Optimizing Your Press Releases
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If you look at a press release through the lens of an SEO, what you see is not a piece a paper; it’s potentially a mini web site. From this perspective, the humble press release takes on a whole new life. In this article, I’ll discuss a number of ideas that will give your press releases much more impact.
Before I get to these tips, however, maybe you’re not convinced that you need to optimize your press releases in the first place. If you aren’t, here are some points to consider, with a nod to Rob Garner, writing for Media Post’s Search Insider:
- If you use an online news wire such as PRWeb, PRNewswire or BusinessWire to help you distribute your press releases, you may already know that many reporters go directly to them (or receive feeds from them) for content. They’ve turned into “press release search engines," and as with any search engine, content indexed by them may need to be optimized if you want it to be found by your target audience.
- Google, Yahoo, and especially Ask have begun including a greater variety of content in their general SERPs; they’ll now turn up a healthy mix of blogs, video, and yes, news items. If your press release is picked up by news outlets, it stands a better chance in Google if you’ve already optimized it.
- Journalists, reporters, bloggers, and news junkies often have alerts in place with various sites (such as Google) that are triggered by particular keywords. These alerts push them new stories. Since this is content they’ve actually requested, wouldn’t you like your press release to be one of the items they receive in their inbox?
Garner mentions a couple of other reasons, but these seem to be the most important. Press releases are and always have been about visibility. It’s true that they’re many decades older than the Internet, but like everything else they need to keep up with the times. That means they need to fit into their new online environment. With the tips in this article, you’ll see how to make your press release feel right at home.
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