Hi all,

Welcome to our April Newsletter.

I'm back from the Search Engine Room Conference in Sydney last week and thought I'd share some search world updates with you! Firstly, I want to talk about Press Releases - a very hot topic for the online industry right now.

In Marketing 101, we've got Pay Per Click for Dummies! - An introduction to paid advertising on Google Adwords (you know the line of search results down the right hand side of Google's listings?), what they are and how to get there. Remember that we can do this for you. And last but not the least, we have a checklist to help you determine if your website looks outdated.

We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles… just email us at info@optymise.co.nz.

Have a fantastic month.

Enjoy,
Robyn

P.S. To our avid readers & you will be pleased to note that the rapidly moving nature of online marketing has forced us to take drastic measures this year - sending an extra newsletter every month! This is to ensure you have the most up to date information about what's happening in our online world. Some of the hot topics we will be touching on include the fast emerging blog marketing, RSS feeds, and article releases & watch this space!

In this issue:

• » Press Releases
• » Marketing 101: Pay Per Click for Dummies
• » Time to update your website? Here's a Checklist...

Press releases were originally designed as a communication tool between company PR staff or public relations firms and the media. But now that online news sites such as Yahoo News and Google News contain such an abundance of press release content and RSS makes it easy to syndicate news, press releases can be effectively used as a direct to consumer communication tool.

Not only are press releases an effective tool for distributing content to the media and consumers, they can easily be syndicated creating a excellent opportunity to attract incoming links. Some of the press releases our SEO firm optimizes and distributes have gained as few as 30 unique domain name links and some have garnered over 500 - all from a single press release. Using progressive wire services like Business Wire, PR Newswire, PRWeb and Market Wire simplifies the process of getting news content into these popular news search engines.

Each month, more than 27 million people use Google News and Yahoo News to find the latest information about a wide range of topics that interest them. According to Neilsen/NetRatings, the unique audiences of Yahoo News and Google News now rival the online audiences of other current events and global news destinations such as CNN and BBC News. In fact, Yahoo News and Google News now reach audiences that are equivalent to those of major search engines like Ask Jeeves and AltaVista. If your company's marketing and promotion strategy includes the Internet, your press releases should be optimized for and distributed to the major news search engines.

Realizing the opportunity news search offers, many company marketers continue to flounder at making sure their press releases receive maximum exposure. To that end, here are 10 tips for maximizing the visibility of press release content:

1. Start with something worth announcing. Boring news gets little results no matter how well it's optimized. It's important to focus on a specific topic. Too much information and focusing on too many keywords will dilute the message for both news search engines and readers.

2. Think upward and to the left. Optimise a press release using web page optimisation principles (ask us about these) and keep in mind that important keywords need to be near the top of the document with the most important keyword phrases first.

3. Distribute the release via a wire service like Business Wire and PRWeb or PRNewswire. If you distribute the same release through more than one wire service on the same day, it is very likely that the news search engines will filter out the duplicates. If your story has more than one angle, take advantage of that and mix it up.

4. Give the reader a reason to click through. A direct to consumer release needs to offer more than an announcement of news. It needs to provide the reader with an action opportunity. Examples include: white paper downloads, free trials, special offers, podcasts, webinars, reports, email newsletters and consultations.

5. Create a landing page to convert referred press release visitors to prospects. You use landing pages with your PPC campaigns, don't you? Then why not use them with your press release? Embed links in your release to relevant resources as well as a strong call to action. Along with giving the reader a reason to click through, the destination of that link should be designed to bring the visitor further along the sales cycle for whatever the desired outcome is.

6. Assemble a list of media contacts for the release and email them the release along with a concise, summary. Offer an exclusive if you can and suggesting story ideas that clearly indicate you're familiar with the writer's work can do wonders.

7. Make it relevant and make it easy for journalists and bloggers to write about your news. Research bloggers that write about the topic and pre-write a summary of the release for them. In many cases, bloggers will simply copy/paste all or part of your summary and add their own commentary.

8. Post the release to the company blog enabled media room. Ideally, the company site contains a blog that can archive press releases chronologically and by category, offers a search function, lists previous media exposure, contains links to media-centric photos, audio and video as well as an RSS feed to make it easy for interested parties, including journalists, to subscribe to company news.

9. Write a blog post version of the news and submit to relevant social media sites. This does not work for all types of content and you need to be sure what you're writing resonates with the culture of the social media networks that you want to promote to. Do not submit press releases directly to Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Stumble Upon, etc.

10. Use social bookmark sites as a clipping service. Bookmark pickups of the release using social bookmark services such as del.icio.us, Furl.net or blogmarks.net. Such services can be linked to from the online media room and many become crawlable links for search engines.

Want to know how this can help your business? Optymise would love to do a press release for you, so contact us today to find out more.

An Introduction to Pay Per Click Advertising

For the beginner, understanding PPC (Pay per Click) services can be utterly confusing. With so many search engines to choose from, and so many options within each one: different billing schemes, different terminology, and different techniques for ranking in the top spot, the learning curve is quite substantial. So why would anyone go to the trouble?

When it comes to most PPC campaigns you can be sure of one thing: Your rankings are stable. When you go to bed, you know that when you wake up the next morning your placements will still be there. Google is not going away any time soon, so it is still very important to optimize and try to get those top placements regardless of whether or not you wish to pursue a PPC campaign. If you are ranking well on Google, in many cases it is still well worth it to pursue PPC placements as well to get that extra exposure. With a PPC campaign its important to remember that it isn't always as simple as paying top dollar to dominate the number one spot. Regular tweaking and maintenance will be required.

Benefits of a Pay Per Click Advertising Program include:

♦ Speed: PPC listings can be launched very quickly. Unlike organic SEO, there's no need to wait for the search engines' spiders to perform a deep crawl of your site.

♦ Reach: PPC provides additional traffic to your site. It is particularly effective for highly competitive search phrases where it may be extremely difficult to get a top 10 organic listing. You can save your SEO effort for more fruitful targets and use PPC to get on that top results page.

♦ ROI (return on investment): PPC can be extensively tracked. Statistics like Cost-per-conversion are quite valuable for comparing your campaign ROI against other marketing tactics. Furthermore, this data is reported to you accurately and quickly.

♦ Experimentation: When researching potential search phrases, you will likely find some that are a good match for your website. But typically there are others that are intriguing but questionable. Do you want to risk optimizing your site for marginal terms, only to find that the conversion rates for these visitors are dismal and the resulting leads are unlikely to be customers? PPC campaigns provide a low-risk test bed for keywords, enabling you to determine if a full site optimization campaign is worthwhile.

In our second newsletter issue this month, we will give you some tips on how to run a successful Pay Per Click campaign.

Your website looks outdated if. . .

• » The copyright at the bottom is not current.
• » The design still looks like your 6th grade nephew created the site.
• » Your site is 5 or 6 years old and not up to current design trends.
• » You still use a "splash" page (your home page says, "Click to enter").
• » You have broken links to other sites, such as a reference to an article.
• » You have Word documents as downloads instead of PDF files.
• » Your navigation menu is old and was created before the adoption of drop down navigation.
• » You still use 12pt Arial for all your text.
• » You do not make it easy for someone to contact you.

When it comes to your web site, it's out with the old, in with the new. Optymise specialises in custom website design, so let us know if yours need a facelift… or even a new site for that matter!

CONTACT US today to find out about any of these services, or to fill out a brief outlining your business and website goals. We will assess your needs and be in touch with you with our recommendations.