Monday 28 January 2008

Optimising Press Releases

How to write a press release

Along with formulating a writing style to your press release which will resonate with your brand, you can also SEO optimise your press releases to increase presence of your company in the Search Engine Result Pages.

Word of caution though is to avoid keyword stuffing press releases, as not surprisingly this will reduce the credibility of your news to the readers. A good SEO copywriter will be able to incorporate the keywords into a press release at the same time satisfying any creative requirements for a compelling read.

Writing a press release for SEO is the same as writing a web page for SEO, looking for relevant links and relevant content on subject matter with keyword density of around 3% - 7%.

For step by step guide on considerations when writing a press release see the criteria at Pressbox.co.uk http://www.pressbox.co.uk/contpr1.htm

More information on writing Press Releases can be found at the BBC and WikiHow: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A4288944
http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Press-Release

Where to distribute

For maximum impact, where to distribute your press release is also an important consideration. Dependent on your industry and importance of the news story will decipher whether you pay or opt for a free press release service.

Remember that wire press release services will send out your press releases to a number of mail boxes, in effect Spamming mail boxes, thus you need to consider whether you want your company associated with that practice.

List of Press Release Distribution Services

The number of press release distribution services are growing, however at this current date, these are the ones I recommend:

Press Coverage free:

Press Coverage cost: Members news releases will be found on Google News, Google Search, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com News, Ask.com. My favourite is PRweb.

RSS Feeds

Another strategy on getting press coverage on your news story is to pull journalists to you by making sure you have good visibility on places where they will be looking ie: RSS feeds in search results.

Make sure that the news is available to this network of readers ie: every article or press release distributed is available as part of a RSS feed. Should news stories be updated daily or weekly on your site then you could be eligible to qualify for Google News. Other criteria for Google News include: editorial needs to be written by more than one person, regular news stories on the site and these can’t be a duplicate of a news story found elsewhere on the site.

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