Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the backbone of digital marketing. Hence, writing press releases for SEO is one of the priorities set by businesses.
Press releases are powerful tools of communication between the business and the media. Crafting press release content with an SEO-friendly approach ensures the best practices of digital marketing. It also leads to an effective distribution and promotion campaign. There are various ways of writing press releases for SEO. The following tips and components will help you come up with the best PR for your company.
Optimizing the First Section
The writer should always remember to convey the message of the press release within the first 250 words or so. You have to present your content as the initial captivating component before the reader so that they check out the rest. It also helps with SEO as search engine algorithms identify your content better this way when published. You must give your audience a brief to your news rather than a big excerpt of unnecessary, lengthy details. You have to keep their interests through the press release. The only way to do so is to use words that are SEO-friendly and relevant to their requirements.
Hyperlinks
One of the most understated components of SEO-friendly PR is a hyperlink. You can highlight and hyperlink certain keywords to the business web page. This increases the scope of sales and also helps the website emerge with greater visibility. Ultimately, the entire strategy will help in earning a better ranking of the business website on search engines.
Newsworthy Topics
The PR writer or marketer needs to do extensive research alongside the business to identify what is newsworthy. Another aspect that must be looked after in this regard is the target audience. Keep in mind the interest of the user end. However, an effective SEO-friendly PR may contain newsworthy topics related to the business such as:
- Special events
- Awards won/given
- Achievements by company or employee
- Information resources
- Charitable donations
- Giveaways or promotions
- New launch or expansion of services and product lines
- Organizational Changes
- Change in Location
- Off-site Links
A press release must have the company information and contacts preferably with links towards the end. Using appropriate links to where the PR is published previously helps the business form a solid validation and authenticity before the readers. It makes the press release a lot more informative and looks formatted with professional knowledge.
Diverse Press Coverage
Many companies send out the same press release to different media channels for subsequent publishing. But most of the time, this strategy does not work out well. This is because Bing and Goole essentially ignore most syndicated versions that are duplicates. If you want to get wide media coverage, it is always better to send out different versions containing the same news and story across a plethora of media houses.
Commonly Used Search Phrases
The biggest tip of crafting an effective PR is to know your keywords. Keywords may differ from industry to industry. So, keywords must be chosen depending on the background of the business. Primary and secondary key phrases or keywords that are commonly used by end-users should be present in the PR for an effective campaign. The keywords should be relevant to the news and then to the respective market. This way, your news will emerge during searches, thus increasing the visibility of the brand and other things associated.
Nowadays, single keywords rarely find the right SEO advantages. Long-tail keywords are where the collective digital world is heading to. For example, take a day in your life. You want to know which restaurant serves the best sushi. For that, you will not search with the word ‘sushi’ or ‘restaurant’ only. You will put queries like:
- Best sushi restaurant in New York
- Best sushi restaurant near me
- Best sushi place around me
So, it is important to find out more about the target audience so that keywords can be composed most effectively. SEO plays the biggest role in deciding the success of a PR campaign in the scope of digital marketing.
SEO PR Format
The format of a press release also says a lot of its SEO-friendliness. An SEO-friendly PR has five parts:
- Title
- Summary
- Body
- Company Details
- Contact Details
Title- If you notice, most news titles will have the name of the brand or company, It is because the company name is one of the primary keywords of an SEO PR. The title must catch the reader’s eye instantly. Always remember to put the primary keyword, whatever it is in the title as it the most crucial tag in SEO. This is where search engines look when filtering the results of a query.
Summary- A summary must also have the primary key phrase preferably along with secondary key phrases if any. Minor adjustments can be done without affecting SEO benefits. However, do not change must along the key phrases or that may confuse the search engine.
Body- Placing the primary key phrase within the first few sentences is a good tip. But do not span the entire press release with keywords and phrases. It is a practice that does not score well with search engines. Find your balance between the write-up and the key phrase. There must be a sense of emotional connection as in the end, the PR is for the mass. Also, you must make sure that it is SEO-friendly. So the fine line between the two is where a successful SEO-friendly PR lies.
Embedding links into a PR is also another crucial part. You may push your business by adding hyperlinks to important keywords or phrases within the PR. A topical link between a PR and the company web page shows a lot of potential in the SEO world.
About the company- A third-person summary about the company at the end of the PR is a format that is accepted widely. Your press release will anyway have information about the company throughout. But this section is specifically dedicated to the company. Somewhere along this section, a link to the website is provided. One can use deep links in SEO press releases. These are links to pages beyond the company website where you want to drive your audience.
Contact or press details- Mention the contact information of the company at the bottom of the press release for journalists, potential collaborators, and bloggers for future interaction. It is called the press contact area in a press release.
Are SEO press releases effective at all?
Press releases are considered fleeting news for everyone out there.If a press release finds more readers, it increases its longevity. This is where SEO comes into play as it’s evident that an SEO-friendly PR will be identified by a search engine so that readers come across it. It also needs to be a good write-up in order to captivate the readers. Content is endless and it is important to stand out. SEO and good PR writing skills is the way to accomplishing your desired goals.
