Free press release distribution sites like prweb.com offer you an opportunity for additional exposure beyond your media list. Not that submitting your release on these sites necessarily gains you more coverage, though that’s a distinct possibility. What these sites really do is act as a rather large pay per click ad--only you don’t have to pay and your release won’t appear with the “Sponsored Links”.

Confused? Don’t be, it’s really quite simple. When you submit your release to a prweb.com, you will be asked to submit keywords as well as a summary of your release. You can choose any keywords you like and those words don’t necessarily have to be in the press release. With a little research, you can find the keywords for your subject area that people search on the most. Then submit your release.

Since prweb.com houses so many press releases, most with links to the sites of the people sending the releases, it becomes a search engine magnet. Consequently, your release will rank higher in the search engines just because you posted it on prweb.com.

The most important part of this process is to make sure you run your release with a link back to your Web site. Getting a higher search engine ranking for your press release will not mean that much to non-media members so you want to make sure that you have a way for potential customers to get to your Web site where you can talk about your business in more detail.

That prweb.com will get you higher rankings than your own Web site is certainly not always the case. At least it shouldn’t be if you hired an SEO company to make sure you get higher rankings. If you haven’t, it’s an affordable way to improve your search engine rankings, at least temporarily.

Freelance copywriter Joe D'Eramo owns and operates Hiroad Communications (http://www.hiroadcommunications.com). To read more of Joe's articles, please go to http://wwww.writingup.com/blog/deramojd.

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