Having a press release published in your local newspaper or trade magazine is one of the best (not to mention cheapest) methods around of publicising your business. But press releases can also be used to drive traffic to your website. Here's how:

What is online press release distribution?

When you write a press release, your main objective will probably be to have it publishedeither in a newspaper or magazine, or perhaps online, on a website relevant to your industry. In order to do that, you'll need to distribute your press release to a carefully targeted list of journalists and publicationsthe ones that are most likely to want to print your story.

There is, however, another method of distributing press releases. News wires are organisations which "blast" your press release out to their own list of media contacts. These are journalists, editors and webmasters who have signed up to receive press releases on specific subjects.

What's in it for you?

When you distribute through an online newswire, your press release won't just be picked up by the media. In theory, it could be picked up and published by anyone with a website. If you've included a link to your own website in that press release (and you should always include a link to your website in your press release!), that means that your link will appear on all of those sites. Because the likelihood is that anyone choosing to publish your press release will be running a site to which that release is relevant, you gain valuable inbound links, from relevant websites. And you get them for free.

Press release distribution case study

As an example of how well press release distribution can work, we recently prepared a press release for http://www.thefashionpolice.net on the topic of The Oscars. Because the subject of the release was a topical one, it was immediately picked up by a number of relevant websites (including Google news), resulting in a large increase in the site's traffic and revenue.

How to distribute your press releases online

There are a number of different online press release distribution sites which will distribute your release for free, or for a small charge. Custom-Copy.com is just one of them. Here are some others:

http://www.prweb.com http://www.prfree.com http;//www.free-press-release.com/ http://www.prleap.com http://www.pressbox.co.uk/ http://i-newswire.com/

Each of these sites offer a free distribution option, although many also allow you to "upgrade" your press release for a fee.