Press Releases

There are numerous opportunities to generate a press release - to announce new products, programs and events, partnerships or even events within your organisation. The news doesn't have to be life changing, but it's always best if it has at least some relevant interest. Meaningless press releases are a waste of everyone's time and can even harm your reputation.

Press releases aren't generated simply for the fun of it. There are primarily 4 reasons that make them a potentially fantastic SEO resource for your organisation:

• They should gain added visibility and profile on search engines for your keywords
• Press releases can create powerful anchor backlinks for your website - Search Engine Optimisation professionals refer to this as 'link juice'
• They trigger Google Alerts emails on particular keywords - Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on a choice of query or topic. Google Alerts allow you to monitor developing news stories, keep up to date on a particular industry or competitor, celebrity or sports news
• They will hopefully appear in Google and Yahoo News for your keywords

Creating effective Press Releases is a skill that requires a clear combination of specific disciplines. Not only must the release offer information in a compelling and irresistible way, but that information needs to be presented in such a way that your release is optimised for maximum coverage. Search Engine Optimisation is the art and science of being found by your audience.

Many people believe that SEO involves simply researching and improving upon press release keywords, phrases, meta tags, etc. Whilst these issues need to be closely considered and the correct application of keywords, anchor text and headings is important, the days of successful Search Engine Optimisation by stuffing your text with keywords and shoe-horning inappropriate terms and phrases into releases are well and truly in the past. Anyone who tells you other wise is simply ill informed. Contrived copy makes for bad copy. Bad, old school Search Engine OptimisationO type copy will kill your press release. In our opinion, traditional copywriting is the new SEO copywriting.

It's essential that the writing is considered and well executed and that it is good quality. If you can write a press release that a reporter can take and only needs to change a little before putting their name to it, you save them an incredible amount of time. They are far more likely to run with your press release than with something that they have to write from scratch themselves. It's said that a great press release is not something that prompts a journalist to write an article; a great press release is published as an article. In this day and age many press releases bypass the journalistic filtering process and are read 'as is'. Direct to reader services such as PRDirect distribute releases to Google News, Yahoo News and MSN News, providing a page one link on the PRWeb home page, targeted pay-per-click ads and RSS distribution. Thanks to online PR services like PRDirect, your press release automatically becomes web content and you have a shot at automatically becoming news.

Without journalist filtering you now have no mechanism through which a substandard release can be fished out of the system before being exposed to the unforgiving eyes of the public. More than ever, organisations must be sure that their message is being shared in as effective and professional way as possible. Remember; bad press releases can harm organisations portraying them as at best misguided, and at worst amateurish or even untrustworthy.

At SEO Consult our teams of professional copywriters use all their skill and experience to partner our clients in the creation of world class press release content. The first question we ask ourselves and our clients is, 'What would catch your eye, what would you want to read if this press release was coming from someone else?'

We usually announce the release with a 'to the point' (80 character or less) descriptive headline that includes important Keywords, a hook to catch the attention and appeal to the curiosity of busy journalists and readers. Applying important keywords in the headline, and subsequently in the lead and throughout the piece reinforces the relevance of your message on those important terms, not only to your reader but to search technology as well.

We get to the raison d'etre of the release quickly and succinctly, sharing the message firmly and confidently. There's a story that needs to be told, why hang about? We deep-link strategically important search keywords to deep relevant pages in client sites, as well as the home pages. If the pages don't exist, we develop appropriate landing pages placing keyword specific content on them. For example, if our client sells kitchen furniture and are linking the words 'kitchen furniture' from within the press release, we make sure to link to the page that details our client's kitchen furniture range.

Our releases usually include informative, interesting, funny, useable quotes that provide a great opportunity for blatant self-promotion. Quotes make it easy for journalists to quote the release itself and can distil the whole message into just a few words to entice the reader into exploring the compete article. Quotes can be extracted for inclusion in other software. PR Web has a feature called 'Quotables' that randomly pulls quotes out of the press release and enlarges them as an inset in the body of the press release. It is possible to include too many quotes, so if you have one powerful message you wish to convey, you may want to make this the only quote in the press release to give it more visibility.

Our press releases hold no fear of our clients' big name competitors, often including them in releases in order that our clients can also return on search results for the bigger names.

Once we have the fundamental story/article aspect of the press release in place, we can then look at applying specific Search Engine Optimisation techniques. We carefully mould releases into effective information sources, treating them as professionally formatted, media-rich mini web pages. Formatting tools such as bold, italics, bullet points, short headlines and subheadings not only makes the page easier to read online, but also enhances Search Engine Optimisation. Embedded branding, photos, graphics, video links podcasts RSS Feeds as well as adding information also assist the Search Engine Optimisation.

To find out more about how we can help you create and deliver powerfully effective press releases, Contact SEO Consult today.