Crafting Search Engine Optimized Press Releases
Hey everyone, Chaz and the Web 20 team here and I wanted to share with you the basics of press releases and how to create a search engine optimized press release.
Learn How To Write The Best Press Release For News Pick-Up And SEO
But First, Let’s Talk About The Basics Of A Press Release
Imagine you want a friend of yours to come and visit you, but you don’t provide them with any details on how to find you, including your address. It would be pretty hard for your friend to find out this information in order to come and see you, and it is much the same for press releases.
When sending your release for distribution, you want to give as much information as possible so that your target audience and potential customers know how to contact you.
You’ll want to include a headline, summary, and beginning paragraph for starters. This will help you to make the best possible first impression with your readers.
Creating Search Engine Optimized Press Releases
The Headline
When you write a press release, you’ll want to make sure that you’re getting across the right message and information to your target audience. Remember, you’re writing a press release, NOT a sales letter.
You’ll need to create a headline that announces the news that you want to share, like a new location or service. Think about headlines in a newspaper.
You want something that is going to catch the eye of your readers, but something that is also new and newsworthy. A good rule of thumb for creating a headline is to use an active verb.
The Summary
This is perhaps the easiest part of the entire press release writing process.
Your summary should be no more than a paragraph, and should give readers a brief description of the content to follow.
You don’t want your summary to mimic your first paragraph, as audiences can quickly lose interest if they believe you’re being repetitive.
Think about the back cover or inside flap of your favorite book. In most cases, these areas give you just enough information to be interested in what you are about to read, while not giving away the entire story.
Location And Introduction
There is no point reading a press release for a lawn care company in New York if you live in Oregon. That means you’ll want to include a dateline consisting of the city, state, and the issuing date of the press release in the first line of your copy.
You will then follow this with the introduction of your announcement.
Following this, the first paragraph of your release should provide your readers with information and answers to the 5W1H rule of writing: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. And it goes without saying that you’ll want to provide these answers in a way that grabs their attention.
Of course, your introduction should be different from your summary. This paragraph should be the highlights of your release so that your target audience can understand the message of your release by only reading the first few sentences.
Third Person Point Of View
First person language is generally used with calls to action and sales letters, whereas the third person is a great way to give an outside perspective on the events in question.
Think again of newspapers and magazines. Oftentimes, you don’t even know the writer until you’ve gotten to the end of the article.
Your release shouldn’t sound like you telling your readers about your company and news, it should sound like a journalist reporting the facts. Of course, there is an exception to this rule when speaking of the quotation paragraph of your press release.
If you are quoting someone the company, a partner, or a customer, it is perfectly acceptable to use first person language.
The Boilerplate
If your press release is all about the newsworthy thing that your company is doing, readers might start to wonder what it is that your company does, or what they are known for most in their industry.
This is where the boilerplate comes in handy. This short paragraph, usually the last of the release, is where you will write information about your company or organization.
Here you will add some details about your company’s background, and you may choose to use a subheading like, “About (Company Name)” in order to separate this piece from the body of the release in order to help readers easily locate this information.
It is important that you provide your target audience with a company name, phone number, and email address. This just makes it that much easier for potential customers who are interested in your products or services to contact you. This also helps you to gain authority. Now that you know how to write your own press release, you can begin learning how to write your release for maximum exposure.
SEO Tactics
If you are interested in writing a press release for SEO value, and you should be, you’ll want to start by understanding the basis of SEO tactics.
Choice In Keywords
When you choose your keywords, you’ll want to choose ones that people will search for fairly regularly. By doing this, you can start to rank your content for particular keywords.
Here you might want to use our favorite free tool, Google Keyword Planner, in order to look for the search volume of your keywords. You can also do some research on whether you should use short-tailed or long-tailed keywords for your own release in order to get the best results.
Now that you have your keywords, you’ll want to include them in your headline, summary, and core content.
Be careful of Google’s penalties, which you can incur by using too many keywords. By using LSI keywords, or keywords similar to your main keywords, you can vary the usage in your content and avoid Google penalties. To get more LSI keywords, try using LSIGraph.
Google’s Penalties
Google penalizes those who practice keyword stuffing in order to manipulate the search engines and get ranked. Google also penalizes links that are not of benefit to your readers.
This means you’ll want to create a unique release with both content and links that are beneficial to your readers, as well as to Google and other search engines.
But there is another way to avoid Google’s penalties.
Try to include no-follow links in your press release. When you add these links, you are telling Google bots not to count those links.
This can help you to avoid penalties while still getting valuable referral traffic from the links in your press release.
Asking Questions
Press releases are all about announcing news, so you shouldn’t ask any questions in your release. Your message should always come across clear and concise.
Your target audience is interested in learning more about you and your company, not being asked a bunch of questions that require them to think of solutions.
Your job as a business owner when writing your press release should be to offer your customers solutions and products that make life easier for them.
Press Release Writing Styles
Press releases, which were once filled with only the facts, are now written more as articles, and many less than newsworthy. Businesses are now sending press releases for distribution that are full of promotional content and chocked full of keywords and hyperlinks in order to affiliate sites and other networks that can manipulate bots in order to have their content appear in search engines.
Of course this isn’t what you want, because your press release will be rejected by most media outlets, which is a loss of money for your company.
There are 5 main types of press releases that work well for businesses, each of which should be considered when writing your own release for distribution.
General News Press Release
This release doesn’t really include any news, but is written in a newsworthy manner with a powerful headline to grab the attention of your readers. This release should announce something new or updated that is happening in your company.
Launching Press Release
If your company is working on a project or service that is nearly completed, it is a great idea to create a press release announcing the launch of this. This is the most common form of press release for companies, and is a great way to get the word out to your target audience.
Staff Announcement Press Release
Whether you want to talk about the growth of your company or the addition of a new key staff member, this is the way to do so.
Event Press Release
A press release will help you gain more exposure for your upcoming event by getting the news out to your target audience. If you have a powerful standing in social media, you might not see much value in this form of press release. However, if you are a small company or a startup without much exposure, this is a great way to increase the amount of consumers that your news will reach, and even help you to grow that social media following a little more.
Product Press Release
Every business has products and services to sell, or else they wouldn’t be a business! Rather than announcing a new product or service itself, you can use this release to highlight something that your company offers already.
For instance, if you are a lawn care company who offers snow removal, you might consider a press release in the winter highlighting this service to consumers who need it.
You can use this form of a press release to go into detail about a specific product or service, but keep in mind that your release should be written more like news, not a sales letter or advertisement.
Benefits of Press Releases
Exposure
A properly written press release will get your company more exposure, helping you to increase your traffic.
Flexible
You can have press releases written and distributed once a month or several times a month, depending on your company’s needs and your budget.
Press releases are recommended to be distributed quarterly for most companies in order to keep your business relevant with Google and other search engines.
Easy To Create
Your press releases can even be more or less about the same thing. For instance, you can create a press release for the pre-launch, launch, and post-launch of a new product.
Fast Results
Within a short frame of time, you should begin to see positive effects from your press release distributions.
In some cases, you may want to increase traffic suddenly, which can be done by creating several releases on the same subject but with different approaches to the topic.
At the end of the day, you need a press release that is SEO friendly, can reach your target audience, and help you get your site ranked with the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).
If you spend just a little more time on the optimization of your press release, you’re going to see positive results in traffic and publicity.
You’re probably thinking that this sounds like a lot of work, but in many cases, you don’t even need to write your release yourself! There are a number of inexpensive press release services offered by SEO companies, many of which include both writing and distribution.
Benefits of Press Releases
Google is always getting smarter, and it can be difficult to get every press release into Google News. You should verify sensitive topics not covered by Google News in order to increase your chances of seeing your release make the cut.
If you’re new to press releases, you’re probably thinking about going with either a free or relatively cheap service, or some of the most expensive (and theoretically most effective) distribution services on the market.
But there is a better way. With free services, you don’t know where your press release is going to end up once distributed. With the expensive services, you often know where your release will appear, although you won’t really be leaving any additional room in your marketing budget.
Mid-level press release services will often give you the best opportunity to have your news picked up by premium news sites, including Google News, without busting through your entire budget. And unlike their cheaper counterparts, these services will give you a full report on your press release syndication, including a list of your live links so that you can actually view the sources that have picked up your press release.
Find yourself an expert press release syndication service with a great price tag and start seeing for yourself the benefit of press releases in your marketing strategy.
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