Link Building with Press Release Distribution

Press release distribution is a mainstay in ecommerce search engine optimization. Public relations consultants issue press releases for announcements or news, while search engine optimizers use them to acquire backlinks. But a digital PR consultant aims for both: announcements and links.

For fees ranging from $50 to $2,500 per press release, distribution services can get a release republished on other websites. Sometimes these are reputable news organizations. Other times, they’re low-traffic sites posing as news.

There are a few large press release distributors and dozens of smaller middlemen that syndicate to their own news circuits. Distributing a press release can be complicated due to decisions on the reach, the length of the announcement, and the number of accompanying images, logos, and videos

First-timers can waste a lot of money paying for services they don’t need. Smaller distributors are more willing to assist and provide advisory services. Larger distributors have less patience, especially for low-volume customers.

Search Optimized

“Press releases are a great way to boost ecommerce rankings, but you need to know how to use them,” says Maj Hussain, owner of Magic PR, one of the smaller press release distributors.

The process of search optimizing a press release and a web page is similar. Select a keyword and its variations and support them with related entities and semantic terms in the headline, sub-headings, and body text.

A press release is usually search-optimized for the same keyword and tactics as the page it links to and typically includes three components: (i) a news angle, (ii) optimized body and anchor text, (iii) and hyperlinks.

The example release below is a news angle optimized for an unbranded keyword (“Sebastopol Wine Tasting.”)

This release is optimized for “Sebastopol Wine Tasting,” an unbranded keyword.

And here’s an example of my own release for backlink acquisition optimized for a compound keyword: a brand (“Eric Schwartzman”) and a category (“SEO consultant”).

Maj Hussain of Magic PR suggests that ecommerce merchants start with a branded press release to establish authority, followed by product or category releases to drive traffic and link equity.

Branded releases promote the store’s name and link to its home page. Once the brand and home page rank, target your product listing pages, where the sales occur.

Press Coverage vs. Backlinks

The most powerful ecommerce press releases spur third-party editorial coverage with links to product-detail or category pages. A media-savvy digital PR consultant can help.

For newsworthy scoops, I’ve negotiated exclusives with a single editorial outlet. That site gets to break the story first in exchange for a prominent link in the article.

Google considers links from credible news outlets as authoritative and arranges its indexing system accordingly. I addressed the issue in July, explaining how the Google API leak suggests a three-tiered link storage hierarchy that places the most valuable, highly trafficked pages in RAM storage for faster access.

News articles with traffic are more likely to be stored on Google’s RAM tier.

But even if it doesn’t score original news coverage, a press release can still be aggregated by a group of websites that post it unchanged. If the aggregators are legit, this is a reliable method of acquiring backlinks.

Anchor Text

How you link from the press release to an ecommerce page matters. Qamar Zaman, founder of Kiss PR Brand Story, recommends linking “product name as anchor text to a product detail page and including a separate brand anchor link to the home page.”

He prefers no more than one link per 100 words, adding, “Naked URLs work very well, especially in ecommerce, because they drive engagement and link power directly to the page.”

Naked URLs start with https:// followed by the domain you’re linking to. The text of the URL remains in the body even if an aggregator strips out the link. Google may consider it active nonetheless.

“It’s also smart to use partial-match keywords or compound links that include both the brand and product name,” says Zaman. A compound ecommerce anchor could be the company name plus a product category, wherein both a store name and product category link to the same page.

Press Release Pick-ups

A press release is “picked up” when it is republished (“aggregated”) on another website.

Not all press release distributors have relationships with aggregators that can deliver high-authority backlinks. PR Newswire, Business Wire, and GlobeNewswire are three of the larger distributors. They satisfy the Securities and Exchange Commission’s fair disclosure requirements (Regulation FD), which are imposed on publicly traded companies to ensure no one investor has an unfair trading advantage based on selectively revealed information.

Publicly traded companies comply by using one of the distribution or “wire” services that discloses to the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and Reuters simultaneously.

Distributors that comply with Reg FD  generally have superior distribution. But they’re more expensive and have stricter editorial guidelines, employing editors who review and approve releases before distributing them. I offer free training on satisfying Reg FD with social media.

Some of the smaller press release companies buy extended distribution through wires such as GlobeNewswire and then pad their pick-up reports with links from publishers with little traffic. The Associated Press aggregates press releases, but its backlinks are no-followed.

Aggregators have their own (undisclosed) rules and conditions. Many are low-quality, quasi-news sites that programmatically publish the same content. The sites frequently use the same templates with different mastheads. Smaller distributors often send their releases to these “news” aggregators to fluff up the number of pick-ups to justify their fees.

It is unlikely that Google will index press release pick-ups on these sites, much less store them on its RAM index.

The goal is press release pick-ups from known news outlets. “Press releases distributed through major outlets like Yahoo News and Bloomberg can attract attention from Google’s search engine and get those critical backlinks indexed,” Hussain adds. “The result is higher rankings, more traffic, and increased visibility for ecommerce sites.”

Google News

Press releases featured in Google News Top Stories or Google Discover can significantly boost rankings, but it’s not guaranteed.

“Press releases can show up in Top Stories, but they typically have to be picked up by major publications like MarketWatch or Bloomberg,” says Zaman. “A content creator with an established site has a better chance of getting into Google News than newer sites.”

Press Release Pitfalls

Press releases must follow distributors’ guidelines. And that depends on the editor’s experience.

I recently had a release with the headline “Predatory Practices of Military Credit Card Issuers Exposed” rejected by an editor at one wire service, only to be approved with no changes by an editor at another. The rules are opaque and unevenly enforced.

The sites a release links to must be approved too. “Editors won’t approve releases that promote third-party brands without a direct relationship,” says Hussain. “But it can still work depending on how you structure the release.” Announcing a brand-specific sale or promotion at your online store is one way to get a brand name in the headline.

Another challenge of press releases (and all content) is link decay. You must continuously acquire quality backlinks as their value decreases over time, especially from lower-tier sites.

“Many smaller sites with low domain authority can initially get indexed, but over time, their impact on rankings fades,” says Zaman. “The key is securing high-authority placements and building links from topical, relevant sources.”

Ecommerce SEO

Despite these challenges, press releases remain a valuable tool for building ecommerce brand authority, securing backlinks, and boosting organic traffic.

• Start with brand-focused releases. Establish authority and recognition by targeting the home page.

• Target product detail and category pages. Focus on specific categories and product pages to drive direct traffic and conversions. Use compound anchors and naked links to target pages.

• Maintain link quality. Use tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz to assess the quality and authority of backlinks. Be wary of press release providers that bundle quasi-news pick-ups with one or two known outlets.

• Leverage major news outlets. Target top-tier publications to increase the chances of appearing in Google’s most valuable index tiers, securing high-authority, long-lasting links. Examine distributors’ news circuits carefully to determine how many reputable news sites aggregate their releases.

Tips for Internal and External Page Links

Google’s original ranking algorithm relied on inbound links to gauge a page’s quality. Links remain critical for organic rankings despite suggestions otherwise. Common questions include tactics for internal links, the value of outbound external links, and strategies for anchor text.

Certainly I can share my experiences as a 15-year search optimizer, but guidance from Google representatives is helpful. Here are those answers.

Internal Links

Internal links play a huge role in rankings in two ways:

• Importance. The number of internal links pointing to a page signal to Google its relative importance.

• Content. The anchor text of internal links and surrounding copy help Google understand the linked page’s purpose and relevancy.

There’s no maximum number of internal outbound links on a page, although Google likely values links in navigation and footers less than in the body. The text surrounding such contextual links — in articles, product descriptions, and categories — signals relevancy.

Thus an effective strategy includes:

• Links from a product’s description to an article on how to use it,
• Links from blog posts to relevant products and categories,
• Links from product categories to buyers’ guides.

Too many links?

Ecommerce owners often add many internal links to, for example, related articles, products, and categories, as well as cross-sells and upsells (“frequently bought together”).

So how many links are too many?

Google’s answer is there is no limit. Responding to a LinkedIn query, Google’s John Mueller stated, “Nobody at Google counts the links or the words on your blog posts.”

Other Google representatives have said more or less the same. But leaked documentation earlier this year suggests Googlebot may not crawl longer pages to the end. We don’t know Googlebot’s maximum page length, but the leak suggests links at the bottom of long articles could be ignored.

Over-optimization?

Should site owners fret about using exact-match keywords for internal anchor text? Per Google, the answer is “no.” There’s no such thing as over-optimizing internal links.

Use whatever anchor text you choose. Keep in mind, though, that relevant contextual links are likely more effective for rankings, even if you can use a well-optimized anchor. For example, linking to a running-shoe product page is likely more effective from an article about running than from one about car repair.

External Links

Google has long stated that outbound external links do not improve a page’s rankings or trust, even when linking to .gov (government) or .edu (education) sites.

I cannot confirm this either way, although one university study last year found generative AI engines (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) cited an article more often when it included links to those trusted sources.

Since Google search now uses gen AI technology, it is safe to assume that links to trusted sources may be helpful for rankings, especially if they benefit humans, too.

How To Build A Diverse & Healthy Link Profile via @sejournal, @AndrewDennis33

Search is evolving at an incredible pace and new features, formats, and even new search engines are popping up within the space.

Google’s algorithm still prioritizes backlinks when ranking websites. If you want your website to be visible in search results, you must account for backlinks and your backlink profile.

A healthy backlink profile requires a diverse backlink profile.

In this guide, we’ll examine how to build and maintain a diverse backlink profile that powers your website’s search performance.

What Does A Healthy Backlink Profile Look Like?

As Google states in its guidelines, it primarily crawls pages through links from other pages linked to your pages, acquired through promotion and naturally over time.

In practice, a healthy backlink profile can be divided into three main areas: the distribution of link types, the mix of anchor text, and the ratio of followed to nofollowed links.

Let’s look at these areas and how they should look within a healthy backlink profile.

Distribution Of Link Types

One aspect of your backlink profile that needs to be diversified is link types.

It looks unnatural to Google to have predominantly one kind of link in your profile, and it also indicates that you’re not diversifying your content strategy enough.

Some of the various link types you should see in your backlink profile include:

• Anchor text links.
• Image links.
• Redirect links.
• Canonical links.

Here is an example of the breakdown of link types at my company, Whatfix (via Semrush):

Screenshot from Semrush, May 2024

Most links should be anchor text links and image links, as these are the most common ways to link on the web, but you should see some of the other types of links as they are picked up naturally over time.

Mix Of Anchor Text

Next, ensure your backlink profile has an appropriate anchor text variance.

Again, if you overoptimize for a specific type of anchor text, it will appear suspicious to search engines like Google and could have negative repercussions.

Here are the various types of anchor text you might find in your backlink profile:

• Branded anchor text – Anchor text that is your brand name or includes your brand name.
• Empty – Links that have no anchor text.
• Naked URLs – Anchor text that is a URL (e.g., www.website.com).
• Exact match keyword-rich anchor text – Anchor text that exactly matches the keyword the linked page targets (e.g., blue shoes).
• Partial match keyword-rich anchor text – Anchor text that partially or closely matches the keyword the linked page targets (e.g., “comfortable blue footwear options”).
• Generic anchor text – Anchor text such as “this website” or “here.”

To maintain a healthy backlink profile, aim for a mix of anchor text within a similar range to this:

• Branded anchor text – 35-40%.
• Partial match keyword-rich anchor text – 15-20%.
• Generic anchor text -10-15%.
• Exact match keyword-rich anchor text – 5-10%.
• Naked URLs – 5-10%.
• Empty – 3-5%.

This distribution of anchor text represents a natural mix of differing anchor texts. It is common for the majority of anchors to be branded or partially branded because most sites that link to your site will default to your brand name when linking. It also makes sense that the following most common anchors would be partial-match keywords or generic anchor text because these are natural choices within the context of a web page.

Exact-match anchor text is rare because it only happens when you are the best resource for a specific term, and the site owner knows your page exists.

Ratio Of Followed Vs. Nofollowed Backlinks

Lastly, you should monitor the ratio of followed vs. nofollowed links pointing to your website.

If you need a refresher on what nofollowed backlinks are or why someone might apply the nofollow tag to a link pointing to your site, check out Google’s guide on how to qualify outbound links to Google.

Nofollow attributes should only be applied to paid links or links pointing to a site the linking site doesn’t trust.

While it is not uncommon or suspicious to have some nofollow links (people misunderstand the purpose of the nofollow attribute all the time), a healthy backlink profile will have far more followed links.

You should aim for a ratio of 80%:20% or 70%:30% in favor of followed links. For example, here is what the followed vs. nofollowed ratio looks like for my company’s backlink profile (according to Ahrefs):

Screenshot from Ahrefs, May 2024

You may see links with other rel attributes, such as UGC or Sponsored.

The “UGC” attribute tags links from user-generated content, while the “Sponsored” attribute tags links from sponsored or paid sources. These attributes are slightly different than the nofollow tag, but they essentially work the same way, letting Google know these links aren’t trusted or endorsed by the linking site. You can simply group these links in with nofollowed links when calculating your ratio.

Importance Of Diversifying Your Backlink Profile

So why is it important to diversify your backlink profile anyway? Well, there are three main reasons you should consider:

• Avoiding overoptimization.
• Diversifying traffic sources.
• And finding new audiences.

Let’s dive into each of these.

Avoiding Overoptimization

First and foremost, diversifying your backlink profile is the best way to protect yourself from overoptimization and the damaging penalties that can come with it.

As SEO pros, our job is to optimize websites to improve performance, but overoptimizing in any facet of our strategy – backlinks, keywords, structure, etc. – can result in penalties that limit visibility within search results.

In the previous section, we covered the elements of a healthy backlink profile. If you stray too far from that model, your site might look suspicious to search engines like Google and you could be handed a manual or algorithmic penalty, suppressing your rankings in search.

Considering how regularly Google updates its search algorithm these days (and how little information surrounds those updates), you could see your performance tank and have no idea why.

This is why it’s so important to keep a watchful eye on your backlink profile and how it’s shaping up.

Diversifying Traffic Sources

Another reason to cultivate a diverse backlink profile is to ensure you’re diversifying your traffic sources.

Google penalties come swiftly and can often be a surprise. If you have all your eggs in that basket when it comes to traffic, your site will suffer badly and might need help to recover.

However, diversifying your traffic sources (search, social, email, etc.) will mitigate risk – similar to a stock portfolio – as you’ll have other traffic sources to provide a steady flow of visitors if another source suddenly dips.

Part of building a diverse backlink profile is acquiring a diverse set of backlinks and backlink types, and this strategy will also help you find differing and varied sources of traffic.

Finding New Audiences

Finally, building a diverse backlink profile is essential, as doing so will also help you discover new audiences.

If you acquire links from the same handful of websites and platforms, you will need help expanding your audience and building awareness for your website.

While it’s important to acquire links from sites that cater to your existing audience, you should also explore ways to build links that can tap into new audiences. The best way to do this is by casting a wide net with various link acquisition tactics and strategies.

A diverse backlink profile indicates a varied approach to SEO and marketing that will help bring new visitors and awareness to your site.

Building A Diverse Backlink Profile

So that you know what a healthy backlink profile looks like and why it’s important to diversify, how do you build diversity into your site’s backlink profile?

This comes down to your link acquisition strategy and the types of backlinks you actively pursue. To guide your strategy, let’s break link building into three main categories:

• Foundational links.
• Content promotion.
• Community involvement.

Here’s how to approach each area.

Foundational Links

Foundational links represent those links that your website simply should have. These are opportunities where a backlink would exist if all sites were known to all site owners.

Some examples of foundational links include:

• Mentions – Websites that mention your brand in some way (brand name, product, employees, proprietary data, etc.) on their website but don’t link.
• Partners – Websites that belong to real-world partners or companies you connect with offline and should also connect (link) with online.
• Associations or groups – Websites for offline associations or groups you belong to where your site should be listed with a link.
• Sponsorships – Any events or organizations your company sponsors might have websites that could (and should) link to your site.
• Sites that link to competitors – If a website is linking to a competitor, there is a strong chance it would make sense for them to link to your site as well.

These link opportunities should set the foundation for your link acquisition efforts.

As the baseline for your link building strategy, you should start by exhausting these opportunities first to ensure you’re not missing highly relevant links to bolster your backlink profile.

Content Promotion

Next, consider content promotion as a strategy for building a healthy, diverse backlink profile.

Content promotion is much more proactive than the foundational link acquisition mentioned above. You must manifest the opportunity by creating link-worthy content rather than simply capitalizing on an existing opportunity.

Some examples of content promotion for links are:

• Digital PR – Digital PR campaigns have numerous benefits and goals beyond link acquisition, but backlinks should be a primary KPI.
• Original research – Similar to digital PR, original research should focus on providing valuable data to your audience. Still, you should also make sure any citations or references to your research are correctly linked.
• Guest content – Whether regular columns or one-off contributions, providing guest content to websites is still a viable link acquisition strategy – when done right. The best way to gauge your guest content strategy is to ask yourself if you would still write the content for a site without guaranteeing a backlink, knowing you’ll still build authority and get your message in front of a new audience.
• Original imagery – Along with research and data, if your company creates original imagery that offers unique value, you should promote those images and ask for citation links.

Content promotion is a viable avenue for building a healthy backlink profile as long as the content you’re promoting is worthy of links.

Community Involvement

Community involvement is the final piece of your link acquisition puzzle when building a diverse backlink profile.

After pursuing all foundational opportunities and manually promoting your content, you should ensure your brand is active and represented in all the spaces and communities where your audience engages.

In terms of backlinks, this could mean:

• Wikipedia links – Wikipedia gets over 4 billion monthly visits, so backlinks here can bring significant referral traffic to your site. However, acquiring these links is difficult as these pages are moderated closely, and your site will only be linked if it is legitimately a top resource on the web.
• Forums (Reddit, Quora, etc.) – Another great place to get backlinks that drive referral traffic is forums like Reddit and Quora. Again, these forums are strictly moderated, and earning link placements on these sites requires a page that delivers significant and unique value to a specific audience.
• Social platforms – Social media platforms and groups represent communities where your brand should be active and engaged. While these strategies are likely handled by other teams outside SEO and focus on different metrics, you should still be intentional about converting these interactions into links when or where possible.
• Offline events – While it may seem counterintuitive to think of offline events as a potential source for link acquisition, legitimate link opportunities exist here. After all, most businesses, brands, and people you interact with at these events also have websites, and networking can easily translate to online connections in the form of links.

While most of the link opportunities listed above will have the nofollow link attribute due to the nature of the sites associated with them, they are still valuable additions to your backlink profile as these are powerful, trusted domains.

These links help diversify your traffic sources by bringing substantial referral traffic, and that traffic is highly qualified as these communities share your audience.

How To Avoid Developing A Toxic Backlink Profile

Now that you’re familiar with the link building strategies that can help you cultivate a healthy, diverse backlink profile, let’s discuss what you should avoid.

As mentioned before, if you overoptimize one strategy or link, it can seem suspicious to search engines and cause your site to receive a penalty. So, how do you avoid filling your backlink profile with toxic links?

Remember The “Golden Rule” Of Link Building

One simple way to guide your link acquisition strategy and avoid running afoul of search engines like Google is to follow one “golden rule.”

That rule is to ask yourself: If search engines like Google didn’t exist, and the only way people could navigate the web was through backlinks, would you want your site to have a link on the prospective website?

Thinking this way strips away all the tactical, SEO-focused portions of the equation and only leaves the human elements of linking where two sites are linked because it makes sense and makes the web easier to navigate.

Avoid Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

Another good rule is to avoid looping your site into private blog networks (PBNs). Of course, it’s not always obvious or easy to spot a PBN.

However, there are some common traits or red flags you can look for, such as:

• The person offering you a link placement mentions they have a list of domains they can share.
• The prospective linking site has little to no traffic and doesn’t appear to have human engagement (blog comments, social media followers, blog views, etc.).
• The website features thin content and little investment into user experience (UX) and design.
• The website covers generic topics and categories, catering to any and all audiences.
• Pages on the site feature numerous external links but only some internal links.
• The prospective domain’s backlink profile features overoptimization in any of the previously discussed forms (high-density of exact match anchor text, abnormal ratio of nofollowed links, only one or two link types, etc.).

Again, diversification – in both tactics and strategies – is crucial to building a healthy backlink profile, but steering clear of obvious PBNs and remembering the ‘golden rule’ of link building will go a long way toward keeping your profile free from toxicity.

Evaluating Your Backlink Profile

As you work diligently to build and maintain a diverse, healthy backlink profile, you should also carve out time to evaluate it regularly from a more analytical perspective.

There are two main ways to evaluate the merit of your backlinks: leverage tools to analyze backlinks and compare your backlink profile to the greater competitive landscape.

Leverage Tools To Analyze Backlink Profile

There are a variety of third-party tools you can use to analyze your backlink profile.

These tools can provide helpful insights, such as the total number of backlinks and referring domains. You can use these tools to analyze your full profile, broken down by:

• Followed vs. nofollowed.
• Authority metrics (Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score, etc.).
• Backlink types.
• Location or country.
• Anchor text.
• Top-level domain types.
• And more.

You can also use these tools to track new incoming backlinks, as well as lost backlinks, to help you better understand how your backlink profile is growing.

Some of the best tools for analyzing your backlink profile are:

Many of these tools also have features that estimate how toxic or suspicious your profile might look to search engines, which can help you detect potential issues early.

Compare Your Backlink Profile To The Competitive Landscape

Lastly, you should compare your overall backlink profile to those of your competitors and those competing with your site in the search results.

Again, the previously mentioned tools can help with this analysis – as far as providing you with the raw numbers – but the key areas you should compare are:

• Total number of backlinks.
• Total number of referring domains.
• Breakdown of authority metrics of links (Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score, etc.).
• Authority metrics of competing domains.
• Link growth over the last two years.

Comparing your backlink profile to others within your competitive landscape will help you assess where your domain currently stands and provide insight into how far you must go if you’re lagging behind competitors.

It’s worth noting that it’s not as simple as whoever has the most backlinks will perform the best in search.

These numbers are typically solid indicators of how search engines gauge the authority of your competitors’ domains, and you’ll likely find a correlation between strong backlink profiles and strong search performance.

Approach Link Building With A User-First Mindset

The search landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace and we could see dramatic shifts in how people search within the next five years (or sooner).

However, at this time, search engines like Google still rely on backlinks as part of their ranking algorithms, and you need to cultivate a strong backlink profile to be visible in search.

Furthermore, if you follow the advice in this article as you build out your profile, you’ll acquire backlinks that benefit your site regardless of search algorithms, futureproofing your traffic sources.

Approach link acquisition like you would any other marketing endeavor – with a customer-first mindset – and over time, you’ll naturally build a healthy, diverse backlink profile.

More resources: 

Featured Image: Sammby/Shutterstock

AI-powered Internal Linking Tools

Internal linking is crucial for search engine optimization. It helps Google discover all pages on a site and assign value to each. The more links to a page, the more important it is.

A site’s structure produces internal links. Examples include navigation, footers, “related articles,” and “related products.”

However, the most impactful links are “contextual” because Google looks at the surrounding context to assign relevancy signals. A link in the body of this article is contextual.

Contextual links are hard to scale, especially for sites with thousands of pages, but AI technology can help. AI can spot phrase variations and synonyms to identify relevant pages.

Here are three AI-powered internal linking tools.

LinkWhisper

LinkWhisper

LinkWhisper is a WordPress plugin and Shopify app that analyzes contextual links (internal and external), identifies pages with zero or too few inbound links, and suggests where to add links. The tool focuses on contextual links only, ignoring those in navigation, widgets, and sidebars.

The report is also helpful for identifying broken and orphaned pages — those with no inbound internal links (accessible via external links or sitemaps).

LinkWhisper suggests relevant internal links while in the WordPress editor. It’s a handy reminder. The tool can additionally recommend internal links to a list of pages.

Pricing for LinkWhisper starts at $97 for a one-time WordPress license or $7 per month for the Shopify app with a 7-day trial.

LinkActions

LinkActions

LinkActions connects to Search Console to analyze a site’s structure and provide internal linking suggestions. It can also add internal links automatically. Just paste the LinkActions code snippet in your site’s header and enable internal link insertions.

Pricing for LinkActions starts at $64 per month for up to three sites and 1,500 pages. The free trial includes a limited report with no automation.

LinkStorm

LinkStorm

LinkStorm crawls a site and reveals:

• Immediate internal linking opportunities based on the content,
• Additional copy for each article to increase linking opportunities based on the semantic similarity of the two posts.

It also cites the optimal number of internal links for each page and shows where to place a link on the page and the preferred anchor. It does not automatically add the link, however.

LinkStorm costs $30 per month for 1,000 pages across unlimited sites. A free trial is available.