News Release Distribution Review 2010

Posted: February 22nd, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Media Relations Opinion, Online News Release Distribution, SEO PR Tactics, SEO Tactics | 10 Comments

This is the third installment of my running review of online news release distribution sites. If you’re finding these reviews for the first time, you should know that I’ll update this post as best I can throughout the year as sites change their offerings. Previous editions of my review can be found here and here.

This post has been a long time coming. Client work and family life keeps getting in the way, but the online distribution universe changes so fast, and I’ve received so much goodwill as a result of the previous two versions of my online news release distribution reviews ( that I had make the time to write this update.

Let’s take a look at a some good reasons to distribute your news releases online:

By including a link in your release, you’re building inbound links to your web site.
Your news is being spread beyond the boundaries of your web site, increasing the odds of it being seen by your audience.
There is the possibility that it will be seen by new media or traditional media, leading to coverage from these outlets. This isn’t something I ever count on, but it does sometimes happen.

Disclaimer: There have been occasions where I have been given free “try out” release distributions. I do accept these because they allow me to sample different services, but I do my best not to let them sway my judgment in the review. I consider it the same as a product reviewer accepting a sample product. Disclaimers about specific services can be found within their reviews.

So, which is the best place to distribute your news releases to reach your goals? Below is a review of what I consider the best of the best, both free and paid. Feed free to add your own via comments!

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Tags: media relations, news release distribution, public relations, seo, social media

Optimizing Twitter for SEO

Posted: July 3rd, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: SEO Tactics, Social Media Tactics | 1 Comment

You had to know it was coming. Twitter is taking over. Now, we have to optimize it to make it happy!

Just kidding, of course. What I’m talking about is making sure your Twitter account is optimized for the search engines. Yes, Virginia, Twitter is indexed by Google. That means you want to make sure you get the most bang for that opportunity. I found a good article at Mashable recently that described the steps you should be taking, including picking the right Twitter name and taking advantage of the space for your bio.

TechCrunch “Kills” Embargoes

Posted: December 18th, 2008 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: SEO Tactics, Social Media News | 3 Comments

There’s quite a discussion going on at blogs across cyberspace about news embargoes after an announcement yesterday at TechCrunch. It’s fairly common practice (particularly among makers of electronics, one of the main topics at TechCrunch) for PR people to give the information about a story to the media, but tell them to hold it until a certain date or time. Yesterday, TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington yesterday posted a rant that said his site will no longer honor these embargoes, and that if a PR person gives them information it may be posted immediately, regardless of any stated embargo. Here’s an excerpt:

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Tags: blogger relations, social media, techcrunch

Wordpress Web Design and SEO Tip

Posted: August 23rd, 2008 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Rants, SEO Tactics, Web Design | No Comments

Here’s a big tip if you plan to use Wordpress as a CMS for your website, particularly if you’re working off of a fresh installation of Wordpress:

As you might know, I recently redesigned the EndGame Public Relations website, moving it from being html-based to php-based and using Wordpress as its content management system (CMS). The site was ranking extremely well for the keywords I targeted, falling in the top five on Google and Yahoo for all of them. Shortly after the redesign, however, I found that every time Google re-indexed my site, a few more of my pages would disappear from the rankings for my keywords. I figured they would return shortly and made a few moves to speed up the process.

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Tags: search engine optimization, seo, Web Design, wordpress