A good press release can do more than just generate publicity. It can attract incoming links to your website from highly trafficked websites. These incoming links can give you a big boost in the search engine rankings. Many of the top distribution sites directly feed into Yahoo News Google News and other large new organizations. The problem is, press release distribution can be expensive and if your press release isn’t effective, you’ll be throwing money down the drain.

Here are five things you can do to ensure your press release is a success.

Make it Newsworthy
Reporters and editors scan distribution sites looking for news they can use in their publication. Your job when writing a press release is to convince the editor that you’ve got news their publication can’t live without. One of the biggest problems with press releases is that they are often little more than advertisements filled with hyperbole and over used cliches (ie. “We’re honored to see Acme Widgets receive this award. It’s a tribute to the people who work at Acme Widgets and our ongoing commitment to the quality of service we provide every day”). A good press release presents the news an editor needs to make their publication successful.

As a blogger and former newspaper editor who’s sorted through his share of bad press releases, I don’t care about the top producer in your office or who sold the most widgets for the month of November but I’d be glad to sell you advertising space to announce it. However, if your widget won an award because it converts cars to run on solar power, I’m interested–not in the award but in the ground breaking technology of the widget.

Find the newsworthy angle in your story and feature it prominently.

Make the reporter’s job easy
The work involved in filling a daily publication can be overwhelming. When you provide a newsworthy press release that an editor can directly use to fill the pages of his publication, it’s a win/win for both of you. Editors can be very receptive to a good press release.

When writing, think and write like a reporter. Write it as if you were writing a news story using AP Style. If it looks like news and can be dropped directly into a publication, it has a much better chance of getting picked up than a release that needs extensive editing.

Deep link to inner pages on your website
When an online press release gets picked up by a large publication, the back links to your website can be very valuable both for SEO purposes and for directly driving readers to your website. To make the most of these pages, anchor links to targeted key words in the body of your text leading to specific pages on your website. This is where your businesses blog can really pay off. Instead of linking to your home page, you can link to related articles on your blog. You can then use your blog to direct readers throughout your website.

An effective strategy is to write articles on your blog specifically designed to support the press release. Look for opportunities to expand on your blog. When done properly, the links can provide a benefit to readers.

Write Powerful Headlines
Most pr distribution sites show little more than a headline. Editors scan the headlines and make a decision to read the rest of the press release based on the headline. A good headline can make or break your press release.

Make sure the headline is newsworthy, captures attention and physically fits the space allotted on the distribution site. Spend a few moments scanning the headlines on a press release distribution site to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

SEO Optimize Your Press Release
Make your press release search engine friendly just as you would a blog post on your website. Most press release distribution sites are crawled and indexed by Google and press releases will often come up in the search engine rankings. Editors also search distribution sites in the same way that you would search Google. Include appropriate keywords in headlines, descriptions and tags. Make it easy for both the search engines and the target audience to find.

Bonus tip: Hire a professional
Press release distribution on premium distribution services averages around $250 per release. A successful press release can quickly pay for itself through increased traffic and search engine ranking. At the same time, when you send out a poorly written press release that fails to meet your objectives, you’re throwing your money away. It’s often worthwhile to hire a proven professional with experience getting press releases published.

If you need a professional to write your next press release, contact me at jalodico@bizwritings.com. You can also find more information about my copywriting services at www.jalcommunication.com.

Of all the premium themes available, Thesis is probably one of the most popular themes available. In the world of templates and standard themes, popularity might not always be a good thing but thanks to the unlimited customization features, repetition between unrelated sights doesn’t need to be problem.

If your site is hard to read, people won’t bother. Thesis offers a clean design featuring stellar typography combined with a generous use of white space. It is pleasing to read and looks professional right out of the box. For bloggers who focus on the written word, the default installation looks great. However, it’s when you start digging into Thesis that the theme comes to life.

SEO, SEO and More SEO
One of my favorite features in Thesis is that it is built for search engine optimization. SEO customizations that would take some serious coding or plugins in other themes come standard. Along with custom fields for title tags and meta descriptions, you get the ability to optimize everything down to the categories and archive pages. You can guide the search engine spiders through your site using “nofollow,” “noidnex,” and “noarchive” settings for each page and can even optimize the “read more” link on particular posts.

Another feature new in 1.8 is character counts in the meta fields. Title tags and meta descriptions are limited to around 72 and 180 characters. The character count lets you know where you stand. Although it’s nothing groundbreaking, it’s one of the little things that makes Thesis nice.

Even if you know nothing about SEO, Thesis by default will put you ahead of the game. I personally saw one of my blogs jump from about the fifth position in the Google search returns to an alternating first/second position after switching over to Thesis. While I can’t verify that Thesis is the reason for the jump, I can’t believe it didn’t help.

Custom Control Panels, No Coding

Fonts and colors for the nav bar can be changed through the Thesis design options

With some themes, changing basic elements such as background color, number of columns, fonts all take custom coding. Thesis includes an extensive design panel that allows you to select colors, fonts, etc without the need for coding. Teaser display options, post date format (or no date at all), number of columns, framework options, to name a few can all be managed through the design control panel.

But that’s not all you can do through the control panels. Header and footer scripts such as those needed by Google Analytics can be directly added through the control panel. You can select pages, posts or links to include in the navigation bar, drag and drop to change the order in which they appear and even create drop down menus using the control panel. You can even change the display order of comments, trackbacks and comment forms with simple drag and drop.

With version 1.8, one of my biggest complaints with the theme has been fixed. With past versions, something as simple as adding a custom banner to the top of the page required custom coding. Now, header images can be uploaded through a control panel that automatically resizes the image and drops it into place.

Thesis also comes with a multimedia box that can be set to show throughout the site or on a per page/post basis.

Hardcore Design Customization
Thesis goes way beyond the basic blogging platform. Armed with a little coding knowledge, it can become a powerful web design tool. Developers can quickly save options and upload them to new sites, javascript libraries can be turned on with the touch of a button and custom pages can be created from scratch if needed. Customizations can all be done directly through the WordPress control panel without the need to upload files to the server.

Don’t Know Code? Problem With the Site? Help is Available
By far, one of the best features of Thesis is the support forum. Although the theme gets better and better with each upgrade, if you really want to customize it, you will need to do some custom coding. When I first started using Thesis, I knew very little about web design. However, as I’ve built more and more websites with it, I have always been able to get the code modifications I need through the support forums. When I couldn’t find the code I needed in the forums, I started a new thread and the code was provided usually before the day was over. All I needed to do was cut and paste it into place. When I was first learning, they even helped me paste it in the right place.

Personally, I think the support forums alone justify the price. They are always quick to respond and most important, they are patient users of all ability levels.

Pricing Options
DIY Themes offers a number of licensing options. A personal license which allows you to run Thesis on one site costs $97. A developers option which allows for use on unlimited sites you own is available for $164. Developers can purchase additional licenses for clients for $40 apiece.

Want to see more?
Check out the video below to see how Thesis can unleash the web designer in you.

Click here if you’re ready to rock The Thesis Theme for WordPress

Looking for other Theme Reviews? Be sure to check out my reviews of Headway and Studiopress.

As I wrote a while back on Socialmediaexaminer.com, one of the best ways to move to the top of the search engine rankings is by producing good content. When you create quality content, your readers will come back for more, share it with others and most importantly, it will generate incoming links.

That said, there are still a number of simple things you can do to help the search engines find your content. Sticking to the topic so that desired keywords occur naturally, writing meta data that is consistent with the information on the page and composing a search engine results description that is compelling enough that readers will click through to your site are all techniques that can help a page or post rise to the top.

Unfortunately, even for the advanced copywriter or blogger, it is hard to tell exactly what the search engine will see when a post or page is published. Enter Scribe Content Optimizer, a search engine optimization tool available for WordPress (and other content management systems to come). Scribe analyzes your post and meta content and provides a wealth of information allowing you to revise and reanalyze your post before hitting the publish button.

In WordPress, Scribe sits quietly in the corner waiting for you to finish your draft, custom title and meta description. . Once complete, you can run an analysis on your post. Scribe will give you a score based on a number of factors and make suggestions for revision.

As you can see in the image below, an analysis of this post up to this point returns a score of 87%. At this point, the post is still a little short for the search engine’s liking.

While I might be inclined to finish the post knowing that once I’ve got my 300+ words, this post will be fully optimized for the search engines. However, let’s dig a little deeper to see how I’m doing in terms of keywords.

While my earlier score of 87% might have looked good, notice that my top primary keyword is “common sense.” Not really a term I was hoping to emphasize. Fortunately, If I click on the next tab in the image above, Scribe will make suggestions for changing keywords. In this case wrote my title tag to read, “Scribe for SEO; Common Sense Review for a Common Sense Program.” As you can see, although it might make for a catchy headline, I’ve repeated the term “common sense” twice resulting in it being picked up as a primary keyword.

Revising the custom title tag to read, “Scribe for SEO; WordPress Plugin Takes the Guesswork Out of SEO Copywriting” changes “common sense” from a primary keyword to a significant keyword leaving just “scribe” and “SEO” as my primary keywords. “Common Sense” may still be getting a high ranking because I also used the term in my meta description which reads, “A Review of the search engine optimization tool Scribe. Scribe provides common sense seo allowing the user to edit and revise copy using this powerful seo tool.”

If I revise the meta to read, “A Review of the search engine optimization tool Scribe. Scribe gives users the information needed to edit and revise copy for the search engines,” the term “common sense” drops from the keyword list completely.

And that’s what Scribe is all about–providing the information needed to revise and rewrite your copy until it does exactly what you want it to do. Yes, you still need to be able to write but in the hands of a skilled copywriter, seo copywriting becomes an art and not just stuffing keywords into the page.

More than just keywords
While keywords are important, the SERP or the title and paragraph that show up when someone finds your site in the search engines are just as important. Once your page comes up in the search engine, the information the reader sees must be compelling enough to entice the reader to click through to the site. This becomes more important the further down the search engine results you go.

Using Scribe, you can see exactly what the search engine sees before you publish the page. Nothing is left to chance.

Using the SERP preview, you can be sure that important information isn’t cut short and that you’re giving the reader a reason to click through to your site.

Pricing and Page Analysis
Scribe is a premium plugin and requires a monthly subscription. Subscription rates begin at $17 per month and go up to $97 per month. The entry level rate of $17 gives you 15 page evaluations on one website. At $97/month, you can run up to 300 page evaluations per month on an unlimited number of websites.

Special Offer
If you purchase Scribe before June 4th and use the coupon code “PROMO27″ you can get all the benefits of the $97 dollar level for only $27/month.

Want to learn more about common sense SEO
The creators of Scribe have put out a great report on optimizing content for the search engines. Be sure to check it out here.

Need compelling search engine optimized copy for your site? Contact me here or at www.jalcommunications.com.

Read to the end of this post for a Special Offer

As I mentioned in an earlier post, WordPress premium themes have a number of advantages. Along with features you don’t find in most free themes, premium themes usually come with an active support community which can more than pay for itself when it comes to learning the them, customizing and helping when you run into problems. Of the premium themes available, one of the most interesting is Headway. Featuring drag and drop design, Headway brings advance design features without the need for advanced programming.

Visual Editor

For those who don’t like getting their hands dirty, the Headway visual editor makes it very easy to change colors, fonts, character spacing, just about anything you want without even thinking about HTML code. About the only coding you’ll need to know are the HTML color codes. One of the great things about the visual editor is that you can see your changes as you make them. No need to jump between browser windows refreshing the page.

Each content box is shown in a sidebar with drop down menus making it easy to make changes. If you don’t know the name of a corresponding field, you can click on the appropriate box in the sidebar and it will momentarily highlight the coordinating field. For example, if you don’t know the header from the body, it is easily identified so you can make changes to your site.

Leafs

Leafs are by far one of the most interesting features of the Headway theme. Leafs are basically content boxes that you can drag and drop wherever you want them on the page. This allows you move elements on the page in ways usually only possible with advanced coding. Don’t like the size of a content box, change it. Want to see featured posts on the bottom left corner, drag it there. Don’t like that look, move it to the right side of the page. All can be done visually without any custom coding.

Another aspect of leaves I really like is the wide variety of content that can be added to a page using leafs. Along with the usual featured posts and rss feeds, leafs also include advanced photo slider and gallery options and widgetized sidebars that run horizontally across the page wherever you want them.

Site configuration and Navigation Menu

As with the rest of Headway, uploading headers, changes to the nav bar and full width framework can all be done from the control panel. Header elements such as logos and advertisements can also be changed using drag and drop. Drop down menus and the ability to hide pages from the nav menu are just a few of the features that can be changed without coding.

Easy Hooks

Adding content such as banner advertisements or text below each post usually requires going into the WordPress files and making PHP programming changes. Headway uses what they call “Easy Hooks” that clearly identify the hook and provide a field for entering text, images or whatever. Say you want to add an advertisement after each post. Just use the drop down menu to find “after post” and insert the advertisement. That’s all there is to it.

SEO

Although I haven’t tested Headway’s SEO abilities, it does include everything you could ask for in a premium theme and more. Along with the basic meta fields, Headway automatically optimizes WordPress slugs, includes the ability to set no-follow and no-index links and uses categories to create breadcrumbs throughout the site. This last feature is interesting as it creates the potential to use categories as powerful keywords.

Design Without Programming

Headway is a great theme for those who want to design their own website but don’t want to spend time struggling with code. Designers may also want to consider the theme as a way to speed workflow and quickly build great looking websites.

Headway offers a personal option for $87 which allows the user to use the theme on two websites. A developers options is available for $164 which allows for use on unlimited sites (including client’s sites) and the removal of the Headway footer credit.

Special Offer!

The first person to purchase any blog or website installation from QuickEasyBlog.com and mention this post will receive the Headway premium theme installed and ready to use on their site.

While there are thousands of free WordPress themes available, the advantages of a quality premium theme can quickly justify the price (usually under $100). Along with getting a professionally designed theme that looks great right out of the box, premium themes usually come with a solid support community that can help you quickly customize your theme and fix any problems you might encounter–a luxury not found with most free themes.

Behind the scenes, premium themes often include control panel modifications and SEO optimization features that greatly improve upon the WordPress platform. Also, premium themes are often built with cleaner programming code resulting in better SEO and faster load times.

For professional looking blogs and business websites, a quality premium theme can often take you to the next level. Here’s the first in a five part series on premium themes you should consider:

StudioPress
StudioPress offers a number of themes that look great without the need to customize. Studiopress themes are built using the “Genesis Framework” upon which you can add any of a number of “Child Themes.”

StudioPress themes include a number of page layouts that allow each page to be individually customized without additional code. This allows for quick creation of any of a number of page designs within the site. SEO optimization such as meta titles, descriptions and tags and nofollow options are also built into the theme eliminating the need for extra plugins. There are also a number of sitewide SEO options built into the theme.

StudioPress featured post widget options

One of the features I like best about StudioPress is the ability to quickly create and move content on the home page. For example, the home page on the Executive Child Theme is broken into separate content boxes that can be modified using special widgets. By dragging and dropping widgets, content can be customized to show featured posts/pages, categories or even your latest Tweets.

Pictures are easily incorporated into the home page by adding a thumbnail photo to a page or post and adding the post to the featured post widget. With a combination of widgets and thumbnail images, you can quickly create a professional looking home page that looks like it was built by a designer.

Header customizations are also fairly straight forward allowing you to upload custom header images without modifying code. You can also use widgets in the header making it easy to add logos, advertising banners, search forms or other specialized content.

At the moment, changing colors does require changing code although a beta version that includes a design panel is being tested at the moment. Expect future upgrades to include this feature. Fortunately, as the program is now, changing colors is not difficult as it’s just a matter of changing the html number for the desired color. One thing to note is that many of the colors you see on the StudioPress sites are actually gradient images. When you change the color, you will lose the gradient.

Although I’m still exploring StudioPress, there are a couple of other features that look nice including the ability to change navigation menu features with widgets and widgets for email/rss feed subscription.

StudioPress also offers AgentPress, a specialized theme for Realtors that includes photo sliders and special fields for home listing information.

Pricing/Licensing
Most StudioPress themes cost $79.95 for the first theme which includes the Gensesis Framework. Additional child themes can be purchased for $29.95 and a developers option which includes all StudioPress themes is available for $299.99. Purchase includes unlimited use of the theme (on as many websites as you like including client sites), access to support forums and lifetime upgrades.

If you’re looking to build a professional looking site without the expense of a designer, StudioPress is a great option.

When it comes to choosing a name for your blog or website, search engine friendly terms or key words can help your target find your site. A keyword rich title can also help your site stand out among a collection of search engine results.

Let’s say you’re going to blog about your obsession with cow tipping (come on…if you haven’t done it you know you want to). If you were to name your blog, “Bob’s Obsession”, you probably wouldn’t get many hits from people searching for instructions on how to properly tip a cow.

However, if your were to name your blog, “Cow Tipping: Bob’s Secret Obsession”, you might get a number of hits from people entering the search term, “cow tipping.”  Add “hints, tips and advice” to your title and you’ve covered even more bases.

When choosing a name, brainstorm search terms that might be used to find information on your topic. Test terms by searching Google and with the Google Key Word Tool. Do they get a big response and do you have a lot of competition? Is there a way you could further specialize your blog or website to improve SEO?

If you’re blog title doesn’t include strong key words, not to worry. Bob can still focus on his obsession without including it in the title of the blog.

Say cow-tipping Bob doesn’t want to announce his obsession in his title (although if it’s a secret, I’m not sure why he’s blogging about it), he can still get the SEO juice he’s looking for by customizing the sites meta information. WordPress plugins such as the All-In-One-SEO Pack make it easy to customize the home page titles. Bob could change his meta information so that Google sees “Professional Cow Tipping Hints, Tips and Advice” while the title at the top of the page displays “Bob’s Obsession.”

The same holds true for the domain name or URL. When setting up your web hosting and choosing a domain name, consider something that is both easy to remember and includes one or two primary key words if possible. If our man Bob can get it, “Cowtipping.com” would be an excellent domain name. It is key word rich, easy to remember and tells the reader exactly what the site is about.

Website titles play an important role in driving traffic both through their impact on SEO and the reader’s decision to click through.

Are you ready to launch your blog or website? Visit The Details page to get a totally awesome blog or website you can manage yourself. I’ll even provide complete video instruction so you’ll be a wiz in no time.

Here are five tips that can help you get your blog off on the right foot:

1) Set Clear Goals and Objectives
What do you want to achieve with your blog? Are you looking to communicate with friends and family? Generate enough traffic to sell advertising? Attract potential customers or clients? Publish the poems you’ve been writing to your cat?

These are all valid reasons to start a blog. Setting clear goals and objectives for your blog will help you with everything from choosing the proper blogging platform to developing content that will attract your target audience. Clear goals will also help you maintain focus when the initial excitement of your new adventure starts to fade.

2) Determine Your Niche
The most successful blogs fill a specific niche. Clearly defining your niche can help you build a solid audience of returning readers. Smaller niches mean fewer competitors increasing your chances of being discovered. Writing for a specific niche also provides a clear focus for the blog. The more posts you write on your specific topic, the more pages indexed by the search engines which can result in better search engine traffic.

It’s also good to research your niche. Is it already filled with competing blogs or is it difficult to find blogs on your selected topic. Can you provide information of value that other bloggers in this niche do not provide? Use the information from your research to further refine your topic or niche.

3) Know Your Target Audience
Successful blogs provide content of value to their target audience. The more you know about your target audience the better. What do they need? What are their hot buttons? How old are they? Are they primarily men or women? The more you know about your target, the easier it is to provide the content they seek.

As your blog grows, note the posts that generate the most comments and discussion. What was it about the post that got your readers talking? Also look at the search terms readers used to find your site. Search terms often provide good topics for future posts.

4) Choose the Right Blogging Platform
Choosing the right blogging software early on can save you big headaches in the future. It is much easier to start out with the right platform then to transfer your blog (and readers) to a new site. If you’re just looking for an easy way to keep friends and family up to date on your travels or adventures, a free service such as Blogger.com or WordPress.com should do the job. However, if you’re looking to blog for business or to generate advertising, chances are you’ll probably want a more advanced blogging platform.

Most bloggers today are finding that WordPress on a self-hosted platform is an excellent solution. As an open source program, there are thousands of themes and plugins available allowing near limitless customization. For the beginner, it is very easy to use yet can be fully optimized for the large business or professional. WordPress is a free program but you will need to pay for web hosting ($6-$8/month avg.).

Clearly defined goals and objectives will help you choose the best blogging platform.

Love Your Topic
While there might be profit in blogging about a niche you know nothing about, if you don’t enjoy writing about it, you won’t stick with it. Blogs take time to develop and if you don’t enjoy the topic, it will soon become very hard work. However, blogging about a topic you enjoy can be great fun. When you are passionate about your topic, it shows through in your writing. You will always have a wealth of information to write about and blogging becomes an enjoyable extension of your passion. It gets even better as the blog grows and you find others who share a love for your topic.

Your blog posts are like tickets in a lottery. The more tickets you buy, the the more chances of winning the prize. Each time you post a blog on your company web site, you’re buying a ticket in the great Google lottery. The grand prize is that coveted top spot in the Google search results.

Consider for a moment the average business web site. Most web sites consist of between 5-10 static pages. Let’s say that our sample business is on top of their game and has hired a SEO copywriter to fully optimize each page for the search engine terms (keywords) they want to target. At best, they now have 5-10 tickets in the Google search engine lottery. Of course, this only works if they are targeting a very small number of keywords and each page of their website is optimized for those exact same keywords.

Now add a blog to this website. Let’s say that our website belongs to a Realtor in Anywhereville. Our Realtor has done his research and knows that he wants to be the top search engine results for the terms “New Homes Anywhereville,” “Realtor Anywhereville,” and “Anywhereville Homes for Sale.” He sets out on a plan to write a series of posts about real estate in Anywherville providing information on home buying, choosing a Realtor, what to look for in a new home, tips on selling a home, the list goes on. The important thing is that he is providing useful information aimed at helping his target built around the key words he has determined are important.

Each time our Realtor adds a new post, he adds another page to his website which in turn, adds another page to the search engine lottery. The more posts he writes, the better chances of gaining the top spot in the search engines.

How many blog posts do I need to win?
That depends first on the key words you’re looking to target. If your targeted key words are very popular and there are lots of entries in the lottery, then it will be much harder to win. For example, if our Realtor is in New York City, he will be competing against a much larger field than if he is a Realtor in a small, rural town.

Competing in a crowded field doesn’t mean you can’t win. Often, by narrowing the field or targeting related keywords can result in much higher search engine rankings. Say our New York City Realtor specializes in a particular burrow or neighborhood of New York City. By targeting just the neighborhood as opposed to the entire city, he is competing against a much smaller pool. The more specific the niche, the better chances of winning the prize.

Quality Counts
Stuffing your posts with key words won’t help you win new clients. You want to create content that brings potential customers to your site. Even better, you want content that is good enough that others link to it. Incoming links from higher ranked web sites move your lottery ticket to the top of the pile. Information your target can use also gives them a reason to return and even share your content with others.

It takes time
Results don’t happen overnight. It does take time to build a quality blog and move your way up the search engines. However, adding just one post a week can eventually return very high results. Consider the cost of advertising and the value of that top search position and you can soon see the power of a well optimized blog.

A Real Life Example
About five years ago, I started blogging about Ohio State football. Seeing as how Ohio State has a very large fan base, you would think that search terms such as “Ohio State Blog” or “Ohio State Football Blog” would be very competitive. However, after four seasons of blogging on the subject, my Ohio State blog now owns the top spot on Google for the search term “Ohio State Blog” and second for the term “Ohio State Football Blog.” Granted, it’s taken lots and lots of posts but when advertisers go looking for an Ohio State blog on which to advertise, guess who they come to first.

Be sure to check back soon for my coming post on turning blog readers into clients.

Are you ready to enter the Google Lottery?
If you’re ready to start adding tickets to the Google lottery, I can show you how. Click here to learn how Quick and Easy Blog can help you launch a blog or website. For help creating quality, search engine optimized content for your website or blog, be sure to contact me today or visit me at www.jalcommunications.com.