible.
I also would recommend that you think carefully about the picture you use. It really should be as appealing as possible. Here are Five Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic. They do include tips about avatars and cartoon images, but I recommend that you stay away from those kinds of pictures. People like to see real human faces that are happy. Give that to them.
The instructions tell you to then: "Copy and paste the following code into your site where you want the button to appear"
When Google detects content you've marked as yours, we'll list that content on the +1 tab of your Google Profile (we'll do this automatically as soon as you've +1'd at least one webpage). You'll need to create at least one +1 on your own (look for the button on search results or around the web) before we can add authored content to your +1 tab. (If you haven't +1'd anything yet, just click this button and you'll be all set:
(the internal Google +1 button from the instructions doesn't reproduce here, but go ahead and click on my +1 button at the bottom of this post and you'll be all set! lol )
You'll then be able to see this Help article on the +1 tab of your Google Profile.). Then go to your Google profile, click Edit Profile, and then select Show this tab on my profile.
Getting it Together With Wordpress
Now I'm going to assume that you're like me in that you're basically the only author on your site and that you have an "About" page just like I do. If you don't have an "About" page on your site, you need to create one. It doesn't just give you a way to do this trick, it helps your site appear more trustworthy when people can see that it is owned by a real person.
Log into your site, and go to the Menus Page, which is under the Appearance tab and then look to the upper right for the "Screen Options" tab. Open that up and you'll see an option to "Show advanced menu properties" where you can check the box for "Link Relationship (XFN)"
Since the theme I'm currently using doesn't have native support for the "menus" function (it tells me this on the menus page), I created a custom menu and added the "About Me" page to that menu. If your theme has native menu support, you won't need to do this. For me, after I finish here, I will go to the Widgets page and drag the "Custom Menu" widget into my sidebar.
Now add the word "author" to the "Link Relationship" box on the About Me menu properties. Here is how my setup looks (you can click on the picture to see it full size).
Remember, for this to work, a link to your About Me page has to be on the post/page you're linking to and in Wordpress, the best way to do that is to have the About Me page in a menu that shows in a header or footer or sidebar.
That's the first part. Now you need a plugin. Here's the one: Allow REL= and HTML in Author Bios
Install the plugin and activate it and forget it. There's no setup or input from you required in any way. It works invisibly in the background. You need it because it allows the next trick.
Remember that code you copied from Google up above? Here's what you do with it...
Go to edit the About Me page and switch to the HTML tab and post the code into the page where you want your little Google Profile button to appear. But then you need to change the part where it says rel="author" to rel="me" and then save the page.
Now that you have Wordpress all set, it's time to go back to Google and add your URL to your Profile. Be sure that you add the "permalink" URL for the post/page to your profile.
The way to do that is to go into where you edit your profile and click on the "Links" area. Then select for "Add custom link" and in the window that opens up, the first box is for the name of the link and the box below it is for the actual URL.
That should be it!
You can test it all out by using Google's Rich Snippets Testing Tool
That tool has a cool little troubleshooter to let you know if you goofed up.
Have fun!
It looks like the days of people hijacking your content are over, but that's just the tip of the iceberg and this really is as big as an iceberg, with much of it below what you can easily see.
Google is now implementing, "the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content."
This means that when we publish to the web and the Google spider crawls that content, Google is going to try to identify and verify who the author of that content really is. If they can, then they will display the author's thumbnail image next to the listing in search results! Here's what it looks like:
Pictures Have the Power!
Pictures are incredibly powerful. We are basically visual creatures. Trust me, SERP results that have friendly faces attached to them are going to get clicked on way more often than those that don't and that act alone (more clicks) will boost your rankings. Plus, Google has said that being able to verify authorship is a ranking factor in itself.
If you don't jump on this, you're not a marketer!
OK, so how does it actually work? Here's the basic run down straight from Google:
To identify the author of a blog or article, Google checks for a connection between the content page (such as an article), an author page, and a Google Profile. Authorship markup uses the
rel attribute (part of the open HTML5 standard) in links to indicate the relationship between a content page and an author page.You didn't get that?
Not to worry, because WordPress, as usual, makes the implementation of this fairly easy and I've got it all here for you.
The first step is to create a Google profile for your author, if you don't already have one. I'm assuming that you already have a Gmail account associated with your blog that you use for managing all your niche related email needs, right? If not, then you need to start one and use it to set up a Google profile. Log into your Gmail account and look to the top right where it shows your account name and click on that. In the menu that opens up, you'll see "Create Profile" and you click on that. Walk through the prompts and then when you get to where you can edit your profile be sure to be as interesting as you can and don't forget to add that profile picture! The more stuff you say in your profile, the better. Google likes "rich" profiles.
Here's what they say:
Here are some tips for creating a rich, useful Google Profile:
- Update your Google Profile with links to any of your other author pages around the web. (To add links to your profile, click Edit profile, then click the Links box on the right of the page and add the links you want.)
- Your profile picture must be a photograph of yourself and of high quality in order to be eligible for be shown as a thumbnail in search results.
- To easily link to your Google Profile, add the Profile button to your site.
OK, so after you've created your profile, you then add links to the content you authored. In Wordpress, you want to be sure that this link is to the canonical address for the post. That means the shortest possible URL for that specific post. In Wordpress terms, this would be the permalink.
In the case of this particular post, it is: http://deanrichards.info/easy-seo-authorship- Your profile picture must be a photograph of yourself and of high quality in order to be eligible for be shown as a thumbnail in search results.
That having been said, after reading "Crush It" I'm a firm believer in building a personal brand and I strongly advise you to do the same whenever possible.
I also would recommend that you think carefully about the picture you use. It really should be as appealing as possible. Here are Five Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic. They do include tips about avatars and cartoon images, but I recommend that you stay away from those kinds of pictures. People like to see real human faces that are happy. Give that to them.
- To easily link to your Google Profile, add the Profile button to your site.
The instructions tell you to then: "Copy and paste the following code into your site where you want the button to appear"
Go ahead and copy the code, but save it for now as a text file, we're going to come back to this.
Now continue with the instructions as follows:
When Google detects content you've marked as yours, we'll list that content on the +1 tab of your Google Profile (we'll do this automatically as soon as you've +1'd at least one webpage). You'll need to create at least one +1 on your own (look for the button on search results or around the web) before we can add authored content to your +1 tab. (If you haven't +1'd anything yet, just click this button and you'll be all set:
(the internal Google +1 button from the instructions doesn't reproduce here, but go ahead and click on my +1 button at the bottom of this post and you'll be all set! lol )
You'll then be able to see this Help article on the +1 tab of your Google Profile.). Then go to your Google profile, click Edit Profile, and then select Show this tab on my profile.
Now I'm going to assume that you're like me in that you're basically the only author on your site and that you have an "About" page just like I do. If you don't have an "About" page on your site, you need to create one. It doesn't just give you a way to do this trick, it helps your site appear more trustworthy when people can see that it is owned by a real person.
Log into your site, and go to the Menus Page, which is under the Appearance tab and then look to the upper right for the "Screen Options" tab. Open that up and you'll see an option to "Show advanced menu properties" where you can check the box for "Link Relationship (XFN)"
Since the theme I'm currently using doesn't have native support for the "menus" function (it tells me this on the menus page), I created a custom menu and added the "About Me" page to that menu. If your theme has native menu support, you won't need to do this. For me, after I finish here, I will go to the Widgets page and drag the "Custom Menu" widget into my sidebar.
Now add the word "author" to the "Link Relationship" box on the About Me menu properties. Here is how my setup looks (you can click on the picture to see it full size).
Remember, for this to work, a link to your About Me page has to be on the post/page you're linking to and in Wordpress, the best way to do that is to have the About Me page in a menu that shows in a header or footer or sidebar.
That's the first part. Now you need a plugin. Here's the one: Allow REL= and HTML in Author Bios
Install the plugin and activate it and forget it. There's no setup or input from you required in any way. It works invisibly in the background. You need it because it allows the next trick.
Remember that code you copied from Google up above? Here's what you do with it...
Go to edit the About Me page and switch to the HTML tab and post the code into the page where you want your little Google Profile button to appear. But then you need to change the part where it says rel="author" to rel="me" and then save the page.
Now that you have Wordpress all set, it's time to go back to Google and add your URL to your Profile. Be sure that you add the "permalink" URL for the post/page to your profile.
The way to do that is to go into where you edit your profile and click on the "Links" area. Then select for "Add custom link" and in the window that opens up, the first box is for the name of the link and the box below it is for the actual URL.
That should be it!
You can test it all out by using Google's Rich Snippets Testing Tool
That tool has a cool little troubleshooter to let you know if you goofed up.
Have fun!
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
New Challenge, New Blog!
It's finally official!
The Challenge 2011 starts Sept. 1st so I decided it was time to clean this baby out and start fresh!
The 2010 forums are still active and if I was a betting man, I'd bet they won't remain that way for long. But until they fold (and after they start again) I'll be posting some of my answers to questions that I feel are helpful to everyone.
I also have a tutorial for WordPress users on how to get going with the new Google author thumbnails that I will be posting tomorrow.
So until then.... let's party! A new Challenge! New fun!
The Challenge 2011 starts Sept. 1st so I decided it was time to clean this baby out and start fresh!
The 2010 forums are still active and if I was a betting man, I'd bet they won't remain that way for long. But until they fold (and after they start again) I'll be posting some of my answers to questions that I feel are helpful to everyone.
I also have a tutorial for WordPress users on how to get going with the new Google author thumbnails that I will be posting tomorrow.
So until then.... let's party! A new Challenge! New fun!
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