6 Tips for an SEO Friendly Press Release
A press release is a powerful way to communicate your company’s news and events. By crafting your press release in an SEO-friendly way, you can make sure that it functions as a companion to your SEO efforts as well. By adopting a smart press release strategy, you can get extra links indexed and counted by major search engines. In other words, your press release can help provide quality, keyword-rich links to your site–if you write them properly. The reason for doing this is simple: with just a little extra effort, you can get twice the bang for your (press release) buck. Below are 5 simple tips that can help you achieve this goal.
1. Optimize the first 250 Words
Make sure you are getting the meat of your message within the first 250 words of your content. There are two reasons for this: first, it’s important that you have the relevant content up front, because this will make it easier for search engine algorithms to understand your press release. Additionally, you want to make sure you are providing the (human) readers with relevant information pertaining to your message and keeping the reader’s interest to continue through the entire release.
2. Create a buzz-worthy title
Like writing a blog or article, titles can make or break your press release. Buzz-worthy, or catchy, titles help garner interest and clicks onto your page. Not only can titles help with initial traffic generation, but they can be extremely helpful when starting distribution. Sharing a press release with a catchy title to the right sources and audiences can skyrocket your press release reach!
3. Hyperlink and bold important SEO keywords and phrases
By including important phrases in your anchor text, you will help provide pertinent links relating to your main keywords in your current SEO campaign. Consider adding links to pages like:
- Your about page
- Your service pages
- If the PR is in reference to another company, link to their website
4. Use hyperlinks appropriately
One mistake many novices make while trying to write SEO-friendly press releases is over-linking. While you definitely should make the first instance or two of your keywords a link, don’t go overboard. Doing so will only make your release very hard to read for users. Even worse, search engines will see this as spam and might ignore your efforts altogether. In extreme cases, the engines might even penalize your site.
Google’s John Mueller had this to say on press release links back in 2018:
“We try to ignore links from things like press releases because we know in general companies put the press releases out themselves so any links in there are essentially placed by themselves…”
While this might look like a red flag to remove links from press releases altogether, this should only be a notice to be extremely careful with your links in press releases. Like mentioned above, over-linking can saturate your PR and ultimately make your release look like a game for links. Be purposeful when adding links to press releases.
5. Make sure your topic is newsworthy
This part can get a little tricky – what qualifies as ‘newsworthy‘, anyway? The answer, of course, depends on the audience. This is where you need to keep the end user in mind and maintain their interest. Below are a few topics to consider when writing an effective SEO-friendly press release.
- Achievements by company or personnel
- Information resources
- Special events
- Charitable donations
- Awards won/given
- Giveaways or promotions
- New product/service
- Improvements or expansion of products/services
- Organization/staff changes
6. Off-site contact and links
At the end of your press release, be sure to provide your company and contact information, providing links where appropriate. Keep in mind that some sites displaying your press release may not allow this, but it’s good to have this information as many sites will point these links back to your site.
Bonus Tips and Considerations
If press releases are something that you are going to be using often, then it would also be advisable to switch the keywords that are used in press releases. In SEO, diversity of keywords and links can be nearly as important as getting links in the first place.
Create an online press room – Because a single press release can only hold a limited amount of information, it’s a good idea to create an “online press room” on your website. This page should list your media contact with an email address and direct phone number, contain a high-resolution logo of your company in various formats (.jpeg, .psd, .cdr, etc.) and high-resolution photos of key people in your organization.
You should also use this page to point links to important products, case studies, client comments, press releases and media coverage. Be sure to provide a link to this page on all press releases. By using these tips as a guideline to your press releases, you should receive a strong boost for your current SEO efforts. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different strategies to see what works best for you. Continuing to experiment with your results will help you fine tune your press releases and SEO along with your company’s image as a whole.
Final Word
These tips should help you on your way to creating great SEO-friendly press releases for your company. Remember, put the reader first when optimizing them. Don’t go overboard with links and optimizations and always keep your messaging clear! If you’re struggling with creating PR to reach large audiences, reach out to an SEO agency to partner with.