If we held an election today for SEO President of News Search, Greg would win hands down. His SEO-PR firm is not only one of the most visible in the sector, but also one of the most effective. I know from personal experience - Greg optimized a release for a client of ours and had it ranking in Google & Yahoo! News and bringing in close to a thousand extra visitors the morning it was launched (this was in a tiny niche category).
Greg's been interviewed by Lee Odden, one of the most personable guys you're likely to meet on the conference circuit. And, no surprise, when I last checked, the interview was ranking #1 at Yahoo! News for SEO (don't expect that to last long, though - news search changes hourly).
With news search, there are several goals:
- Being listed on the Yahoo!/Google News homepage
- Getting picked up for syndication by some major online/offline outlets
- Enticing a reporter to write an editorial story about you
- Ranking for a news search query
Greg's a master of all of these, but even he can't making boring crap interesting, so if you approach Greg or conduct press release optimization on your own, make sure you have a "hook". Think of it this way - is your press release (and headline) at a quality level high enough to where a casual glance by an industry insider would force a deeper read?
jasongolod, The fees for press release distribution vary depending on the wire service, the size of the release and if there are "extras" like buying anchor text links which are worthless on Google.
The real value from press release optimization for link building and online visibility purposes comes from the creative. A well written, newsworthy release can get picked up by many, many sites in a contextually relevant way.
Otherwise, if the release is about something you can convert, then a proper call to action and landing page are critical. Not much different than PPC.
I have finally got reporters writing articles on one of my websites. I did it through an Awards program for Branson Shows at www.bransoncritic.org/. I would recommend to anyone to come up with contest or awards to get media attention.
D
Rand, something that I would to know (as someone who does not have a ton of experience with PRs) is how much of the optimization is in fees to the service for better distribution and how much is on page factors.
...and when I looked at that Yahoo! News page, the SEO beginner's guide was ranked #2 and #4 via Search Engine Journal and Lifehacker, respectively. ^_^