Even loyal newspaper readers are turning to the Net for their news and treating their newspaper as a leisure activity. Newspaper and magazine print circulation figures are down, but their online revenues are growing month by month. The tool to include in your Internet marketing strategy is optimized press releases. These are press releases written as news articles with key words and links included.

10 Reasons to Use Optimized Online Press Releases:

1. Get onto page one in the News Engines right away. Your story can be featured in Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN News and a host of other news sites. You can be on page one for your keywords within 24 hours.

2. More than 70% of Americans read their news online. Yahoo! News has the largest Internet news audience in the world - even bigger than CNN.com. Source: Nielsen/Net Ratings.

3. Reach interested and motivated readers online. When someone accesses your optimized online press release in a News Engine you know they are interested - they asked for that topic by keyword. Online press releases are mainly read by consumers and prospects searching for information about products, services and companies. For business buyers, it is their #1 choice for information.

4. Get stats on your press release - for the first time you can find out how many people read your release and what keywords they used to find it.

5. Increase valuable inbound links to your website - Your story gets picked up by other industry news websites and reaches audiences you had no access to before. Each time your online release is published on another website it creates a link back to your site. Google and other search engines use inbound links as a key part of their ranking formula.

6. Get more than one result on a keyword in the natural web search results - These optimized online press releases migrate to the natural web search and then remain there. With optimized press releases and articles you can increase visibility on your chosen keywords.

7. Get your news displayed on the natural search above the #1 position - Both Yahoo! and Google now pull items from the news search and display them above the number one position if there is a valid news story on that keyword

8. Bypass the media and reach your audience with your news. You are reaching out directly to your prospective customers. Write stories that will interest and attract them.

9. Increase the traffic to your website - optimized online press releases generate interest in your product or service. They click through to your site. Use a good analytics program so you can track them through the site.

10. Increase your brand value - Clients routinely get comments like this one - "You must be doing really well, we see your name everywhere these days!"

Getting your news into Yahoo News and Google News is a vital part of your Internet marketing strategy. Remember to incorporate optimized press releases with proper links and keywords.