And what does it have to do with online public relations? It is common for sites that have affiliate programs to place higher on search engines than those without. The reason is that search engines weight sites with more links higher than those without. Going a step further, a few search engines rate quality of links pointing to your site differently. That means if you pick and choose affiliate relationships that will most benefit your site you will truly start capitalizing on online PR efforts. Many successful affiliate program managers provide content for their affiliate to place on their site. Whether it is a business brief, a feature article or a twenty five word keyword dense description of your company, its products or services, providing content that appeals to users of affiliates site will not only benefit affiliate in making additional sales on behalf of your organization but improve quality of links pointing to your site.

An alternate way to measure effect of your online PR campaign or PR efforts is to create a mini-site. Mini-sites give PR managers ability to control everything from image you want to convey to content that you are sharing with public. Mini-sites can be used for Web logs, article archives, web press centers or Internet press rooms. Thanks to low cost of domains and hosting, you could conceivably set up a separate domain from your company for less than it costs to send out one press release to media using popular distribution services. By knowing what it costs to generate one new client for your company, you will be better able to report contribution online PR efforts make to bottom line of your business venture.

Another way, that can arguably be perceived as under dominion of online public relations is bid for placement or pay per click advertising. While a company's main site might be used as an "all-purpose" solution, PPC advertising enables promoters to promote a concept or an idea over a general business category. For example, if you sell pillows, you might want to create a page on a mini-site that deals specifically with fabric used within your pillows. Take this page and promote it on PPC search engine using a low bid making sure to define with titles and descriptions exactly what surfer might be looking for.