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Easily Incorporate XHTML into Your News Releases

Did you know how easy it is to incorporate XHTML into your news release? Use XHTML formatting to turn your release into an online news channel today.

Your news release is seen by a large audience of journalists and the general public.  Enhance its appearance, readability and ability to drive online traffic by taking advantage of XHTML formatting.  Hundreds of Web sites render PR Newswire releases in XHTML, including Yahoo! Finance, AOL Personal Finance Channel, MSN Money, prnewswire.com, Breitbart.com and many more.

Make the most of this exposure with the following formatting tips:

Linking:
Provide readers with an easy way to get more information by using anchor text (for example, hyperlinking a word to a specific URL.) Simply embed links in your Word document:

1.    Highlight the word or phrase you wish to link in your document.
2.   Click on "Insert" on your main toolbar and then select "Hyperlink."
   
3.   In the Address box, enter the URL to which you wish to link.
   
4.   Click "OK." Your keyword/phrase will now be hyperlinked to the URL you entered.
   
5.   Submit your release to PR Newswire.
   
   

Anchor text best practices:

• Link keywords that support your message to deep, specific pages of Web sites.
• Write out the full URLs (for instance, http://thewholeURL.com) to particularly important sites. Many third party sites do not render anchor text. Include full URLs in addition to anchor text so that interested readers always have a call to action and a place to go for more information.
  
• Use anchor text in the body of your release, not the headline or subhead. Web sites will not render anchor text in your headline or subhead.
  

Formatting:
How you format your news release affects its appearance on different Web sites. Our own best practice is to use consistent formatting in developing content for the thousands of sites that display it.

Formatting best practices:

• Use bold text and italics. More and more sites are rendering our enhanced XHTML feed and are able to display releases that include these formatting elements.
• Use bullet points. Many Web sites can't handle multiple, stacked subheads. Instead, use bullet points in your first paragraph to make your points.
  
• Keep your headline and subhead as short as possible. Google only displays the first 63 characters of a headline in search results (including spaces.) Similarly, Yahoo! only displays the first 118 characters.
  
• Use numbered lists. Lists appear handsomely with XHTML formatting. However, we would like to recommend the following to make your releases more Web-friendly: for numbered lists, the format is 1., 2., 3., versus 1), 2), 3),.
  

*Important note: XHTML formatting currently cannot be used within tables, though this will be an option soon.

If you would like to learn more about XHTML and PR Newswire's distribution services, please e-mail us at information@prnewswire.com