- Writing a More Effective Electronic Press Release
- Optimizing Your Press Releases for Search
- Who to Target?
- Distributing Your Press Releases Online
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Optimizing Your Press Releases for Search
The content of an online press release, then, is targeted directly at consumers, not to the media that carries the press release. But consumers aren’t the only audience for an electronic press release; you also have to target your press releases at Google and the other major search engines.
That’s because any press release you post online (or get picked up by other websites or blogs) will show up in a search engine’s results when someone searches for that particular topic. And for Google and the other search engines to display your press releases in their search results, they have to be able to find them—which means implementing basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques for each and every press release you write.
SEO for press releases is much like SEO for websites. You have to carefully choose the keywords you want to use and then incorporate those keywords into the content of your press releases. The most important keywords should go into the press release's title; all the keywords should be written into the main text, somewhere.
You want to make sure that whatever terms your customers are searching for are found within the body of your press release. If you sell lawn and garden equipment, potential customers are searching for things like “lawn mowers” and “trimmers” and “edgers;” these are the words you should include in your press release. It doesn't matter that your company has just introduced a "premiere line of lawn maintenance equipment," as your product people might say; you still want to say "LawnCo Announces Innovative New Lawn Mowers, Trimmers, and Edgers." Write the words that people are searching for—nothing more and nothing less.
That argues, of course, for keyword research—the same kind you use when optimizing your website for search. Find out what keywords are most searched for and incorporate them in your press releases.
That's not to say, however, that you should sacrifice style and substance for keyword placement. The primary audience of your press release is your customer, not Google, so make sure that it speaks to your customers. Get the message right, and then you can optimize the release for search.