This past Friday at midnight, we rolled out a brand new PRWeb.com.  This launch was the result of countless hours of effort logged by a wide variety of individuals – from developers, to designers, to writers and more, this was truly a collaborative effort that spanned the company.

Also worth noting is that the launch is a mashup of several different projects that have been on our roadmap for a while now.  Some changes will be immediately obvious, such as the updated look and feel of the site and the new press release template.  Other changes on the other hand, will reveal their impact over time – but more on this in a bit.  What is common throughout all the updates is our intention to better serve our customers – from providing them with more tools to get started to ensuring that the releases perform more effectively online, this launch was all about continuing to offer industry leading visibility to our customers.

As with all significant changes, there are sure to be questions that arise.  We want to take this opportunity to address some of the more significant changes you may notice with the new PRWeb.com:

1. We are no longer listing all $140+ releases on the home page

Back when PRWeb was a free service and publishing a far more limited volume of releases, front page placement was a benefit granted to certain customers willing to make a financial contribution to the company.  At this time there were more tangible benefits to front page placement in terms of readership and SEO.  Over time, the volume of releases published daily has swelled to a much larger number and we have ended up with a home page that can contain too many articles at times.  This has made the home page less than optimal for both users as well as search engines.

Our solution to this challenge has been to evolve from an architecture that focuses on one front page to one that has multiple front pages (from a search perspective). Tactically, we have done this by creating a section of our domain completely devoted to customer news releases, organized around industry verticals (i.e. arts & entertainment, technology, etc.).  This technique is one that is used by many sites with a large volume of content and is a generally accepted method for creating value in certain silos within the hierarchy of a Web site and passing value to the pages located within these silos (customer news releases).

As a result, we fully expect this new architecture to increase the volume of traffic to your release as well as your site.

2. We have made some major changes to the news release template

The PRWeb news release has undergone some significant changes.

First, you’ll notice that there is far more room being given to multimedia elements like video, images, and file attachments.  In the last several years we have gained a lot of empirical knowledge about the way that people consume news online.  Our own research into the effects of multimedia on news consumption showed that the presence of relevant images and video increased the average time users spent on news releases.  There is also notable research that has proven the correlation between multimedia and action.

Then again, all it takes is a quick look at the home page of CNN.com to see how multimedia is beginning to dominate the visual real estate of news sites today.

The second major change we have made is to place links to various actions such as sharing, further inline with the news content.  These days, news releases are not just about getting people to read a story; they are also about getting the reader to take some form of measurable action: to share on Facebook, e-mail to friends, and more.  Subsequently, we have optimized the placement of these links to make our news more action-able.

The final change we’ve made to the release is behind the scenes.  After years of adding code, the time had come for us to step back and optimize the code behind the release to make sure it was optimized for faster load times and better performance in search.  Speed is not only important for users, but leading certain search engines have been very vocal about the growing importance of speed when it comes to performance in search.

3.  We have introduced a dedicated learning center

Over the past few years, we have been consistently investing more time and resources into customer education.  We realize that although there are some folks who have been sending out press releases for years, the practice of creating and distributing online news releases is still relatively new.

What’s more, the varying backgrounds of our customers has created a need for a range of different types of content.  We have PR folks who want to learn more about SEO, and SEO folks who want to learn more about PR.  We have small business owners who want to move from sending out one release each year, to a more ongoing cycle of communication that results in the long term development of online visibility for their brand and their business.

So in response to the ongoing demand for educational resources, we are launching a dedicated learning center that will serve as a hub for all the various articles, webinars, and white papers we have put together.

Hopefully these points address some of the more glaring questions you might have.  If you have others (and I’m sure some of you will), please post them to the comments section of this article and we will make sure to address them as quickly as possible.

We’re looking forward to the conversation.

Introducing the New PRWeb Web site was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Part 2 Natural Search

In a recent post we took a look at how paid search can help you get visibility quickly in the search engines. This week, we’re looking at the other end of the spectrum for both speed and (to some extent) cost.

Natural Search- Also known as organic search requires patience, skill and consistency. Did I mention patience? It can take months before your website is found in natural search – but it’s a great bonus when you start seeing results! Click through on natural search results is far greater than that for paid results (about 2 to 3 times, or more, depending on the search phrase).

If you’re new at this search stuff, you have probably heard a lot about SEO – this is short for “search engine optimization,” a term coined by Bruce Clay about 15 years ago.  If you are not familiar with Bruce Clay, definitely click through on the link and check out his company’s blog. Great information there once you get your feet wet.

Similar to how Google has become a verb, SEO has become one – SEOing one’s website means taking a critical look at it the way a search engine would look at it, and making certain that search engines are able to understand what the site is about.

For natural search, Google’s objective is to provide the best possible answers to people who have given them two, three or four word questions. This is far more complex than you might imagine – given that they handle millions of these queries daily.  The process that they use to organize information to retrieve the right answers is called an algorithm. Much has been written about the Google algorithm – all of which is based on conjecture or (in some cases) exacting tests. It is, however, a very closely guarded secret. However, here is a simplified version of how natural search works:

1. The search engine sends bots (a computer program) throughout the Internet, following all the links that they find.
2. When the bot reaches a page, it reviews all of the text on that page.
3. The algorithm then categorizes (or indexes) that page based on a number of factors, including the page’s title, text, web page address and keywords that link to the page.
4. When someone enters a phrase the algorithm displays search results that are relevant, fresh, unique and valuable.

So what does understanding how Google finds and indexes the web help a site owner? Here are specific items you should consider with each one of those steps above to help your site be found.

Step 1: Make certain that you can get to every important page of your website by clicking a link. One good way to do this is to add a sitemap to your website. If you are using blog software for your site, set up tags or categories, and make certain to tag each of your articles.  If you can get through your site with regular links, this means your site is search-friendly, and is the first, basic step in optimization. If you have to enter a form, the search engines cannot find that content. There is a tool that I use frequently to test links, available at AuditMyPC. Put your domain name in and it will show you all the pages that a spider can reach.

Step 2: Make certain your important content is in text. Although images with words in them can be prettier than plain text, search engines cannot “read” images. The closest they can get is reading an image alt tag. This is true for Flash, as well.

Step 3: Search engines expect web pages to be organized similarly to term papers. The title is very important to state what the page is about. The synopsis gives some more information about the content. The title tag and meta description serve as your web page’s title and synopsis – and each page must have a different title and meta description (can’t stress that one enough!). Then the content on the page is organized under headings and sub-headings. Make your title and headings descriptive of the content that is on the page. A catchy headline might give you some reader value, but if it is not related, at least somewhat, to the content, then you’re going to confuse the search engines.

Step 4: Choose carefully which phrases (also known as keywords) you highlight on each page. Use phrases that make sense – but do not OVER use them. If you use a keyword or keyphrase too much the page doesn’t read well, and Google prefers sites that read as if they are written for visitors rather than search engine bots. Using a keyword too frequently is referred to as keyword stuffing – and harms your whole site’s positioning in search.

Some other key points to optimizing your site – Google looks for fresh content, meaning that the page or site is updated regularly, provides value to readers (has enough content on it), and other people find it valuable enough to link to.

That said, get other people to link to your website. Google views these links as both votes for your site and indications of what other people think your site is about. Link building is an art – and there have been a lot of articles written about getting links. Here’s a rule of thumb, though – if someone is selling you links or promises 10,000 links overnight, run the other way FAST.

Because natural search is “free,” it is extremely competitive. Unless you want to invest a great deal of time in learning and implementing search engine optimizations, my recommendation for business owners is to find a reputable SEO company to help you. But having some understanding of what is involved will help you in talking with your SEO service provider.

If you want to learn more about search engine optimization, or how to get found in Google, a good starting point is Search Engine Watch.

Here’s an interesting article that discusses the philosophy behind choosing between SEO and PPC.

Search Visibility – The Paid, The Natural and The News: was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Note (7/1 @ 5:02 PM ET) - As of 12AM this morning, the situation has been resolved.  Thanks to both the teams at McAfee as well as Yahoo! for helping us rectify the situation in an efficient manner.

In the past day, some customers may have noticed the PRWeb hosted version of their news release showing up in the Yahoo! search results with a flag indicating that there may be harmful downloads associated with their news release URL.

This flag is the result of a new beta feature that Yahoo! has released, in conjunction with McAfee, to screen their search results for harmful or malicious sites.  A closer look at the the detailed McAfee profile in the drill down clearly states that there “aren’t any significant problems” with PRWeb.com or with any of the releases hosted on the site.

In researching the matter, we have observed an indication that one file on PRWeb.com has been flagged in the McAfee report although the individual file doesn’t impact our overall site’s rating.  This file was an attachment from a release originally distributed in 2003.  We have reviewed that file and determined it to be safe and also freely available for download from several free download sites.  It was mistakenly diagnosed and flagged by McAfee and we believe this may be contributing to the Yahoo! search results flag.  As a precaution we have removed this file down from the PRWeb server.

We are currently in the process of reaching out to both Yahoo! and McAfee and expect a swift resolution to this issue.

Update 7/29 @ 12:31 PM (ET) – We have received the following response from Yahoo!

I understand that you have concerns regarding a “Dangerous Downloads” warning listed on your site in the Yahoo! Search Results.  I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Yahoo! SearchScan is powered by McAfee.  McAfee provides safety data within Yahoo! Search results to indicate potentially harmful websites.   If your domain shows a warning that you disagree with, it is important that you contact McAfee directly, so they can provide an analysis of your domain.

In fact, we did contact McAfee as soon as we saw the issue and have received the following:

This site (prweb.com) has been queued for a full retest.  Please note that any change (if warranted) may take up to 8 weeks to reflect.  We thank you for your continued patience.

Rest assured, we are not satisfied with these answers and are continuing to move forward to get this situation resolved as quickly as possible.

Update 7/29 @ 4:09 PM (ET) – We have received a direct response from direct contacts at both McAfee as well as Yahoo! and they have both mentioned they will investigate the situation in more depth however no direct actions as of yet.

Update 7/29 @ 5:29 PM (ET) – We have been in ongoing communications with McAfee, who have been very active in working with us to resolve the issue.  They have reportedly updated their records.  It may take a little while to circulate through their system.  They are also reaching out to Yahoo! to see if the Yahoo! data can be refreshed.

Update 7/30 @ 10:21 AM (ET) - We made more inroads with the Yahoo! Web search team last night.  They are fully aware of the situation and looking into solutions.  Also received notification from the team who originally contacted me over at McAfee, saying it was being escalated, however I think the McAfee team has already updated the data and is doing everything they can to reach out to Yahoo!   Meanwhile, Online Media Daily has published a story on the ongoing situation.  Hoping for a resolution by the end of today.  Even if all the data is updated on the Yahoo! side, I would think it would take a while to work it’s way through their vast system.

Update 7/30 @ 3:43 PM (ET) – The Yahoo! Web search team has been able to remove the flag from some of our results.  For example, the main top-level domain PRWeb.com is no longer showing the warning sign however there are other URL(s) that continue to show the warnings including several of our sub-domains.  The Yahoo! team is continuing to work to clear out the remainder of the warning signs.

Update 8/1 @ 4:32 PM (ET) - As of 12:39 AM (ET) this morning, Yahoo! reported all search results have been successfully updated.  Thanks to both the McAfee and Yahoo! teams for mobilizing and helping us achieve resolution to this situation!

Inaccurate McAfee Message on PRWeb Results in the Yahoo! Search Engine was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

It is pretty common in our industry to talk about about getting your news release to Google, Bing or Yahoo! but what does this actually mean?

First off, it’s important to note that no one (despite what you may be told) can guarantee very much when it comes to the search engines.  However, what we are capable of doing is studying the various methods for getting news releases into search engines and work with customers to provide them with the best opportunity to get the most traffic from the countless people using search engines to find news and information.

That being said, one of the keys to defining what it means to “get your news release to a search engine” involves distinguishing between the standard Web search engine and the news search engine.  The Web engine shows a wide variety of content – from images, to video, to news and more.  The Web engine is what most people use when they visit Bing, Google or Yahoo!

If your web site is already getting indexed by a search engine, then getting your news release into these engines can be as simple as uploading it onto your Web site where the search engine crawlers can get to it.   If you want to increase the likelihood that a search engine will pick-up your news release you can submit a sitemap file to the search engines that includes the URL of your news release.

However, just because a search engine finds and indexes your news release doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is going to see it.  Getting a news release into a search engine is the easy part – getting it into a search engine so people will see it is the tricky part.  This depends on a number of variables but essentially boils down to A) How you have constructed your news release and B) The authority of your site.  Best practices for news release optimization is a pretty big discussion that we’ll have to save for another day.

Moving on, the other type of search that matters for news releases is news search.  News search is a different section of Bing, Yahoo! and Google than the standard Web search engine.  Another key difference that only related to Yahoo! is that they not only provide an engine for retrieving news but they also generate original, editorial content.

When it comes to getting into news search, the search engines are more selective about determining what gets in.  They distinguish between certified “news sources,” that can include outlets like the AP and Reuters and news distribution services like PRWeb.  Content from these certified news sources will be indexed and retrieved when searches are run in the news search engines.  Even if you use a certified news source to carry your news release, there are still various factors that may prevent your particular news release from getting indexed.  Google, for example, has a list of news-specific crawl errors that may prevent your news release from getting into Google News.  However, once it does get in, your news release will be typically indexed for a 28-day period.

Getting your News Release into Google, Bing and Yahoo! was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

It used to be that small businesses looked to the Yellow Pages as a key source for leads. It is no longer and a sales executive here recently relayed this real life anecdote that captures the essence of why this is true:

There was a bag in the front yard. It had been sitting there for several days.

A little girl meets her father in the garage after work one day and says, “Daddy, what’s in that bag in the front yard.”

“I don’t know, honey, let take a walk over and see,” the father replies.

They walk over to the bag and discover the contents contain a Yellow Pages book.

“What’s the Yellow Pages, Dad?” asks the little girl.

“Well, when you need something, like a plumber, you look in the Yellow Pages directory to find one.”

They carry the bag into the garage and the father promptly drops the bag in the trash bin. The girl is dismayed as to why her father would toss such a useful directory into the garbage and inquired why.

“Well, when we need something now, we just turn look it up in Google,” explains the father.

Ironically, I looked around the office for a copy of a Yellow Book just prior to publishing this post – I was hoping to take a photo to add as a visual element to the blog. I couldn’t find a copy, so this Google screen shot will have to suffice.

Why search matters to small business was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Press releases can have a long search shelf-life.   Some releases are simply amazing with their ability to drive traffic.   This press release, from Leatherup.com, for example, is more than two years old and continues to draw traffic in the thousands.

Part of this traffic appears to be from paid search, for example the company seems to be using this release as a landing page for paid search campaigns, but a substantial portion also comes from organic search.  One key to organic search is finding the right key words to include in your release – words your audience uses to search for content.

One tool to help you identify the right words is Google Trends.  Let’s say my target audience is public relations professionals, commonly referred to as PR professionals.  Should my key word be “PR” or “public relations”?

Google Trends, shown below, gives me a pretty clear answer:  searches for “public relations” are trending downward, while searches for “PR” are trending up.  PR should be my primary choice for a key word.

This principle can be applied in a different way – that it might change how we describe our products or services to ensure they can be found in search.

Here’s a hypothetical example:  genetically modified foods.

The term “genetically modified” might have a negative connotation – who wants to eat that?  As such, marketers and PR professionals might prefer to refer to this as “agricultural biotechnology” because it connotes innovation without the baggage.  However, the dilemma that’s presented is this:  which term is more often used in search.  I’d venture to say it’s the former, which means if the latter is included in a press release — it’s less likely to be found in search.

SEO Boost: Key words for press releases was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

When PRWeb was still a fledgling start-up operating on a freemium model, we decided to offer placement on the PRWeb.com home page as an enticement to upgrade the value of a release. At this point in time, there was a far smaller volume of news releases being published each day and front page placement offered some tangible benefits to customers. For one, visitors to PRWeb.com looking to consume content were more likely to see the release if it was on the front page. Secondly, we believed that placing the release on the home page meant that the crawlers would get to it faster, increasing the rate at which the release would be indexed in search. So for one day, the customer’s news release would be hosted on the front page and subsequently relegated to deeper pages within the site.

Over time, the volume of news releases published through PRWeb has grown dramatically and the front-page approach has grown problematic from both a news consumer perspective (who wants to scroll through over a hundred news releases on a page) and from a search crawler perspective. The time has come to implement a site architecture that is more suited to the flow of content that is passes through PRWeb on a daily basis.

In re-architecting the section of the site devoted to customer news releases, we were driven by the following goals:

• To ensure optimal visibility for customer news releases – We believe that the primary benefit we provide to our customers is the visibility we are able to generate for them through their news releases. The majority of traffic that comes to PRWeb news releases is from search engines and we made sure to design a site architecture that would first and foremost, be focused on ensuring our customer news releases be easily found and indexed by search engines.
• To provide an optimal experience for news consumers – A secondary focus of ours was improving the general user experience for news consumers, which in turn translates to increased traffic for customers.
• To create a dedicated destination for customer content – For a long time, PRWeb.com has served the dual purpose of educating customers and prospects as well as being the distribution point for customer content. The new architecture will ensure an appropriate segmentation of these two types of content, which will provide us with considerably more flexibility to mold the architecture to solely focus on improving the visibility of customer content.
• To introduce content scalability – We wanted to ensure that the framework we designed and implemented would not only be able to support the hundreds of releases we are publishing on a daily basis today, but the thousands of releases we expect to be publishing daily in the future.

The news center we will be launching over the next month will be oriented towards the fulfillment of the above, stated goals. In addition to some aesthetic changes, you will also see an architecture that is more organized around verticals (i.e. business, finance, technology, etc.) and pages that have a more manageable array of stories.

We fully expect the new architecture will increase the visibility of customer content in search and also drive more traffic to both their PRWeb news releases as well as their own Web sites. As always, we’re happy to get your feedback in the comments section of this blog.

A Sneak Preview of the PRWeb News Center was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Over the next few weeks you will see some modifications to the actual news release template being rolled out. These modifications are aimed at accomplishing several important goals including.  Top-level goals include A) Improving the experience for those reading and interacting with the news release, and B) Improving the search friendliness of the news releases.

The modifications to the news release editing tool are minor but don’t be surprised if we have introduced a few tweaks.  When we roll the new template out we’ll be providing a much broader, comprehensive explanation of the launch.

Upcoming Changes to the News Release Template was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

For the last few months we’ve noticed that Google has begun surfacing news results on Page 1 of their blended Web search.  After taking a closer look, here are a few specifics we have found:

1. News stories have approximately a 24-hour shelf life in blended search – In fact, news stories surface on page 1 of Google for about 24-hours or so.  After that they are primarily just found in news search.

2. Keyword competition is an important variable in determining placement on page 1 - For less competitive keywords, top placement is possible.  Take for example a release from PRWeb customer America’s Watchdog, “Mesothelioma Victims Center Urges Diagnosed Mesothelioma Victims To Call Them First For Help, Advice and Honesty.“  On day 1, the release appears at the top of Page 1 for a query of “Mesothelioma Victims”:

This is decent placement but it is worth noting that mesothelioma + victims isn’t a terribly competitive keyword.  According to the Google Keyword Tool, there are about 880 queries for the term on a monthly basis.

For more competitive keywords, the placement moves down the page.  Take for example the release titled, “Twilight Star Ashley Greene Covers the Latest Issue of Savvy Magazine.”  If you search for “Ashley Green,” a search term queried about 673,000 times every month, the news placement is now at the bottom of the page.

3.  Placement of keywords in the title is extremely important – Google seems to be paying a lot of attention to the keywords in the title of the release.  Take for example the release titled, “New Web Site Guides Moms to Greener Living.”  The release shows up on the bottom of Page 1 in the news section for a query of “Greener Living,” which is a fairly competitive term but a search for a far less competitive term found in the body of the release, Nickie Night (the founder of the site), doesn’t show up at all in the news section of Page 1 although I should mention that the news release does show up as a standard Web result.

4. Keyword sequence is important but proximity is sufficient – The keywords don’t have to appear completely sequentially.  Take for example the release titled,  “Manhattan, NY Board Certified Plastic Surgeon Performs 200th Buttock Implant Procedure.”  The higher volume query for this customer is Manhattan +Plastic +Surgeon however the presence of those keywords in the title is sufficient to result in a mid-Page 1 placement:

It should be noted that much of these recommendations are based on a relatively small sample set.  More extensive research may result in varying patterns however in general, I would conclude that in certain cases where a query is relatively targeted, news releases can be an effective means for targeted potential audience members through Page 1 of the blended Web search.

News in Blended Search was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

This Friday we are going to be rolling out several additional updates to our analytics dashboard including the following:

• Hovers for ‘impressions breakdown’ - We will be adding hover menus with help text over the various fields in the breakdown table for impressions to better explain what those different values mean.
• Table with exact counts for impressions, reads and interactions - We will be adding a table into the impressions, reads and interactions reports showing the actual count for each of these statistics by day.
• Premium impressions – Premium impressions was an idea we had during development that was rolled out as part of our beta release.  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to acquire the proper data and will be putting that feature on hold for the time being (until we can get the proper data to filter through).

You may also see some changes to our category taxonomy.  We’ve made these changes for a number of reasons.  First, we’ve added a lot of categories over time based on customer request and it was simply time to take a step back and evaluate the overall quality of the taxonomy scheme.  Second, we wanted to start imposing more of a hierarchical logic on the overall scheme that better organizes more specific categories (i.e. chemistry) into broader categories (i.e. science).

Finally, I wanted to mention that we are in the midst of making some significant changes to the layout of the PRWeb news release itself that are going to be a big step forward in terms of search-friendliness and overall look-and-feel.  There are also going to be some goodies thrown in.  We’ll be talking more about some of these upcoming changes in the next several weeks so stay tuned!

More Updates to Analytics, Category Updates and More was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com