So, you have your press release all checked and ready to go. You have managed to write a newsworthy story about your company that holds enough value to be shared with your buyers. You may not have earth-shattering news at first glance, but pretty much anything can be worth sharing with your audience.
Here are a few examples to get you started:
- Launched a new product, service or program? Worth sharing
- Upcoming campaign or events? Worth sharing
- Attending an exhibition? Worth sharing
- Speaking at a conference? Worth sharing
- Won an award? Worth sharing
- Opened a new distribution channel? Worth sharing
- Good quarterly results? Worth sharing
- Won a new customer? Worth sharing
- Merger or acquisition? No doubt that it’s worth sharing…so start typing quickly!
You’ll have probably carefully optimized your news release too for searching and browsing: killer keywords and long tail keyword-rich text…Check! Inbound reference links to an internal page of your site not just your home page…Check! Incredibly attractive title…Check! Amazingly compelling images…Check! Alt tags…Check! Newsworthy content…Check! Check! Check! Check!
What you can do next
There are different ways of reaching your target audience when you have put together a press release. My advice first of all is to make sure you have your website analytics software configured to track your SEO efforts. Right after that, you need to publish your story on your own website and then send it to many different news release distributors. It is important that your news release is retrievable from as many reliable places as possible and also having it saved in a corporate archive of your company’s press section is a great idea.
Most press release submission sites will only keep your news story for a few months and when that time has passed your story will most certainly disappear unless it is indexed by Google and the other search engines through a permanent link on your site. You want to make sure that when a potential buyer searches for an essential word embedded in your press release a couple of years after you have published your story, he will find you easily in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
As I have mentioned before, you also want your story to appear on news wire distribution services simultaneously so that it gets as much exposure as possible. The great thing about submitting your Press Release to a news distribution channel, when done properly, is a visible increase in:
- Visibility of your company in the search engines
- Inclusion in online news services such as Yahoo, Google, Lycos and many others
- Possible media coverage by a journalist who can pick up your story
- Real time contact with your audience in case the distribution service offers RSS feed
- Back links from good-quality sites that increase the ranking of your Web site for your keywords
There are a great number of distribution services available on the Internet. Most of them offer the possibility to purchase basic coverage in any geographical area for a fixed annual fee. But there are some others press release submission sites that offer good media exposure at a very low cost or for not fee at all.
Try these 20 Free SEO-Friendly News Wires
As a marketing professional I know how hard and time-consuming distributing your company’s news can be.
Take my word for it, when I say that I have spent hours and hours conducting research on the most affordable free Press Release submission sites.
So now I’ve come up with my list of over a 100 sites that can be found on the Analytics SEO project management tool; and here are the free ones that I recommend.
Hopefully, this will help lighten the workload of any SEO professionals, link builders, PRs and webmasters who are running SEO campaigns.
| Domain | Free | Cost/Release | Min Fee/Year | SEO Friendly | Notes |
| www.webnewswire.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Hyperlinks limit per release:2 |
| www.theopenpress.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Hyperlinks limit per release:2 |
| www.techprspider.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Allows full html and clickable links but not anchor text links |
| www.prlog.org | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | No | Links are not clickable |
| www.prfriend.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Only covers US geographical areas at registration |
| www.prfocus.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | No | Contact urls are clickable |
| www.pressreleasepoint.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.sanepr.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | It takes about a month for a release to be published |
| www.pressexposure.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.pressbox.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly but tags need to be put manually |
| www.FreePressIndex.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Easy to use. Immediate release |
| www.pr-usa.net | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.pr-gb.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.PageRelease.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Hyperlink limit per release:1 |
| www.informationonline.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.freepressreleases.co.uk | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Html friendly |
| www.24-7pressrelease.com | Yes/No | £349,£89,£49 | £0.00 | No | One press release per day (for free) |
| www.afly.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | £0.00 | Only covers US geographical areas |
| www.nanotech-now.com | Yes | £0.00 | £0.00 | Yes | Limited only to the nanothechnology industry |
| www.newswiretoday.com | Yes/No | £249,£295,£399 | £0.00 | No | Logos can be uploaded only in paid articles |
Let me know whether you know of any more good sites and I’ll update the list accordingly.
Your feedback is always welcome!