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As you’ve been reading, online press releases can be powerful tools for promoting a website in the travel and tourism industry. They can bring qualified traffic, gain attention for the business, help boost rankings in the SERPs, and are fairly easy to create, once you know how. If you’ve never done one before, here are some tips on how to get started:

1. Find some news!
Press releases must be newsworthy. If you don’t have good, interesting news to share, you could be wasting your time and money.

2. Select the online news service you want to use.
Decide which online news service will best meet your needs. Since there are so many to choose from, you could make yourself crazy trying to evaluate them all. You can’t go wrong with PRWeb, so if you’re having trouble deciding, start there.

3. Educate yourself on the news service’s requirements.
Each service has recommendations and requirements for formatting and submitting press releases to them. Some offer templates, where you add your information to their pre-set forms. Look at the examples and, as you proceed, follow their directions exactly.

4. Write the article.
Anyone with decent language skills can write an article to be used as a press release. If you don’t have the confidence to write your own article, consider enlisting a friend, family member or employee to help out. Many of the online newswires offer hints and tutorials online. Remember to include who, where, why, when and how.

5. Optimize the press release.
If you’re an experienced writer, use your best keyword terms naturally as you create your press release. Less confident authors may want to write a draft first, then go back to insert good keywords where appropriate. Don’t overdo it! Use your best keyword phrase once in the title and once more in the body of the text - no more. Additional keyword terms can be scattered in the press release, as well. Consider using two - four anchor text links embedded within appropriate places in the article, but use no more than one link for each 100-150 words.

6. Submit your press release.
Submit your press release to the online newswire of your choice according to their terms and conditions.

7. Track, track, track.
Set up alerts through Yahoo! and Google to track when the spiders find your news online and track referrals from the articles through your website tracker or log files. Keep an eye on your backlinks to see if you are gaining an SEO boost as well.

Perhaps most importantly, don’t give up if you feel overwhelmed. The process of writing and submitting online press releases becomes easier, and you get better at it, every time you write one. So, dive in and get started today.

Mary Bowling - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

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Categories: SEM.
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