Saturday, May 31, 2008

Press Release Grader

Just tried this Press Release Grader I read about on WebInkNow.com. What a cool tool! It still has a few little bugs, but those will be worked out soon.

The people behind this utility are really on it. I just offered some feedback and almost immediately Dharmesh replied to me and on a Saturday no less. You can tell they are interested in making this thing work well.

Here's a link to the Press Release Grader report for my Club Malibu VIP release. My grade is only a C right now, but after a few of the bugs are worked out, I'm hoping that will climb. The Grader was having problems with my e-mail links and marking me down because of that. Dharmesh is on it.

I ran this press release through the tool just to check it out. Even though this one already went out I wanted to grade it. I'm glad I did. I learned a few things.

  1. I need to think more about my anchor text. I didn't even understand what anchor text was. I looked it up and found a great blog entry describing the term as well as the best way to optimize it for search engines. TamingTheBeast.net published
    It's not just being linked, but how you link - anchor text. This raised my grade.
  2. I should use keywords in my link text. According to the Press Release Grader report, "Press releases should generally contain one or more links that use anchor text incorporating relevant keywords." I wasn't aware of this, but it turns out I did a pretty good job in this area. Who knew?
  3. I also learned that I should ### at the end of my releases. I always used -end-, but this works too. Correcting this raised my grade.
  4. One area I did well in was "Gobbledygook Words". I was surprised by this. I always thought I made these errors, but not in this release. Cool!
This tool worked well in analyzing a traditional press release, but I am getting into social media news releases. I wondered how it would work with those types of releases, so I tried one. Works great! I analyzed the SMNR version of the Club Malibu VIP release and got more great feedback. I am a PR Grader fan. Can't wait to keep testing.

Tags: | | | | | |

No comments: