Friday, December 7, 2007

The value of sharing press areas

Companies who have 'Press' areas and 'About Us' sections on their website encourage visitors to read their communications. In fact, for a lot of corporate websites, the press releases are a great source of SEO content (contain lots of relevant keywords, etc.).

However, what's the case for a company sharing their 'Press' section with other companies?

Pros:
1. It creates a news hub that is a 'one stop' area for the user (consumer or business) - allowing cross-site searches may be particularly useful functionality
2. It could provide cross-references to other companies releases within the same hub (and manage those links, should the articles be changed, withdrawn, etc.)
3. If not part of the main corporate site (e.g. hosted somewhere else), it could create numerous in-bound links to that corporate site - thus significantly improving its SEO.

Cons:
1. The content may be seen to have less authority if it is not part of the main site.
2. A brand's qualities may not be as prominent on a site where its competition are also to be found - therefore affecting stand-out (signal/noise) in any competitive market
3. Corporates may have security concerns about relinquishing their communication 'crown jewels' over to a 3rd party

I'm sure there are other good & bad points to consider.... I am looking forward to addressing the concerns mentioned here though.

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