@Jouranalistics asked a great question:  What’s the best day to send a press release?

Traditional PR professionals will typically tell you Tuesday or Wednesday are the best days because it gets you out of the shadow of the weekend where readers are spending more time catching up or planning their week.

We took a quick look at some PRWeb stats and provided a comment on the above mentioned post, however, since then we’ve received a number of inquires, and as such, we wanted to offer a second look.

Of the five releases to date this year that have garnered the most page views (ranging between 5,000-16,000 page views), these releases were issued on the following days:

1.  April 28, 2010 (Wednesday)

2.  March 11, 2010 (Thursday)

3.  May 24, 2010 (Monday)

4.  July 6, 2010 (Tuesday)

5.  July 21, 2010 (Wednesday)

It’s important to reiterate that PRWeb releases receive residual traffic from search engines.  Since PRWeb releases are hosted permanently, they have in essence, shelf-life.    In fact some releases, like this one, continue to draw thousands of page views.

We’d certainly caution against drawing a direct correlation between the date these releases were issued and the volume of page views.  This is because the data does not indicate, the quality of writing, the newsworthiness of the announcement, or how well a given release was optimized for search, among other contributing factors.

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The best day to send a PRWeb press release was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

“Welcome to AJ Bombers, where everyone knows your name — or at least your Twitter handle,” wrote The Business Journal of Milwaukee.  The burger joint in the same city has used Twitter (@AJBombers) and other social media networks to build a community — and it’s proving to be a standout case study in how small business can spread the word online.

In fact, the same Biz Journal article says social media has landed AJ Bombers articles in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN and even a special on the Travel Channel, called “Food Wars.”

The burger joint has taken engagement on Twitter to a whole new level hosting Tweetups, like the “Bloody (Mary) Brunch” and even introducing a popular new menu item –“Burger of the Moment” – created by one of the restaurant’s Twitter followers (@KateBarrie), according to Forrester’s Augie Ray

Moreover, it’s not just Twitter: you’ll also find AJ Bombers on YouTube, Facebook and Foursquare – all to drive real-world interaction.  For example it “used Facebook to create initial awareness of their brand via a Facebook profile picture promotion, where their customers were assigned the task of taking the most creative photo in their logoed, signature, extra large beach chairs and post that photo as their profile picture, also leaving that photo up for the entire month of July,” wrote theBarBlogger.com.

AJ Bombers offers free food to fans that hold its “mayor” badge on Foursquare, added Forrester’s Ray in the same post previously cited, but the company has also tapped the SXSW crowd to leverage the coveted “Swarm Badge” and generate some business.

To qualify for a swarm badge, 50 people or more must check in to the same place at the same time.  When AJ Bombers made the offer on Foursquare, the promotion brought in 161 patrons, which is astounding for a burger place, let alone the fact there are only a few hundred Foursquare users total in Milwaukee, said blogger Stephan Antonas.

Lesson? Engaging hard across multiple social media channels can propel a small, unassuming brand to nationwide fame.

This post was adopted from Ten (and a Half) Great Social Media Successes (should you be interested in reading the other 9 (and a half).

Foursquare, Twitter and small business social media success was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

Janet Thaeler, a regular PRWeb customer,  recently wrote this blog post – A Press Release That Led to BIG Sales – and it demonstrates the success of one of her clients had with a PRWeb online news release. Among the very measureable outcomes:  page one ranking in Google and sales.  Yes, sales.

We’ve heard from other PRWeb customers that also cite sales from press releases as a business outcome, and given Janet’s success, we thought it would be useful to point out some of the PRWeb features used that helped contribute to that end:

For anyone interested, Janet has written a guide book to online PR called, I Need a Killer Press Release…Now What? In addition to blogging at Online PR Book, she also posts at Newspaper Girl and Tweets from @NewspaperGrl and @onlineprbook.  Thanks for sharing this story Janet!

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Anatomy of an online press release that sells was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

It seems listening to our customers has paid some dividends.  As you know, earlier this week we launched a newly redesigned Website along with some feature enhancements (blog post | news release), and those enhancements were the result of customer input.

So far the feedback on the new look, feel and features has been solid.  Here’s as sample of the buzz leading up to — and after the launch:

• “PRWeb will reveal a better look and feel of their online identity, including the site design and a refresh of their logo, the new one being bolder and more modern looking…But the design changes are less important than the new features that will be added starting July.” – Everything PR
• “As part of the changes, the news center section of the online press release newswire will be overhauled to include a greater focus on SEO, which Vocus said will mean greater visibility and increased traffic for customers.” – PRWeek
• “With over 500,000 pages, implementing SEO friendly design and architecture changes to a site like PRWeb is no small feat. Structuring the news center according to industry categories creates more of a news destination vs. a repository of press releases. Better design and content organization provides a better user experience and will attract more links.” TopRank Online Marketing (Disclosure:  TopRank is both a customer and consultant to PRWeb).
• “Of course, the number of news release pick ups and the volume of traffic to sites will continue to be the criteria of success for users. It’s too early to tell how effective these changes will be, but they seem to be promising. I’m looking forward to trying the re-engineered PRWeb site with my next release, and see if I notice an uptick in responses.” The Art of Telling Your Agency’s Story

We’d also invite you to check out some of the comments on the post on the day we launched the new PRWeb Website. And to wrap things up – here are a few comments we found on Twitter:

So far, so good: Redesigned of PRWeb well received was posted at Blogging PRWeb. | http://www.bloggingprweb.com

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

Are small businesses using social media?  Are they finding success?  Here’s a survey of surveys – a quick look at some of the statistics and figures from around the Web on small business and social media.

Adoption is up among US small businesses.

“According to a survey conducted by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, “Social Media Adoption By U.S. Small Businesses Doubles Since 2009,” the number of small businesses using social media doubled from 12 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2009,” says this post on FoxBusiness.com

“36% plan to utilize social media/networking websites to build business [in 2010],” according to MediaPost reporting on a FedEx Survey.  Based on the same survey, eMarketer said, “more than one-quarter said blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter were other key tools for marketing their business.” This survey was also examined by SearchEngineLand.com Assignment Editor, Matt McGee on his blog Small Business Search Marketing.

(...)
Read the rest of Data points: social media, small business and statistics (383 words)

Data points: social media, small business and statistics 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

At PRWeb, we review and distribute hundreds of releases on a daily basis to countless bloggers, journalists and Web sites.  If we sent every piece of content to every single member of our audience we’d quickly overwhelm them with and it wouldn’t be long until we saw our news recipients opting-out.  In order to ensure that we get the right customer news releases to the right targets, we use regional and topical category schemes.

Whenever a PRWeb user uploads a news release, they are prompted to choose certain topics and regions that are relevant to their news release.  These selections are reviewed by our editor before the release is published.  At the same time, when users sign-up to receive news content via RSS or e-mail, or publishers sign-up to become syndication partners, they make decisions about what regions and topics they are interested in receiving news releases on.

Ultimately, the topical and regional selections are largely what determine the specific bloggers, journalists and Web publishers who receive our customer news releases.

Targeting Specific Regions and Topics with PRWeb 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