The difference: articles & press releases

Articles and press releases are used heavily to promote websites. We do this because a link can be created on each which has the anchor text of the keyword you target to your website. Each article or press release is syndicated to relevant article or press release directories respectively. This in turn increases the number of links to your website pushing you up the search engines.

Articles
An article is of approximately 500 words or over. It is an informational piece which does NOT advertise your business but is more of a how to, facts or detailed discussion on a specific topic. Your advert comes in the form of the author notes for the article and it is within this area the link to your website is. The article must be unique and relevant to the web page you will link it to. The article is submitted to many article directories, most of which are free. The idea behind an article directory is that people can copy and use your article on their own website. The condition being that your author notes and consequently the link to your website remain in tact. A good article can therefore generate many links for you. To avoid duplicate content you need to be aware of where the search engines first see the article (where is the origin of the article). A great article directory site is EzineArticles.com.

Press releases
This is a newsworthy, topical advertisement for your company, product(s) or services of at least 200 words. Your link appears within the press release. The press release is then distributed to various online press release directories. Normally a press release is distributed to media and it is a similar case for online press releases but your release is to online media. There are many free press release directories which your article can be submitted to as well as ones which charge. A very good site for online press releases is PRWeb.com.

Related information:
Useful Article directory and press release links
Anchor text explained