Tips on Incorporating SEO into Press Releases for Better Visibility

Optimizing Press Releases for SEO can add a LOT of momentum to your online marketing campaign, are you doing it correctly?

One of the most useful mediums for getting companies, brands and products extra visibility in the media is the press release. Editorial coverage also has the advantage of being more credible than advertisements or other exposure that has been obviously paid for. Even if the targeted dissemination to the reporters does not work out as per expectations, putting up the press release in the online media serves to promote the business as well as its reputation. It thus becomes very important for press releases to be clear, succinct, as well as professional in appearance. If you also optimize them for search engines, they can add a lot of momentum to your online marketing campaign.

However, optimizing press releases for search engines can be quite complex because you need to ensure that they retain their naturalness while at the same time not get penalized by the top search engines. The process involves a lot more than inserting keywords. Some tips on optimizing news releases:

Make Sure You Have the Appropriate Quotes

Even before you start fleshing out the contents of the press release, you need to ascertain that you have the quotes that matter as these will not only help you considerably to capture readers’ attention but also act to draw the attention of the search engines, enabling them to drive the release up in the page rankings. Make sure that all quotes being considered for inclusion in the news release confirm to attributes such as being concise and to the point, be newsworthy, should be capable of adding perspective, should contain the keyword, be tweetable and be less than 100 characters. If you can make sure that your quote possesses all the mentioned attributes, then you can be sure that a lot of people will find value in it, making your press release worth reading.

Ensure Brief Headlines

The headline of the press release is what gets the reader’s attention. However, you should avoid the tendency to make them really long or stuff them with important keywords in the hope that even if visitors just read the headline without the accompanying body text they would still get a good idea of the news item. However, since the search engine results are likely to contain only the initial 50-60 characters, you should attempt to keep the headline really brief and to the point. You need to understand that the purpose of having the headline in place is to capture the attention of the reader and tempt him to read further. Every SEO training course that you attend will tell you that basically the headline’s purpose is to act as a hook for the reader’s attention. Just make sure that it contains an important keyword that should fit in very naturally without affecting the ability to engage the reader.

Add More Value into the Subtitle

While the subtitle is a very important component of the news release, its significance is often not appreciated and thus, it ends up being completely neglected. The importance of the subtitle lies in its ability to add more information to what has been indicated in the headline. This is the perfect opportunity for adding more details in a descriptive manner that can be different from that of the headline.

Make the News Release Easy To Read

A press release is just the same as any web content; so, it needs to follow the same rules that are applicable to quality online content. You should take great care that the content is written well, so that it is easy to read and does not leave the reader groping in the dark with technical terms or abbreviations that are non-standard. Also, ensure that the sentences are short and crisp and that the entire content is broken up into logical and small paragraphs that are just a few sentences long. Whenever possible, use numbered or bulleted lists with appropriate subheads so that readers can just skim the contents to get an idea of what it is all about.

If journalists, editors, and even specific audiences find the press releases informative and useful then search engines will also index and reward them with high page ranks.