Develop More Links

Welcome to another WineMarketer.com newsletter! Last month, I gave readers an outline on how to diagnose their websites in order to achieve higher search engine visibility. Since I am confident that each of you tested your site and fixed the problems (smile), we can move on to the next topic of building your site’s reputation and rankings in Google and Yahoo.

One of the most important ways to increase your website search rankings is to increase the number of links that point to your site. For example, imagine how many websites link to a story on www.cnn.com. Hundreds of thousands of links that point to pages on cnn.com tell Google and Yahoo that people value the information on that site.

So, how can you create more links to your website? Believe it or not, an electronic press release is a highly effective way to build quality links to your website. Press releases actually perform two functions: they can help your search engine optimization (SEO) link building goals, and also assist your short term Internet marketing goals.

ePR

An electronic press release means you submit a news story to a press release website that “publishes” your article on its site and RSS feeds. Press release websites often have high page rank scores by Google due to their active content and traffic. Posting an electronic press release on a reputable (high Google PageRank) website actually allows you to build quality links to your site rather quickly. The more quality websites that point to your site, the faster your website’s Google reputation score will increase.

I encourage my clients to consult with their publicist to ensure that the company knows how to write effective press releases for search engine marketing. I also encourage my clients to check to see if their press releases are indexed by Google. If you can’t find your press releases with simple search phrases within 48 hours of being published by your PR agency, it is very possible that your PR agency has not evolved into being able to execute search engine optimized press releases.

Real Life Examples

For example, I issued a press release for Meander Cellars 2005 Cabernet in April, after I tasted their wine and awarded it a score of 96 points on my wine blog. Within 24 hours, my press release ranked #1 in the USA for the term “2005 Meander Cabernet.” Actually, the first two listings in Google were press releases I issued via different PR services. The third listing was the winery’s website. You can see how powerful a well written and well titled press release can position you on Google. My press releases were able to jump ahead of the winery website for a wine that it produces.

Press releases are indexed in Google for a very long time. In February, I issued a press release on my score of the 2005 Diamond Mountain Cabernet. Today, if you go to Google and type “2005 Hall Diamond Mountain Cabernet” the first three listings in Google are my press releases. You can even drop the vintage year from the search phrase and get the same dominant results.

Press releases create valuable links to your website. While you wait for the SEO edits on your website to increase your natural rankings, press releases can jump your message to Google Page one and also build links to your website. The more links into your site, from quality sources like press release websites, the faster your PageRank score will increase.

In addition to press release websites, you can use social bookmarking tools like Digg.com to achieve similar Google Page One results. Next time you issue a press release, make sure you post the story on your website as a dedicated web page. Once the page is published, you can go to www.digg.com and bookmark the page for others to see. Links from http://digg.com , http://del.icio.us and http://technorati.com can help you achieve higher natural rankings since links from these sites are considered “high quality” links.

In conclusion, it should be a very easy task to write something new about your winery each month. Instead of putting off this task, consider adding a story to your website and issuing a press release. If you issue at least one press release a month, and post it on the best SEO friendly PR websites, your organic traffic and PageRank scores will increase. In the end, more organic traffic means more visitors to sign up for winery direct sales.

Cheers!

Brian Pasch, CEO; Pasch Consulting Group

Brian Pasch is the CEO of Pasch Consulting Group, a firm specializing in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization. The PCG website is located at http://www.seonj.com and Brian Pasch can be reached via email at brian@seonj.com. Brian is also an avid wine collector and wine advocate. His wine blog can be found at http://www.brianpasch.com.

This entry was posted by admin on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Keywords, Link Baiting, Press Releases, SEO, Wine Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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