Source: San Francisco, CA (PR Web) March 17, 2004

SEO-PR and PR Web today announced a strategic partnership that combines SEO-PR’s search engine optimization consulting with PR Web’s press release distribution services. The partnership offers help writing press releases for and sending press releases to the major news search engines, including Google News and Yahoo News.

Frederick Marckini, CEO and Founder of Search Engine marketing firm iProspect said, "News searches are a great example of an important new segment that has emerged over the past year. Many of our Fortune 500 clients are interested in reaching the news search audience and SEO-PR with PR Web are defining the path."

Millions of people use news search engines to find recent articles and press releases. According to Neilsen//NetRatings, Yahoo News had a unique audience of 19.8 million visitors in January 2004 and Google News had a unique audience of 4.1 million visitors.

News search engines have also become an indispensable tool for journalists. According to a Middleberg/Ross Survey, 98% of journalists go online daily, 92% for article research, 81% to do searching, 76% to find new sources or experts, and 73% to find press releases.

If an organization wants its news release to be found when either journalists or its prospects conduct a search using relevant terms, then it needs help writing press releases for and sending press releases to the major news search engines. SEO-PR and PR Web have joined forcers to meet this need by combining search engine optimization consulting with press release distribution services.

David McInnis, PR Web's founder and Managing Editor, said, "PR Web is committed to placing press releases where journalists live and conduct research. While we continue to employ traditional distribution methods, we realize that more journalists are turning to the major news search engines when they begin their research. The emphasis that we place on the 'searchability' of press releases and our partnership with SEO-PR underscore our commitment to making client press releases accessible to media outlets in new and innovative ways."

Greg Jarboe, SEO-PR’s co-founder and president, added, "One of the hardest things to do these days is to build relevant links that follow Yahoo’s guidelines on spam and Google’s quality guidelines. Yahoo wants ‘Hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable.’ Google recommends that you ask yourself, ‘Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?’ We have worked closely with PR Web to uphold the spirit of these basic principles. For example, providing a link from a news release announcing a new product to a relevant page about that product on the company’s site follows both Yahoo and Google’s guidelines."

For $270 per press release, SEO-PR and PR Web will:

--Conduct keyword research to identify at least two relevant search terms;
--Optimize the news release so it gets high keyword ranking for up to 30 days in news search engines;
--Distribute the press release via opt-in email to PR Web’s database of more than 65,000 media    outlets;     
--Distribute the press release to Yahoo News and Google News;
--Improve the placement of the news release in XML and RSS feeds;
--Archive the press release indefinitely on PR Web, which gets over 4.5 million pages views a month;
--Build relevant links from within the news release to key pages on the organization’s web site;
--Provide paid inclusion of the news release through Inktomi;
--Provide statistics on the number of times the press release was accessed on PR Web’s site.