In this video, we talk about press releases, particularly how small businesses can use press releases effectively in their marketing campaigns. Press releases also have a secondary value -- SEO. Recent experiments demonstrate that backlinks in press releases are still valuable to search rankings. But, don't overdo it. Check out this video on seo press releases for small business to learn how to reap the benefits from the seo press release with out getting penalized.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Hello and welcome to our video on the seo press release. I'm Chad Hill and I have Adam Stetzer with me today.
Yeah, good afternoon to you Chad. We're talking about seo press release, particularly how small businesses can use press releases effectively in their marketing campaigns. And of course also for that secondary value of SEO, there have been some recent experiments to show that backlinks in press releases are still valuable to help your rankings. But you should never take it overboard and put the cart in front of the horse.
Press releases are really for announcing news, and we know small businesses really struggle to come up with newsworthy events cause they just don't have as much happening as well as getting them out the door. So let's help our small business viewers today. Give them some tips and tricks on doing seo press releases, what's newsworthy, how to make small events sound like big news and make a splash.
Yeah, a great question and it's very timely because at Semify we've been making a bigger push in trying to incorporate press releases into many of our ongoing SEO programs. So actually, I've been working with our team in the last couple days, trying to fine-tune our questionnaire to pull out some of those questions that a lot of businesses don't think are news. But when we're really looking for what drives a smaller business, sometimes those aren't an acquisition or a big purchase of some new capital expenditure, like a new factory or something. But they are smaller, but still very newsworthy and important for talking about local business.
So I'm just going to read a list here that I have of a couple of those. So some of the ones that our team came up with are things like hiring any new employees. That certainly is news and we're still coming out of the recession here and hiring new employees is big news. Expanding or relocating offices or retail presence. Participating in community events. That could be things like sponsoring the little league team or a soccer team. It could be that you join a chamber of commerce or you just participate in some other event. So these don't have to be, again, that you're starting a new nonprofit or a new foundation, they can just be how you're engaging with your community. A couple more Adam and then I'll turn it back over to you here.
Definitely any sort of sponsoring of a charitable cause. Speaking at an event. So if you're out and you're talking to, your invited to a conference to speak, or if you're on a panel. That's newsworthy in many cases, you want to talk about that. Anytime you launch a new product or service or even change a product. We just made some big changes to our plans here at Semify, and we've done a lot to generate some press and some awareness of those changes.
A couple other things. Joining local groups, winning any type of reward or even receiving any recognition, launching or updating your website. That takes a lot of work. It's a big effort and we're all investing in our web marketing because we think that it's going to help our business, so put a seo press release out on the changes you're making.
Two more here. Any time you complete a big project or any other new win that you've made, those are often very press worthy, so if you're in the web development business and you've launched a new website your client, put out a seo press release about the effort that went into it. It gets you a little recognition and also gets the client recognition. The same is true for a lot of other industries.
And the last one I have that wanted to mention is any time that you even start or complete a promotion. So if you're running a sale for a month, you might want to put a seo press release out about why that sale's important and what you're hoping to accomplish. We can help you do that. And those are the types of things that you could put into a seo press release when you're doing a press release and ultimately trying to promote a smaller business.
That's an excellent list, it's pretty long. And I guess if you don't have any of those things going on, I guess you're bigger issue is not just press releases, it's really you need to be maybe marketing your business a lot more. Small businesses maybe aren't hiring every month so they can't talk about new hires, but sometime during the year they probably bring on someone to their team, so there's one month.
And this issue of how frequently do I need to do it comes up a lot. Our recommendation I think is about once a month at minimum. You could ramp that up if you've got a lot more going on, but don't overdo it. You want to make sure there's something newsworthy. But don't go six months without putting one out either. That's just not helping your cause, but if you find you really don't have something going on to talk about, think of this list that Chad just recited and maybe you need to join a group which enable you to write a solid seo press release.
Certainly you've got client works, so if you get their permission, that's a great one that you suggested. Obviously if you're hiring or moving your office or a big release to your product. But maybe you need to spend a half day at Habitat for Humanity with one other employee in the office and that's press release worthy.
So there's certain things you can do that will be great for news, and will get you some SEO value. We always try to find places that'll let us have a link in them because that's OK and we've seen that that does work. But also these are good for your business anyway. You should be doing them. they help employee morale, and they help you think more about the marketing angle and getting your brand out.