Following up on our previous post about search engine marketing with press releases, let’s take a look at three more tips for effective PR online marketing:

3. Pimp Your Summary

Kind of like a website’s meta description, the summary of your press release is likely to in search results pages, so it better be compelling. For the best search engine marketing, be sure to include the SEO keywords you’re targeting.

4. Choose Your Topics Wisely

Although press releases have changed a lot over the years, their purpose remains the same: to communicate news to journalists and other readers. Thus, your press release topic should be somewhat newsy in nature. Talk about a recent or upcoming event, seasonal products, industry news, etc.

5. Choose the right PR services.

All PR sites are not created equal. When browsing various distribution sites, think about:

• The price. There are a variety of free sites available, but some of the pay-sites are worth the money.
• The turnaround time. Is your press release going to be posted immediately, or will you have to wait one or more days to see it? Some sites are worth the wait, others are not.
• The perks. Can you place keyword links in your PR text? How about images and video? On some sites, you can.
• The distribution radius. Looking to get on Google News? You can. Certain PR sites distribute to Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other important networks. You just need to know where to look.

With these tips, you should have no trouble adding PR marketing to your repertoire of internet advertising services.

I’m still learning how to make Pages fancy for search engine marketing… and now there’s another promotional tool on the Facebook horizon: Facebook Groups.

This new feature is different from the ‘book’s Groups of yore (home to countless intellectual Soda vs. Pop debates for budding collegians). In fact, those groups are getting phased out — the existing ones will stick around, but you can’t launch any more of your pro-pop propaganda. Because, listen, it’s pronounced soda.

Explained in the video above, Facebook groups are like mini networks for the different types of people in your life: coworkers, family members, friends from school, friends from home… They’re accomplishing what friend lists were supposed to, but in a way that’s more intuitive and less tedious.

As of now, it’s unclear what Facebook groups will mean to social online marketing. There’s an email digest component, so this could represent an emerging branch of email marketing. But only time — and Zuckerberg – will tell.

Video online marketing is a great way to promote your biz online. Think about it: When Google finds videos relevant to searches, it displays them before the standard list of links on results pages. That’s some prime SEO real estate.

That being said, video marketing is not without its Shakespearean dilemmas. Should you upload your videos to Youtube, or host them on your own domain?

That is the question.

Youtube has its perks. The #3 most visited site on the web (quoth Alexa), the ‘tube offers a wide audience, even if it’s mostly Gen Y-ers. Plus, uploading your vid on Youtube gets it automatically indexed by Google.

The drawback? When searchers click on your Youtube videos on Google, they’ll be taken to that video’s Youtube page. This path is less likely to lead them to your website, although it can be useful for brand awareness.

If you host the videos yourself, searchers will be directed to your site proper. Since they’re not on Youtube, you’ll have to make sure your vids get indexed by submitting them to Google with a video sitemap. You’ll also miss out on some community interaction, but that’s more important for some businesses than others.

What’s your take on this search engine marketing conundrum?