4 Steps To Optimize Your Next Press Release
Given that the news cycle has evolved significantly since the beginning of the digital age, so too has the value and uses of a press release.
Press releases are an excellent promotion tool both online and off. Online, there is a particular opportunity for maximizing search engine optimization. Digital press releases can be targeted, effective, and improve the search engine presence of a person or an organization.
Press release marketing is a great addition to your content marketing strategy. It helps boost credibility and authority. Press releases also help in increasing visibility and awareness. Ultimately, through media coverage, press releases also help you boost your traffic and profits.
But strangely, not many know that getting one is easier than it sounds and can be done by almost every company or individuals.
Yes, we all can do that through press release SEO!
Always make sure that your press release is optimized for the digital world. It needs to also be valuable to search engines. The four steps described below is best applied when writing your next press release. By using these strategies correctly, you can optimize your press releases to achieve the best possible online distribution.
Read more about how an optimized press release can help your SEO here: https://seopressor.com/blog/how-optimized-press-release-can-help-seo/
Step 1: Conducting Keyword Research
Keywords play an important role in SEO, and they’re just as important in press release SEO. The first step in optimizing your press release involves the keyword research. You want your release to get top rankings in Google, Yahoo! And Bing news searches using the most relevant keywords. But just as it is the case with regular SEO, you’ll need to be cautious and careful about how you use keywords in press release SEO.
Brainstorming Initial Keywords
It’s best to brainstorm keyword categories that addresses what your customers want, as well as what journalist need.Think about words and phrases search engines users might type to find your product, company or financial news.
To make your final selection of keywords and phrases, you will want to consider such factors as competition for the word or phrase, and traffic potential. High volume is more important than low competition, and understanding the user intent behind a keyword phrase is just as important as the keyword itself.
Using Free SEO Keyword Tools
These three tools will help you tremendously in doing keyword research.
Use this tool to keep track of the newest and most popular keywords. Start by searching words or phrases related to your products or services. Keyword Planner works to find the keywords that are most relevant to your business. You can also see how often keywords are searched and how their search volume changes over times. That way, you can narrow down your keyword list and go for the keywords that best suits you. The tool will also be able to suggest relevant keywords.
LSI Graph is a rather simplistic and easy to use tool. It is a tool that provides alternative to your preferred keywords. By using formulas that help you better leverage your keywords, LSI Graph returns the best results. This allows for a broader range of search terms, which enables you to appeal to a broader audience, and assists you to outrank your competitors. Because of its ease of use, this is an excellent tool for those wanting to break into a new market or perform a competitive analysis.
Basically, Google Trends is an online search tool that allows the user to see how often specific keywords, subjects and phrases have been queried over a specific period of time. It is an invaluable tool for marketers who need information about the products, events and services that matter most to their audience. You may search for anything from people, food, animals or literally any keyword you can think of.
Step 2: Placing Your Keywords
The news search engine algorithms are primarily interested in the headline, the subhead and the lead paragraph (or the first 100 words). They give extra weight to words that appear in subheadings, bold, italics or anchor text links.
It is vital to use your keywords strategically in the press release and not over-do it. Make sure the release is still readable and not overly repetitive. Additionally, news search engines are on the lookout for the use of too many keywords as it can harm your release’s ranking.
Headline Placement
This headline contains two keyword terms “Probiotics for Dogs” and “Product Milestone”
Work your keywords into the headline of your press release. Use them naturally, so search engines can find them in news feeds, and in organic searches. However, use some restraint. Editors will be reading your copy and it may get rejected if it appears to be a spam. We’re writing a press release, not a sales letter. The headline should be clear and free of promotional tone.
Opening Paragraphs
Be sure to include your keywords or phrases in the opening paragraph of your press release. Search engine filters tends to concentrate on the top of pages, and having your tags front and center will help direct attention to your article. It will also help your audience to quickly decide the relevance of your press release to their initial search.
Step 3: Adding Links
Press release links can be very powerful, but they’re also a common source of SEO abuse. Experts recommend that you can be careful and make the most out of the links in your press release.
Why Add Links?
One of the primary objectives for issuing a press release is to drive traffic to information on your website. By adding a link to a relevant landing page on your website, you are able to direct the reader to additional information about the content in the press release or capture their contact information for your lead database.
Additionally, adding external links to your press release increases ranking, and is a key component that search engines consider. If you link to interesting content on your website from your press release, there is a possibility that editors will find it compelling for their audience and link to it, thus creating an external link to your website.
How Many Links To Add?
A standard for the number of links in a press release is one link per 100 words. More or less is acceptable, but an excessive number is not ideal. The search engines regard a press release with an excessive number of links as spam, deterring ranking. However, the golden rule to follow is 2.
It is advisable to have not more than 3 links.
If you want to see how this is done, check out the full press release at MarketersMedia here.
Where To Place Your Links?
It’s perfectly fine to add links anywhere within the release, but generally you would want to add one in the first or second paragraph. Another somewhere in the body of the release if that makes sense content-wise. Lastly, one just above your boilerplate. It is acceptable to have two links that goes to the same landing page. For example, if you are driving people to an event registration, you might want to place a pink in the first paragraph or the beginning of the second paragraph and then place that same link to the event just above the boilerplate.
Keywords in Anchor Text
Rather than placing bare URLs in your press release, the best practice is by using anchor text which consists of your keywords. This reinforces the keywords that you used in your header, subhead and lead paragraph.
Here are some examples:
- MarketersMEDIA, links to the company’s homepage on the website.
- Meta Descriptions, links to an article on the importance of SEO Meta Descriptions
- MarketersMEDIA’s blog, links to the company’s blog
- Apple Store, links to Apple’s store
While you’re optimizing links, you should use caution and avoid stuffing too many links into your press release, as this can be detrimental. Never over-optimize links by only linking to money keywords either. Link context naturally and minimally. Once you’ve finished creating all your hyperlinks, it will be a good idea to check each link to make sure it is directed to the correct page. You do not want the “404 Page Not Found” error message to be to be appearing when linking in any of your press releases.
Step 4: Finishing Up
Now you have completed optimizing your press release and are ready to distribute them via wire service.
Distribution
Why use a wire distribution service? Google News and Bing News crawl news sources; the new source is the press release put online by a wire distribution service. These news engines do not scan billions of websites to find press releases nor are they able to manually add press releases that are sent to them.
MarketersMEDIA to your rescue!
That is why it is necessary for you to use an SEO press release distribution service like MarketersMEDIA, which is a news source for these news search engines. MarketersMEDIA’s SEO press release distribution service transforms online press releases into SEO press releases complete with anchor text links.
In addition to distribution SEO press releases to Reuters, MarketersMEDIA also delivers to more than 2000+ media endpoints including Associated Press, The Washington Post, New York Times, Dow Jones-owned Factiva, LexisNexis, Comtex and more! You will also find more than 450 publications of your release on branded media outlets including Boston, NBC, CBS, CW & FOX affiliated TV broadcast station sites.
It doesn’t stop there!
With this addition, you are likely to be one step ahead of your competitors.
This year MarketersMEDIA forged a new partnership with Vertical News Network (VNN), a digital media company with more than 190 media outlets specializing in different industries. With VNN, getting your story and message across is quick and targeted, reaching highly relevant audiences.
Bottom Line: Does SEO Really Help Press Releases?
Does it? Does it not?
Whether or not Google wants to admit that press releases boost ranking for specific keywords, we’re seeing many cases where businesses have achieved positive results.
Don’t believe me? Set up your own test.
First, choose three keywords you want to rank better for. Find out where you fall in search results today, and also find out what your existing web traffic is. Next, write your release, using those three keywords. Don’t forget to include a link or two back to your site.
Subsequently, use a press release distribution service to get your release published on as many news and industry sites as possible. Then, over the following week pay attention to where you now fall in those search results. Did you move up? Did you see a boost in web traffic?
If so, mission accomplished. Take note that some press release topics will generate better results than others. Especially it it is newsworthy. Make sure to document the results of every press release you publish. If you’ve identified the topics that send your site the most traffic and get you better rankings, you can write similar releases in the future.
Search engine optimization is always changing, and the rules of the Internet can be difficult to master. But with the right attention to detail, and an emphasis on quality content, the optimized press release can become a powerful tool in directing online attention to your business.
Press releases are an easy, inexpensive way to boost your SEO, especially when used together with other marketing tools. Integrate your SEO strategies with your press releases today. Time to plan one up and send them!
Have you used SEO press release for your marketing effort? Any thoughts and tips are much appreciated so do share them in the comment section below!
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