Press Release Best Practices 2018
Modern press releases can give you more visibility in a couple of ways. The first is the most obvious. You are issuing a press release to inform the media of news related to your business in the hopes that they will pick up the story and share it with their readers.
The second goal of press releases is to drive free traffic through search engine optimization (SEO). Knowing how to write your release in such a way that Google, Bing or Yahoo! will pay attention to it helps SEO. SEO strategies for press releases include the use of keywords, links, and media.
Let’s look at each of these in turn:
Keywords
Keywords tell search engines and human readers what the press release is about. The words you use should be specific to your niche or industry so that journalists searching for interesting content to pass along to their readers will spot your headline and know it is relevant to them.
In addition to using keywords in your headline, you should also use them in your subheadline and throughout the body of the press release. In particular, you should use them as the anchor text in any links you include as part of your press release. For example, if your press release is about a new book you’ve just launched about email marketing, your anchor text should be, “Visit URL to learn more about effective email marketing,” not “Click here.”
Links
Links should take people to the information they are seeking. They will help drive traffic to your site.
Media
Your media files can also include keywords. Name and tag your images. 12345.jpg will not tell the search engines anything compared to EmailMarketingBookCover.jpg. You can usually tag images with keywords as well.
Do the same for your video files. Name your video EmailMarketingVideoIntroduction.mp4.
You should always include media with your press release because studies have shown that press releases with media included are 7 to 10 times more likely to get picked up by journalists than those that don’t have them.
Here are a few other important things human readers will be looking for:
1-It needs to be news
Your release should be about something new and interesting that has happened in your company, such as a product launch, new round of fundraising, and so on.
2-It must have an interesting headline
The best way to issue press releases is through an online press release distribution service. Many busy journalists and other media representatives use these services in order to find content for their stories. The interface will make the releases searchable. In most cases, searchers will see the headline only, and decide from it whether or not they want to read more. Your headline should have one keyword and be interesting enough to make readers click.
3-It needs an effective summary
Many of the distribution service interfaces have a field for adding a summary or subheadline for the press release. It supports the headline, giving more information, and serves as a brief summary of what the release is about. It, too, may sometimes be visible in the interface, or perhaps the first few words of it. This being the case, use keywords here, as well, and make your release sound exciting.
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