Building Strong SEO-friendly Online Press Releases

Creating a strong press release is a matter of directly communicating a well-defined goal to the intended audience of the release as well as implementing a significant amount of newsworthy and properly keyword-optimized content for search engines like Google or Yahoo. Useful SEO techniques include adding keyword phrases (limited to 1-2 per release) to the press release title, sub-heading, and body and any media content consisting of video, audio, or images that are informative and relevant to the press release topic, which

should be made available in popular file formats (i.e. .doc, .docx, or .pdf) that are easily accessible to most users. In order to research keyword phrases that are most relevant to your audience, use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool or a service such as Precision Keywords, which is an awesome and brilliantly designed resource that will deliver multi-layered search analyses that reveal a great deal of highly specific and detailed information as to which keywords are most relevant for a given topic and why.

Additionally, you will want to write up a blog post that summarizes the release while including a link to the original press release article, and creating a shortened custom social media version for sites like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn wouldn’t be a bad idea either, as this will allow you to take advantage of social media sharing features that will help your press release spread like wildfire! For users who prefer to bookmark their preferences using popular RSS readers or plug-ins, make sure you include RSS feeds and links as well!

Of course, the press release won’t just magically sprout legs (or hands, for that matter) and distribute itself across the great expanse of cyberspace. There are some essential ingredients such as strategic keyword placement and the overall link popularity of any online wire service you choose to have your press release published through. Placing links to other news sites and blogs within the content can generate more direct traffic, as search engines take links into account when ranking websites, although it should be noted that anchoring specific keyword phrases is more preferable and optimal than simply inserting a ho-hum “click here” prompt. Moreover, the quality of the content is key to gaining a high ranking on all the major search engines and should be written in such a way that is easily comprehensible to humans, as content that appears to be stuffed to the gills with keywords and keyword phrases will simply be glossed over and promptly dismissed as spam, as it rightfully should be. When researching the keyword phrases that you should use in your press release, place special emphasis on how your title is worded because this will appear at the top of the browser and as the hyperlinked title in search results.

The overall goal, as described thus far, is more inclined towards creating a sort of “mini-website” than a standard press release that’s intended for distribution through more traditional media channels, as any successful online publication will be interactive and thoroughly linked to other sources of information that the reader may find interesting. SEO doesn’t explicitly rely on strategically placed keyword phrases, but also the amount of interactive content that viewers can get into if they decide that they just want to skim and get straight to the crux of the topic without having to read the article from top to bottom. However, writers should keep in mind that decking out a press release with gobs of media content can prove to be more distracting and annoying to readers and should remember to include just enough content to top off or summarize the press release itself.

You should also engage users who respond favorably to your press release or provide constructive or useful feedback. This will help bolster your online reputation and validate you as a living, breathing person or group of people who have something meaningful to contribute to members of a certain industry or niche. Building positive relationships with members of your audience will have a great impact on how often they choose to share your content with others in their online social circles and how they present it as such. An in-depth dialog with your audience will convey your desire to find common ground with your readers, and this will always go a long ways towards driving traffic to your press release, blog, website, or any other online publication more than any souped-up combination of SEO and social media wizardry that’s implemented and used without any real focus or objective towards conversing with your readers who may know something that you don’t or haven’t considered prior to publishing the press release.

Aside from SEO, as a business owner, your digital asset optimization (a.k.a. “DAO”), which is the amount of media content that you actually create and post on any online website or blog, is just as important as SEO for raking in search traffic, as consumers and online users, in general, are demanding such content at an increasing rate. The best strategy, in case you have a lot of media you would like to share with your audience without users getting too overwhelmed or disinterested, would be anchoring keyword phrases to correspondingly relevant links that contain video or audio recordings or providing said links underneath the body and identifying them as additional sources of information that readers can access if they choose.

In spite of the objective nature of this information as it relates to writing and formatting online press releases according to current online standards that have transformed how the written word is published and read by the masses and society at large, the principles presented in this article can be applied to just about any online publication or medium that falls within the purview of the major search engines and depends upon them to get ranked and get seen. Behind the technological shimmer and glam, however, is ultimately the raw, unfiltered content that you create and post online to share with the world. Quality content will get shared if it’s really that good, and more than likely ignored or dismissed if it’s perceived to be half-hearted or insincere to readers of your target audience even if all the right elements (i.e. keywords and media content) are in place. Most importantly, remember to write content in a style that isn’t jargon-heavy and that can be readily understood without readers having to crack open their dictionaries every 2-3 minutes just to look up some obscure, confusing word that you thought would look cool instead of using a simpler alternative. That being said, of course, feel free to write intelligently and be yourself; you should have well-established your writing voice at this point and shouldn’t feel pressured to restrict your writing as such but tailor it to your given audience as needed.