Before I meet a new prospect, I go out to their Web site and mouse through the releases and various news tidbits tucked away in their online press room. I guess my ten years spent in public relations has made me biased towards the importance of a well-stocked press room on a company’s public Web site, but honestly every single press release you throw up there, if written correctly, can become a potential Web page. Just think of them as little visitor magnets that improve search engine visibility for free. (Psst…I’m not even supposed to be telling you this.)

Unlike top tier pages where white space and limited text is preferred from an aesthetic standpoint, a press release can be chock-full of meaty keywords and optimized phrases sure to catch the attention of the major search engine bots (or spider) scanning the web for awesome, authoritative content. The key is in the number, and quality, of inbound and outbound hyperlinks.

An inbound link shoots the reader to another page within your site for more info about something, for example, if you quote your company’s CEO in a release you can send the reader to his/her bio page in your About Us section. You can do this by simply highlighting his/her name, clicking on Hyperlink under Insert in the toolbar and entering in the URL for that bio page.

An outbound hyperlink, or hotlink does just the opposite; it opens up a new window and sends the reader to another site for more info. Both are important to use, but don’t go crazy, a good rule of thumb is one link per 100 words. Look at this good example from the Beacon press room, that uses two inbound links and one outbound, or even just within this blog post. Just remember if you use an outbound link to periodically check that page to see if it’s still active to avoid publishing a broken link. (Depending on what type of content management system you have, it can check them for you.)

But even with all the buzz about social media out there, less than one percent of the thousands of press releases posted each week by Business Wire include hyperlinks according to a 2007 study by Business Wire’s social media platform group EON (Enhanced Online News.)

Don’t leave all that potential “Google juice” out of your next press release, especially when your company is feeling the squeeze of the economy. Ask Beacon Technologies for more ways to juice up your Web site.

Okay,  the Amish don’t know anything about pay-per-click advertising or PPC management and they probably couldn’t tell you where these heaters are actually made either (China).  But we can pick up some tips from last winter’s Amish fireplace ad campaign.

But first off, you can read at ConsumerAffairs.com about exploiting the Amish and a $300 fireplace that you could buy with  equivalent btu’s for $19.99 at Target.

Why is this ad effective?

Some ppc landing page tips from the Amish:

Long copy

Direct marketers have known about long copy for some time now. Its not there for the sake of filling space. Its used to crowd in as many sales arguments as possible.  Not everyone is going to read it, but those that do will probably convert.

from the book Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples:

Advocates of short copy say, “I don’t think anybody will read all that small print. Let’s cut the copy down to a couple of paragraphs and set it in 18-point type.”What the advocates of short copy should say, if they want to be accurate, is this: ” I don’t think everybody will read all that small print.” This is perfectly true. Everybody will not read it. But the fact is that the very people you are most interested in will read your ad. These are prospects who will buy your product or service if you tell them sufficient reasons for doing so.

Here is the solution to the problem of long copy versus short copy that should satisfy the champions of both sides of the question.  Put a brief selling message into your headline and subheadings. Put your detailed message into small print. In this way, you accomplish two things:

(1) You get  a brief message across to glancers with your headline and subheads.

(2) You give a complete message to the person who is sufficiently interested in your product to read about it.

John Caples wrote his Tested Advertising Methods in 1932. As you can see, the same technique is still used effectively in 2009.

Use headers to qualify your audience

Immediately, the problem of high heating bills is made apparent.  Hey, I have high heating bills too! Join the club. Read on reader and your problem will be solved.

Call to action keyphrases

Save! How to! These call to actions are boldfaced in the sub headings. You can read about the best call to action keywords in my previous post. Also, notice that the word FREE is used to grab attention in the ad.

Increase conversions with badges and seals

The Good House Keeping Seal of approval and the Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL) certification is featured predominently in the Amish fireplace ad.  Conversion testing has shown that using security badges and seals such as the BBB Better Business Bureau on your website are an easy way to increase conversions.

Did the methods above increase sales of Amish fireplaces?

“The demand for the product was much higher than the company anticipated. They really were not properly staffed to take all the orders,” said the BBB’s Joy Bender.

Take a few tips from the Amish and increase your conversions too.

The recent Google Vince update has many speculating on the cause of the impact to search rankings. In my opinion, Google has tweaked a knob on what is known as the TSTR or Topic Sensitive Trust Rank. The TSTR involves a human element to determine seed pages that can distribute trust and authority to topically related websites.

Where do these seed pages come from?

It appears that many of the “seeded” pages come from the Yahoo Directory. Lets compare search results for “airline tickets” in Google and in the Yahoo Directory.

Google results airline tickets                   Yahoo Directory

date  2009-3-16

1. orbitz                                                   1. travelocity.com
2. travelocity.com                                       2. orbitz.com
3. priceline.com                                          3. aa.com
4. cheaptickets.com                                    4. expedia.com
5. nwa.com                                               5. cheapflights.com
6. aa.com                                                  6. priceline.com
7. kayak.com                                              7. usairways.com
8. allcheapfares.com                                    8. hotwire.com
9. delta.com                                               9. nwa.com
10. cheapflights.com                                   10. united.com

This current comparison between these two sets is significant because prior to February 2009, the following two sites didn’t rank in the top ten Google search results for “airline tickets”.

aa.com
nwa.com

Besides these new two urls to Google’s top ten, notice the number of matches between the two sets?

The Yahoo Directory is likely considered high-quality due to the entrance fee of $299 for each web site submitted to it. The high up-front cost tends to keep out the riff-raff. Submitters also have to agree to the terms of service and undergo a review by an editorial staff.

The Yahoo Directory appears to be very helpful in adding to a site’ s trust.

Graphic from the Google “Trust Rank” Patent: