Archive Your Press Releases You Idiot
That’s one of those little things I find myself muttering under my breath when talking to the occasional unenlightened Webpreneur. A lot of online business owners and webmasters not only aren’t aware that a press release archive would be good for them, but they actually refuse to post their press releases on their company site.
Now yes, a full online press room is even better, but let’s take baby steps here.
This particular ignorance issue we can blame on the SEO community, and the constant SEO misinformation going around the Web (not saying the SEO pros are telling people not to post their own press releases, but rather all the twits who think they’re SEO experts because they’ve read a few e-books and participate in webmaster forums).
The big issue most of these Web folks have is related to the duplicate content issues everyone loves to yap about. Here’s the basic “logic” I hear all the time:
“My press release is going to be all over the Web, so if I publish it on my site too, Google is going to penalize me in the search results.”
And here’s what I generally want to say to these people.
1. You’re an idiot.
2. Are you sure you’re really qualified to even own a website?
3. Ummm, isn’t the point of your press release to get exposure? If your answer is “no,” because you think traffic and backlinks are the main purposes of a press release, please return to number one.
4. Now that you’ve answered “yes” to number three, ummm, wouldn’t making your news directly accessible to your site visitors be a good thing to get exposure for your news?
5. Wouldn’t your regular readers / visitors / customers be slightly pissed off if they had to find out about your news from a press release on some crap blog that picked up a free press release distribution feed instead of directly from the source?
OK. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system a little bit, here are the reasons you have no excuse not to have your press releases online:
1. They serve as an archive of news and past information about your company; an excellent research tool for any journalist considering doing a story on you based on your most recent release.
2. Frankly, it’s an itty bitty step that can make your site or online company look much more professional (shows that you care about promoting your company, that you’re actually putting effort into making the company or site newsworthy, and gives a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes).
Will the big bad search engines get mad at you for publishing your press releases to your website? No. Does it mean your release on your own site might not be the number one result for a search for it? Possibly… it depends on whose copy was indexed first. Does it mean the rest of your site will somehow be penalized in its existing rankings? Absolutely not.
Get over the Google fear already, and stop letting SEO be a reason to neglect basic PR good practice. Hell, even Big G says they want you creating sites for users; not search engines. Listen to them… it’s not every day they say something that makes sense.
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Comments
Glad you liked it. :) The ones who worry about nothing nut SEO aren’t all that bright, because they’re putting the future of their site or company almost entirely in the hands of search engines. No one with an ounce of real business sense operates their business in a way that it’s entirely dependent on the whims of another company.
The excuse I most often hear is something like, “Well Google sends me the vast majority of my traffic.” And all I can think is “man these people aren’t too bright.” The fact of the matter isn’t that Google is the best source of big traffic. It’s that it looks like that because so many nit wits do nothing but optimize for them to take advantage of their rankings. In the process, they sometimes completely neglect other marketing and promotional methods and tools, which otherwise can lead to significantly more traffic than Google. I swear… sometimes I feel like I’m the only non-Google-slave out there. Maybe we need to start a club. lol :)
[…] had a total “duh” moment when I read that, thinking I must be on a total idiot binge lately on the webmaster […]
You are spot on here - it drives me mad not to be able to see a press release (let alone archives) on websites.
Even more irritating is that sites don’t think to incorporate whatever the story is in the release into their home page. If it is a story about a new product/service - then highlight it on the home page as news.
If it is a campaign - then show you are serious by making it the main content of the site.
There is still this secret squirrel mentality about news being released instead of being maximised.
[…] had a total “duh” moment when I read that, thinking I must be on a total idiot binge lately on the webmaster […]
That’s pretty funny.
I’d just point them to “grown up” Web sites that have media sections. Might not work, but it’s worth a shot.
I’m sorry Jenn, but I just heard that if you mention “Google” in an article, the entire site gets punished. ;)
Came across this entry from DP and couldn’t stop giggling from start to finish. If webmasters are only interested in SEO, and don’t realise the benefit/importance of their own content being seen on their own website, then as you say in point 3, go back to point 1.