Your website caters to 2 specific audiences: search engines and users. Submitting press releases will get your more links from third party websites and increase your exposure to a broader set of people.

Optimize Your Press Release

Press releases help users find your content and provide excellent third party verification of your business. Press releases also help your ranking in the search engines if there are links in the PR piece back to your site.

A press release optimized for search engines will be 500-1500 words, have 1 primary keyword repeated 2-5 times per paragraph, and links back to your website. When creating press releases it is good to be as specific as possible and only try to optimize for one product release or company event.

Adding the press release copy to the description tag of a youtube video, and then submitting a video press release can produce nearly instantaneous rankings for semi competitive keywords. Youtube videos can get a substantial ranking boost when used in combination of a top tier press release package.

If you try to introduce too many topics and force multiple keyword phrases the piece will be diluted and will likely not rank for anything, thus giving you no direct traffic boost.

Good Press Release Topics

• A new product or service
• Announcing a new branch/ subdivision of a business
• Announcing a partnership
• Announcing a restructuring of the company/organization
• Announcing that an individual in your business has been named to serve in a leadership position in a community, professional or charitable organization
• Announcing that you’re available to speak on particular subjects of interest
• Announcing that you’ve reached a major milestone
• Announcing the results of research or surveys you have conducted
• Business Ownership changes
• Celebrating an anniversary
• Changing the company or product name
• Changing the structure of a company
• Contributing to charity
• Earning recognition of the company, product or executives by a publication
• Establishing a unique vendor agreement
• Expanding or renovating your business
• Forming a new strategic partnership or alliance
• Helpful information (on a newsworthy topic- more about this in Part 3)
• Introducing a new product
• Introducing a unique strategy/approach
• Introducing new employees
• Issuing a statement of position regarding a local, regional or national issue
• Launching and/or expansion of a website
• Laws, rules, etc. taking affect on the business
• Making public statements on future business trends or conditions
• Management changes
• Meeting some kind of unusual challenge or rising above adversity
• New charitable partnership
• New direction of company/business
• New laws that affect the business/Industry
• New management
• New or free information available
• New Programs
• Obtaining a significant customer
• Offering an article series for publishing
• Opening up branch or satellite offices
• Participating in a philanthropic event
• Public appearance in person, on radio, television, or online
• Reaction to new developments, laws, etc.
• Receiving an appointment
• Receiving an award
• Relocation
• Renaming a business
• Restructuring your business or its business model
• Setting up a customer advisory group
• Sponsoring a seminar or workshop
• Starting a new business division
• Using new technology

Useful online tools to distribute press releases and article content online

Press Release Submissions – Featuring over 23 sites that will distribute your company news and syndicate your press releases.
PRweb.com – this is the largest and most respected PR firm online, we have exclusive coupons for PRweb
24-7Pressrelease.com – free press release submission with $49 upgrade
1888Pressrelease – Relatively new press release syndication site
Prnewswire.com – long standing old school press release distributor
PR.com – submit free press releases
Massmediadistribution.com – They charge $199 for Local Area Distribution, $299 for Nationwide Distribution, and $399 for Worldwide Distribution. This is significantly more expensive than the other options and I would be interested to know if anyone has found this company useful.

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The categories with the highest online buying percentage. These retail segments had higher online purchased in aggregate dollars than from brick and mortar stores. Percentages show e-commerce sales as a percent of total sales.

Majority of Purchases Online

electronics 74.1%
music & videos 74%
office supplies 67.8%
clothing 65.9%
furniture 65.8%
non merchandise recipts 65.5%
toys & games 61.4%
books and magazine 61%
sporting goods 58.2%
food, beer & wine 57.9%

The categories with the lowest online buying percentage, it is odd that more people prefer to buy computers in store and go to pharmacies in person. These segments were online pioneers with Dell and Drugstore.com the early leaders

Majority of Purchases Offline

Computer hardware / software 48.1%
Health & drug aids 8.8%

Data Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Chart Source: http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kypmk0owX21qz94q6o1_400.png

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Performing Search Engine Submissions
Submitting your website to search engines stopped being necessary in the year 2000. Any firm that promises to submit your site to 10,000 search engines is not only being untruthful – they will also be adding you to hundreds of mailing lists which will spam the life out of your inbox.

Guarantees top 10 placement
It is not possible to guarantee a specific listing, these guarantees are for long tail keywords with low traffic that will not generate sales volume.

Automated Process
Search engine optimization is a time consuming manual process. You must perform constant keyword research to identify new traffic trends and continuously update your website. There is no 100% automated system that will effortlessly bring in targeted visitors.

Multiple Search Engines
The only search engines you should expend energy on are listed in descending order: Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask

Anonymous Unsolicited Contact
If you receive an email with no contact information promising the world for pennies, just ignore it.

When a company like www.websiteregistrationservices.com sends deceptive unsolicited letters through postal mail that rely on misinformation and fear to sell their services, someone must explain what they are doing and offer consumer protections.

Some ways to know if an offer is legitimate or not:

• does not send unsolicited mail
• provides real address, phone number and contact information
• does not mention ‘search engine submission’
• does not claim to have a special relationship with any search engine
• does not use fear to sell services
• does not pit you against your competitors: “our client is Company X and we know you have are in a price war with them. If you signup with us for extra money we will drop Company X as a client.”

The site in the above link checker has 1 trusted backlink, which is quite low. Why would a trusted SEO agency only have 1 incoming link from other websites?

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If Google was more transparent we wouldn’t need to fight them with humor and satire.

Source: here

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Online reviews are an assessment of your business, whether from a customer, another outside resource, or even yourself.

Reviews are such an important part of your business and can literally make or break you.

A recent survey from the online department at Gallup stated that 82% of all consumers purchase after they’ve gone online and researched what other people are saying about that particular product or business.

That means 82% of people place a high weight in what other people are saying about a business.

Increased Sales – The biggest reason why online reviews are important to businesses is that ultimately it increases sales by giving consumers the information they need to make the decision to purchase a product or service from a business.

Online reviews allow you to better understand your consumers and can tell you whether you are doing a good job or what you are doing wrong and how to improve your service.

These reviews do more than just create a better relationships between your business and your consumers, they work towards improving your websites ranking on search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and increase the trust and authority of your website. If you have a local service business, yelp.com may be your best source of customer referrals.

Consumers who take the time to leave you an online review are far more likely to feel a certain loyalty to your business, refer their friends and keep coming back year after year.

Many times the review pages can become active social communities where your customers will leave reviews and keep coming back to see if their friends have made comments on their reviews or added their own opinion. Reviews are social, and people love to read unbiased feedback about a company.

Having negative reviews does not matter, as long as you quickly respond to them and make sure any problem is resolved. No company is perfect and if a potential customer can see you respond positively and proactively to criticism and difficult situations this will increase their trust in you.

Copious reviews do your marketing for you and can become micro marketing campaigns that keep working long after the online review has been posted. Reviews on a well trafficked website like Yelp are a constant positive image to potential consumers and create a continual brand awareness that works for you and requires no effort.

Reviews breed more reviews, and if people see you have a page with active feedback they are much more likely to jump in to the conversation, which has a compound effect to increase your credibility.

Your need reviews to rise above your competition and drive those customers back to your website.

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One legendary Nordstrom story is when a long time customer wanted to return a set of automobile tires. Nordstrom is a clothing company that doesn’t sell tires, but to keep this man happy the sales staff cheerfully accepted the car tires and issued an in store credit. When you have lifetime customers, this is a small price to pay for loyalty.

Video from the Harvard site explaining the Zappos employee policy

It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time… when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers… paid their full salary during this period.

After a week in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls The Offer: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.”

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment & passion they are looking for.

I am sure this money is good an investment in Zappos future. Companies with the best working environment and best employees will win.

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Here is a special trick to get your ads into your ads into prospects email accounts.

Adwords Free Money

Coupons can only be used on new accounts, one per account, and they do not work with invoicing or manager-defined spend and expire after a single use.

To existing users with adwords accounts, these discount codes need to be used with a new ad account. Google is constantly adding new codes, discounts and sales landing pages. Here is the new URL for the discount offer at google.com/adwords/offer

To apply the 2013 voucher, once you’ve created a new account and completed the billing details, click on the ‘Billing Preferences’ tab, and enter the voucher code when prompted.

Don’t delay, activate this $100 promo coupon before it expires.

Share your love in the comments, through tweets and bookmark this site as there will be more promotional code offerings in the future.

Here is a link to activate your Google Adwords Coupon: Get My Adwords Coupon Now

Please tell us how you are using your free Google money in the comments.

*bonus tips*
Look for domain name registrars and web hosting companies that offer Adwords credits for new accounts.

Google and Chase Bank are offering a free webinar with a $100 adwords coupon to all attendees. Just watch this adwords webinar and get your offer code
http://www.google.com/ads/offers/chase.html

More 2013 adwords coupons coming soon, stay tuned for huge special offers.

Mere is another link where you can redeem these discount codes www.google.com/awexpress/promoterms.

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Using email to communicate with your current clients and potential customers is essential. Email is still the best way to deliver relevant messages to your most interested audience.

If you are going to be sending multiple issues to your trusted clients, you must make your e-blast unique and compelling otherwise it will go into /dev/null (linux shorthand for the trash folder).

5 Keys to a successful Secrets to a Successful Email Newsletter

1. Be Relevant Nothing is worse than receiving email that does not relate to your business or is something you are not expecting. Write for your audience and give them specifics. Whenever you sit down to write remember your high school english teacher telling you to be precise and direct.
2. Be Concise Your offer or information should be clearly stated in the header of the email. Don’t make your prospects hunt to try to figure out your offer or engage in extra scrolling. Have you ever received an email that reads like a novel and has 2 dozen images? Yeah, I immediately delete those too.
3. Be Useful Instead of talking about yourself, talk about your readers favorite thing: THEM. Your newsletter should be a mirror of their needs and concerns, and they should feel that you understand them and have helped them. Think karma – if people believe that you are going out of your way to help them, they will unconsciously do the same for you.
4. Be Semantic Use good code and HTML email best practices. Nothing will ruin clickthroughs faster than poorly formatted email. Basic rules to creating email: simple css, few tables, small images, max width 600 pixels, minimal images, large font, similar theme as your website. I have seen messages that blow up when viewed in online email programs, making them unreadable.
5. Be Polite No one likes to be spammed. Your customers have entrusted you with their most precious asset: their email address and time. Don’t abuse this high privilege and send excessive email. As a general rule, the less you email the more likely your subscribers will read it. Respect your prospects time and you will be rewarded.

Your company is unique and you have special qualities that differentiate you from your competition. Use this to your advantage and create a memorable piece of email that your targeted prospects will look forward to receiving each month.

65 percent of marketers say they plan to increase their use of email newsletters.
Source: Intermarket Group

Statistics may be misleading, but the inbox does not lie. More companies are using email marketing because the potential is bigger than Googles Boeing 767 aircraft.

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Using content marketing to seed articles, graphs, PDF documents, research, charts, images, infographics, videos and quotes to other websites is an excellent way to increase awareness of your website. You will be inserting your brand into a natural source of information and can reach users at a critical point in their decision making process.

When seeding your content the key is to get links back to your site from half a dozen sites. Without this quantity your efforts could be lost.

Doing Content Wrong

1. Find trending keywords
2. Get low paid writers to mashup content and rewrite words
3. Semi automated process – publications still need writers and editors like McDonalds needs cows
4. You may find articles written by Mr. Al Gorithm
5. Machines can’t differentiate between “time flies like an arrow” & “fruit flies like a banana” but some people can overlook this
6. Automated baseball sports writing program exists – developed by Northwestern University. It gets the facts but not meaning of games.

Doing Content Right

1. Create a great article
2. Find trusted, high quality, relevant sites to share it with
   • Ezines
   • Blogs
   • Niche websites
   • Small publications
   • Industry specific websites
3. Share with at least 5 sites and have them all link back to your website. If you only share content with 3 sites there is a chance they will outrank you for it.

Read the official Google policy on cross-site duplication:

If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

With this strategy you will never have to worry about other people stealing your content again, as you will always rank #1 for your work.

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He is inspirational and bases most of his success on his never say die attitude.

Tim tells the story of flying back from New York City after pitching 10 different venture capitalists and returning with no money. He took a 2 flight trip via Southwest Airlines, which was the cheapest available. Waking up the next morning was dread and hopelessness, but through perseverance, determination and work he managed to acquire funding and continued to grow the company.

Have you been inspired by startup founders?

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