Where/should I post my press release/articles on my own website?

[echo1]

Sha, I like your response, a very professional approach. My press releases are going to be submitted to major online Release sites. It was just a question if I should put them on my website or not. It does make a lot of sense because the whole idea of a press release is to generate the attention of journalists who then use your contact information provided to call you and get a conference for information that they can write about. They want things that are of general usefulness for the public, not just simple promotion, that's what advertising pages are for.

The thing is, I have been doing SEO for about a year now and it seems to me that there is no wright answer. What works for you might not work for me and vice-versa.  I am not going to have my press releases on my website. I read that the articles SHOULD be put on your website although even the best content guys on Seomoz have different opinions about this. What’s your take on this subject? Do you publish your articles on your website before or after you submit them online?

Although I agree with people like Egol or Ryan who supports the idea of having the articles published on your website first ("why give it away to somebody else if it's that good")__, this approach is not for everyone. For me, it makes sense to have them pushed through bigger article publishing websites because I get much more exposure. My site is not as powerful as I want it to be to get the most out of those articles.

[echo1]

Egol, I saw your response after I submitted my answer above. Although you gave good advice most of the time, I am not sure if your answer is wright more me. As I see it, you create awesome content most of the time, the websites that you put your content on are very strong or at least strong enough to rank for the keywords that you target on those articles. I understand that but if my website is not as strong as yours, shouldn't I have to use, even temporarily, other means to get the word out until my website grows stronger?

[EGOL]

If you are creating strong content for a weak site then promote that content where a one-sentence post about it will capture a lot of attention.

Promoting it on sites such as slashdot or reddit or digg can be valuable.

If you give away great articles and they are posted on other stronger websites then those other websites will outrank you, steal your traffic and get all of your link, like, tweet, etc attention.  This is feeding your competitors and creating new competitors.

Be patient as your site accumulates power and don't be so tempted to give away your most important assets for a small and short-term gain.

[echo1]

I kind of knew you gonna say that...when I see my competitors ranking so high up using spammy techniques, all my patience goes away and all I'm thinking about is is how to gain back my position in Google. The problem is that I need results fast, 70% of my company's revenue is coming from our online presence. We don't do ANY paid advertising which means that if we go down to page two in Google, the phones stop ringing.  You see, it's not always what you should do but what you can do. I need time and money to find very good writers to create that kick-ass content that you talk about and when I do find them and have the articles ready it is very hard not to publish them online where the results will appear much faster.

[EGOL]

Have you thought about making a few videos?  I believe that opening a youtube channel and getting a few videos up and one on your homepage can help your rankings.

How about a video on "renting a limousine - how to get what's right for you"?  This  would not be promotion of your service and would not contain any chest thumping... just explaining and showing all about limousine rentals to people who have never rented before.

Also, have you gotten your site ranking in local search?

[echo1]

We did make a couple of videos. I took your (Seomoz) advice and started shooting some short clips. They are already on Youtube for a few months know and we are working on several ideas to create a long term plan for releasing at least 1-2 videos per month. This is how it looks: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxCiPV17s0Y&feature=feedlik).

About ranking in local search, I talk to Rand about it on a private question and my opinion is that unless I have an exact match domain and tens/hundreds of local reviews, I'm not going to be able to outrank my competitors. Google seems to rank companies based on their listing address without checking the facts and this is so frustrating. For example, I know for a fact that NONE of my competitors have an office downtown Chicago but they do on their Google listing and that counts a lot because the closer you are to Downtown Chicago the better you rank. Also, they use very strong keywords as their listing Title instead of the name of their company as per Google guidelines. It seems that not only they are not getting penalized for that but they are even being pushed at the top. When Google still puts so much weight on exact match domain, when business are taking advantage of the system by posting  fake reviews and using other shady tactics to rank high in local search, there is not too much I can do. Everybody here is preaching a white hat approach and I fully supported but for smaller companies like mine is not that easy to put up with spammy websites because Google doesn't do enough about it. I don't want to lead this discussion somewhere else; I just had to say something about it.

Your thoughts are always greatly appreciated.

[EGOL]

In this situation I would become an Adwords expert while I continue an attack on organic SEO.

[ShaMenz]

Hi again,

I would say that both approaches are valid, as long as you are very strategic about targeting your content.

My personal preference is to work first on building better content on-site (I am a member of the "why help someone else when you can help yourself" movement :), but if there is an opportunity to use the domain authority of another site to improve your own site, then that can obviously be of value too (especially if you are trying to build the strength of your own domain).

The key is to target the content you develop for each and NEVER use the same content for both.

When it comes to targeting, I follow two basic rules - articles on other sites should be aimed at an audience seeking "how to" assistance, while on-site content should be the type that will help to "engage" your audience with your company or brand.

For example:

An article on an external directory might be "How Early Should I Book My Wedding Limo", while a new page of on-site content might be "Why You Can Trust Us To Drive Your Daughter To Her Prom"

Hope that helps,

Sha

[echo1]

Thank you, that is the answer I was looking for!

[ShaMenz]

Glad to help

Just another thought on using video on-site...if it were possible to grab very short video reviews from actual clients while using your services, that could be gold in terms of converting visitors to your site.

Not entirely sure about the detail of how to make it happen, but I'm imagining a happy, smiling bride and groom shooting a 30 second video snippet while in the back of the limo being driven to the reception..."the limo is gorgeous, our day has been wonderful and Joe our driver even brought barley sugar candy to help settle my butterflies on the way to the church!"  these are the type of videos that will engage your audience and tell the story of your business.

Best of luck with it,

Sha

[echo1]

Thanks again for everything!