AdSense Traffic Tip: Distribute a Press Release

Recently, I explained how article writing could generate more traffic (and links) for your site. There's a related technique which is almost identical and which has similar beneficial results, and that's to distribute a press release.

A press release is a short article announcing something. Originally aimed specifically at members of the press, companies and individuals use press releases to announce almost anything these days. Why? Because the Internet makes it so easy to distribute them.

Creating a press release is actually very simple. You need three basic things: a title, a summary, and the body. The title should be descriptive and catchy. The summary should highlight the important parts of the press release. The body shouldn't be too long and should provide all the interesting details. It's very similar to writing an article, really, except that you use a more formal tone.

For some examples of press releases, refer back to the ones I published on this blog:

• The Invisible Fence Guide: A New AdSense Case Study by Leading Expert
• New AdSense Newsletter Delivers Tips and Advice on Content Monetization from Leading Expert
• Canadian Author Publishers Book on Making Money with Google

You can also find examples of press releases by going to almost any company's corporate site and looking for the “Press” or “Media Relations” section. And check out Guide to Writing Successful Press Releases for tips and guidelines.

Important: make sure you write your initial press release as plain text, not HTML. You'll see why very shortly. (If you don't know what I mean, refer to the article writing series I mentioned initially.)

Once you have a press release, what do you do with it? You distribute it! The easiest way to do this is to use the PRWeb Press Release Newswire. You register for free and after you login you press the Submit News Release button. On the resulting form there are fields for all the important parts of your press release: the language, the headline, the summary, the body, the keywords, the release date, the industry, the distribution area, the country of origin, the web site, and contact information. Fill everything out, mostly by cutting and pasting the text from your press release into the appropriate boxes.

Basic press release distribution via PRWeb is free. It doesn't get you much, really. Just a mention somewhere in PRWeb's list of press releases on the day of the release and a permanent URL for the release. And no links active within the release. But at least it's out there. You can pay, however, to increase the distribution of the release and to get access to extra features. It's up to you to decide if it's useful or not. Note that distributing a press release to conventional media over the usual channels does cost money, so it's not something you normally do for your blog/site.

PRWeb is just one example of a distribution site. There are many others. A quick search for “press release distribution” will turn up other sites. Most are not free, but you can find the occasional free one.

But don't forget to put your press release on your own site somewhere. For example, I've started listing my press releases in a special section on my personal site. Be sure to change the press release into proper HTML and make sure to activate any links within the text. If you have a blog, announce the press release there, either by copying the text right into it (like I did with the releases above) or else by linking to it.

And think about turning your press release into an article. If it's truly newsworthy, there's probably an article or two buried in it as well. It doesn't take much to repurpose the text for something else, and then you can effectively submit your press release to the various article sites.

Eric Giguere is the author of Make Easy Money with Google, a real (printed!) introductory AdSense book for non-technical people, available at all fine bookstores. Be sure to download the free sample chapter for more information about the book. Or add it directly to your Amazon shopping cart!

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