43. Optimising Press Releases

Distributing press releases to relevant media channels is crucial for developing your brand. Search engine optimisers tend to love press releases, since you are able to include links and develop the web content yourself.

Follow SEO Specialist’s advice how to submit your press releases for maximal visibility in search engines and among professionals in your industry.

How to get your online press release noticed?

With thousands of new news articles distributed every day, it’s more important than ever to stand out and quickly choose an angle on your press release. Here is a few guidelines when creating a press release:

• Grab attention – now or never: You only have a few seconds to grab your potential reader’s attention. It’s important to carefully choose a relevant and attention grabbing photo, headline and summary to clarify your news.
• Reveal your identity: Make sure to quickly address your identity or risk losing the promotional value of your news release.
• Use ordinary words: Best effect from your press release will often come when you are using ordinary words and limit or avoiding jargong.

What to write about in press releases?

Every firm have news. Often, you are able to share plenty of information about your business in press releases every week. It’s you own creativity setting the limits.

Here are five examples you can write about:

• New products or services: Have you improved a current service or product or simply launched a new one? Tell the world about it.
• Competitions or awards: Are you going to host a new competition or did you win any awards lately?
• Events: Planning to attend any event or seminars related to your niche?
• Partnerships: New partnerships and business deals is often possible to write about.
• Surveys: If you manage to do a survey or examination of your industry, it might be a good idea to share your findings.

What every search engine optimised press release should have

In order to do a fully search engine optimised press release, you need the following:

• One or two appropriate keywords in the headline. It’s all about headlines in PR. Remember, it’s not a marketing pitch or advert. Many common press release services allow for up to 150 characters, which is way longer than normal website titles. Still, we usually recommend writing maximum 80 characters and include both your company name and a relevant keyword in the title.
• External links with the most important keywords pointing to your most valuable pages on your own website. Don’t use anchor text with money keywords, since this usually result in less quotes from newspapers and blogs.
• An interesting photo with ALT-text set.
• Include a video clip if possible. People love videos and it’s likely leading to more people spreading the word about your release.

Where to distribute your press release?

There are many large press release distributors offering their services. But which to choose? Often it can be a good idea to use a combination of free, local and international press release services. Among the free press release services you find PrLog.org and Free-Press-Release.com, while some of the top International services are PrNewswire.com, AP.org, BusinessWire.com, MarketWire.com and PrWeb.com.

For budget press releases, we usually recommend 24/7 Press Releases, Webwire.com or Pr.com.