SEO Content Solutions

Would gaining media visibility improve your sales? The answer is most likely a resounding yes! In this post I’ll show you 4 simple things that people I know are using to gain more media visibility. The best part is that each of these things could easily be tackled over the weekend, yet the results could bring you the exposure you need to grow your business for years to come.

Create a Video Reel

Television and radio media reps want to know that you’ll look and sound great on the air - and that you know your industry. To showcase these, online reputation management specialist Kent Campbell created a video reel and published it on YouTube. The guy is well spoken, funny, sharp and has a great voice. But who would know if they only “read” his content online? Kent set up an interview where he answered some of the most commonly asked questions about online reputation management. The result - an offer to appear on television from a major network.

If video is your bag, you’ll want to learn all you can about video marketing from Gary Vaynerchuk - this guy’s a rockstar!

Show (Not Just Tell) Your Expertise Online

Chris Hanisco, founder of The Dippy Chick, has been approached by several media networks. How did they find her? Through her active participation in the Start Up Nation online forum. Chris wasn’t trying to bait the media - she was just doing what she loves to do - helping other entrepreneurs solve their problems. However, when a major network browsed around Start Up Nation in searh of mom entrepreneurs, Chris’s name, face, and obvious level of experitise was prevalent throughout the community. 

An About Page with a Human Interest Angle

Interviewers are always interested in tying in a personal interest story to their pieces - that’s what makes a story interesting! When the media scouts followed the links from Start Up Nation back to Chris’s ‘About’ page, they learned about the fascinating story behind her business. People want to interview people - not companies. Yet it’s amazing how many company’s ‘About’ pages don’t even include the names of the people behind the business, let alone photos or compelling stories. Your ‘About’ page isn’t just for the media - in my opinion, a compelling ‘About’ page can be one of your most persuasive sales pages.

Publish an Online Press Room

A journalist often knows what type of industry expert they need to interview to enhance a particular story. They will often search the ‘About’ pages of various websites in search of an expert to interivew. Why not take things a step further by creating an online press room with everything that a journalist would need? Your online newsroom might include things such as:

• Executive bios
• Headshots of key people
• A history of the company
• Quotes from the company founders
• News story angles
• Frequently asked questions (from the POV of the media)
• Your most recent press releases

For a daily dose of smart publicity ideas, check out Annie Jenkins. Her regular emails always get my brain turning with new publicity ideas.

From now until Saturday January 17th at midnight EST, Tara and I are offering a free upgrade to an SEO press release on Online PR News to all of our Twitter friends!

Your upgraded press release includes 3 anchor text links, an ad-free page with an SEO friendly title tag, pull quotes, an image upload - and even an iFrame so that readers can navigate to your awesome site right from the press release. (Check out a sample press release that utilizes all the features.)

How To Get Your Free Friend Upgrade

1. Upload your press release as a free version

2. After you upload your press release, just DM one of us with the title and we’ll pay for the upgrade.

How to Get the Most SEO & Aesthetic Value From Your Press Release

Online PR News is loaded with features to make your press release SEO friendly, look great, and convert readers to visitors. Be sure to take a look at this quick slideshow that shows you how to use all of the features on the site.

Connect With Us on Twitter!

Tara: twitter.com/TARAinFL

Christine: twitter.com/SelfMadeChick

There are several reasons why we often recommend that clients pursue article marketing: to establish themselves as industry experts, to increase awareness of their products and services, and to build backlinks to their websites. The first two are fairly obvious, which is why we are going to focus on the third in this post.

Starting an article marketing campaign does not guarantee links. In fact, it is entirely possible to achieve absolutely no linking benefit to your website — and it is amazing how many people are doing just that. Here are some tips to optimize a distribution article for maximum SEO benefit:

Choose Keywords Wisely

Keywords are the search terms that your readers or customers use to find your website. Knowing which keywords you wish to target is one of the single most important components to your Internet marketing campaign. When done correctly, keyword research will be able to pinpoint which keywords your competitors are targeting and which keywords are more easily mastered than others.

Choose one primary keyword to target in your article, as well as 2-4 related keywords to sprinkle throughout. Using these related keywords helps the search engines get an even clearer idea about the topic of your article. Believe it or not, search engines can tell the difference between a keyword that appears on a page of many unrelated terms and one that appears with terms related to its topic.

Using Keywords In Your Title And Summary

You should use the keyword in the title of the article whenever possible — trying to position the keyword toward the first part of the title. For example, a title that reads:

Article Marketing: 3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility

Vs.

3 Things Strategies for Achieving More Visibility with Article Marketing

Using keywords in the title is important because the title often becomes the title tag and sometimes the URL of the web page. The title tag and URL are two of the most important pieces of a webpage that help search engines identify the topic of the content. Not only does the title tag give the search engines a critical tip as to your topic, but the title tag usually becomes the dark blue title that appears in the search engines results page. This is why it is essential to create article titles that not only include keywords, but that also captivate readers. A good, solid, intriguing title can make the difference between your article being seen and being overlooked.

The summary of your article often becomes the Meta description for the page on which it’s published. The Meta description is usually the short summary that appears in the search engine results page beneath the title. The same logic that applies to writing captivating, keyword-rich titles also applies to writing summaries.

Using Keywords In The Body And Author Bio

When writing articles for article marketing, a good target keyword density is between 1.0% and 1.3%. Trying to “over optimize” by using keywords at a higher percent density can cause the article to be rejected by many publishers.

It is also very important that you use your main keywords as anchor text whenever the online article distribution site will allow. Google uses anchor text to determine page ranking. When you use your keyword as an anchor text, you are essentially telling Google (and the reader) what your website is all about.

The author bio is the most important place to use keywords. Many article submission sites allow for anchor text in the ‘about the author’ bio - and taking this opportunity critical. When creating a bio with anchor text, it is beneficial to include two links: one link to the homepage in a main keyword, and a link to an internal page using the keyword the internal page is targeting.

We see many businesses make the mistake of only building links to their homepages. This is a missed opportunity! It is very important to build links to a site’s internal pages — in fact we recommend that an article be written and distributed linking to any new pages created. The backlinks generated by that article will help establish the new page with the search engines.

By choosing to target the right keywords, using your main keyword in the titles and subheads of an article and of course linking to your website with anchor text keywords, you will effectively be using article marketing to build a backlink campaign for your website.