Archive for the 'Press Release SEO' Category

Once upon a time when people wrote press releases they did so with the goal of getting their press releases picked up by mainstream media, so that newspaper readers would learn about whatever it was that was being promoted.

However, these days, newspaper readership is shrinking drastically every year and many more people are turning to the internet to get their information, instead of relying on traditional media. According to Nielson Online, in February 2009, there were 8.494 billion searches conducted on the internet.

What does this mean for you if you want to publicize something?

It means that if you want to get your information out to the widest possible audience, even if you do launch a traditional media campaign, you simply can’t afford to ignore the internet.

Writing a press release for the internet is pretty much the same as writing a press release for a newspaper, except for the fact that you want to do your keyword research first. Try to incorporate a good keyword in your headline and in your first sentence, and then once more in the body of your press release. Other than that just write naturally; you are writing for humans as well as search engines, and if you try to keyword stuff you will produce bad copy and the search engine spiders will pick up on it and it may effect your press release’s search engine ranking.

There are a number of places, both free and paid, that will distribute your press releases. On my website, I have a list of free press release distribution sites.

PRWeb and Webwire are very good options as well. They both charge a fee to distribute your release. One advantage of Webwire is that it will run your press release instantly and only charges $19.95.

If you need to get an idea of how to write a press release, go to PRweb and read through some of the press releases on there. You will very quickly get an idea of the structure of a typical press release, the length, and the type of information that is included in it.

And now you have all the information that you need to start crafting your own Web 2.0 publicity campaign.

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Dana Willhoit is an award-winning former journalist who worked as a reporter at daily and weekly newspapers for 17 years, before leaving the journalism industry to start her own online publicity company. You can read more about how to craft effective press releases and how to get tons of free publicity at her website, ThePressReleaseSite.

Photo Credit: Claude@Munich

We talk/write/learn/listen about optimizing websites, link building, content development, and using Paid Search (PPC) strategies to drive traffic to websites. Let’s not forget about the age-old method of using a well written Press Release to drive traffic, buzz, and links.

Here is a Top 10 List of Bestpractices for optimizing Press Releases.

1. Keyword Selection. Keyword selection is a crucial part of press release optimization. Be very careful while deciding on a keyword phrase that is relevant to the release. Optimize the Press Release for only 1 or 2 keyword phrases. Do this based on your business objectives for each campaign.

2. Keyword placement. Be sure to place keyword phrase into the Headline AND the Title of the press release. Try to repeat it nearly 3-5 times for every 100 words within the content of the release. Put two hyperlinks that contain the chosen keyword within the content.

3. Generally speaking, don’t use abbreviations. Write out full keyword text.

4. Use an occasional bold-type for the keyword phrase.

5. Replace pronouns with keyword phrase. Instead of using “their”, or “it’s”, use the keyword phrase.

6. Select the right PR distribution networks. Below is a list of press release distribution services that are search engine friendly and can offer an excellent channel for link building as well as getting your news distributed.

http://www.prweb.com
http://www.prleap.com
http://i-newswire.com
http://www.webwire.com
http://www.pressbox.co.uk
http://www.pr.com
http://www.marketwire.com

7. Make the effort for substantial media coverage. Eg: Make list of publications, send emails and correspondence emails to journalists for the release. Make sure you don’t send the complete release into the email. Write a concise but short intro, and include the URL to the entire press release with the email.

8. Make it easy for journalists to read. Everyday thousands of press releases are emailed to the journalists. So make the press release presentable and well written to be noticed by them. Journalists usually ignore poorly written releases.

9. Offer RSS feeds. Help journalists by offering RSS feeds specifically for your Press Releases. Many journalists specialize in a specific topic, and categorize their feed reader by subjects. So, make it easy for journalists to find your Press Release. “KISS” (Keep It Sweet and Simple).

10. Publish releases frequently. It’ll benefit your entire domain to have frequent, additional, and unique content crawled by the Search Engines.