Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Optimizing Press Releases for SEO: Add to the power of media

For the past few years, Press Release has steadily evolved as an effective tool for distributing content to the media and consumers. Not only does Press Release prove to be a “direct–to-consumer” communication tool, it can also be easily syndicated creating an excellent opportunity to attract incoming links. Press release not only promotes your company/brand but raises your online profile as well. It increases targeted traffic by helping with your SEO - gaining visibility in the web search results and the news search results and boosting your own site's rankings by building quality back links. When preparing press releases for online distribution, there are a number of factors that should be addressed with regards to search engine optimization.

  • Write a sententious (80 character or less,) descriptive headline that includes important keywords. Utilizing important keywords in the headline and throughout the message reinforces the relevance of your message for those important terms.
  • Furnish detailed contact information including your website’s URL. If you are hosting the Press Release on your site try to optimize the URLs to be search engine friendly and consider incorporating keywords within the URL
  • Use the jargon or the language your audience use when searching for or discussing topics related to your product or industry.
  • Link your strategically important keywords to relevant pages on your site, preferably to deep pages rather than the homepage. If they don’t exist, create appropriate landing pages and place content on them that is specifically relevant to the keywords
  • Consider using blended search wherein you can include an optimized image with your press release
  • Add a link and RSS feed to a del.icio.us page containing relevant historical, trend, market, product and competitive content sources. Keep it up-to-date so that it continues to be a resource to the people who subscribe to this content source.
  • Insert a syndication call-to-action (e.g. "News Releases" RSS feed)
  • Include a multimedia call-to-action (e.g. "download white paper", webinars)
  • Add an audio link such as a podcast or a product announcement into your press release. There are several audio aggregators on the web which spider audio-links and make them keyword searchable.
  • Choose a newswire which will allow external multimedia content hosting. For example, YouTube for video or Flickr for photos. These sites are spidered by the major search engines.

Remember that SEO is really the art and science of being found by your audience. Optimize your Press Release and measure how successful your release has been; not only by how much was written about it, but also how well it ranked in the search engines and how well it drove traffic, sales, or other actions from online visitors to your website.

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