Guest Blogging and Press Releases as Tactics to Increase Traffic.

Do you know who has some of the best content out there on the affairs of society? You do!

Guest blogging and press releases can help drive more traffic as well as increase rankings on search engines, as long as you do it the right way. What is right way? Having quality and original information.

As part of operating your business, you have access to unique information about the sectors you service and the challenges your constituents face. This quality and original content is perfect to package into a short article to appear on blogs or on a press release.

The internet, last I checked, is still made up of people – and we appreciate content that is informative. Good content will be read, linked (which helps in SEO), clicked on (traffic) and serve a branding affect (authoritative).

As you put together your content, make sure you don’t get “spammy” with it. People don’t like it, and search engines like Google certainly don’t either. So no excessive links in your articles or press releases, and while tooting your own horn is OK, don’t get too excessive with it either where the content is overwhelmed by self-congratulations. Also, be careful about “over optimizing” your articles or press releases by trying to stick a bunch of keywords in there – Google especially seems to frown up on it. And by frown, I mean that they will severely penalize you for it.

OK, so you have content and it’s not spammy, now you want to know where you can share this wonderful content. Here are a couple links that go more in depth with best practices as well as places where you can start:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guest-blogging-strategies-whiteboard-friday - in depth guest blogging strategies.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2011/05/12/tips-press-release-seo/ - tips on Press Releases