11 Tips To Write An SEO Friendly Press Release

Issuing Press Release is one of the best ways you can share your brand’s events and achievements to the world.

It works best for brand awareness.

So, if you are trying to brand your business by getting backlinks from reputable news sites you are good to go with a Press Release for SEO of your company website.

Though according to the data on review24 reports, “About 300 Press Releases are issued in the US each day”

An (Search Engine Optimization) SEO PR, when done right, benefits your brand by building its reputation, and creating backlinks.

These efforts can help you achieve attention from traditional and current media such as Google News which is even more beneficial for authority online.

So, in this article on how to optimize a Press Release for SEO for your brand building and reputation building, let’s first understand the PR in Digital Format used in everyday life.

5 Essential Parts Of Press Release

Tips To Optimize A Press Release For SEO

Intent Must Be Clear

Users need a story in their Press Releases, not just a generic statement or mechanical data.

Writers and readers are interested in hearing about your firm and what you’re selling if you have a history to support their goals.

Because today’s generation is interested in hearing how you can help them rather than what all services you provide. Remember the formula of Feature & Benefits. You must show your audience the benefits they are going to get and not the features your product or services has.

Show them how you have helped an audience like them. Make your PR intent in a way you are helping them.

That is why Insights for Professionals states that, “Intent data is now a big requirement to the success of marketing campaigns with 98% of respondents of a survey saying that buyer intent data is essential for demand generation.”

They only care if your product solves an issue for your target clients and especially, when the information is about your company’s history and purpose behind your business is practiced in the Press released content.

Also, a Global Communications Report stated that, “88 percent of digital public relations professionals believe digital storytelling is the future of communications”

This is because people remember stories more than technical vocabulary or professional pep talk.

The announcements made in SEO PR are glanced at and forgotten but your determination and passion through words are what makes your company special so that you can capitalize on the personalized intent.

Catchy Headlines

Headlines are the first 4 to 6 words that your targeted users read and so. It must be catchy and induced with keywords to be ranked by search engines.

See the example below from Dunkin’s Donut:

Now, as you must have observed the heading above shows the following SEO PR for users, journalists, and even search engines to easily analyze the data and decide whether the intent is clear and the headline is catchy.

Creating a catchy headline is important. As you must have heard ‘first impression is the last impression’

The Elements In Headlines Must Be:

i. Long-tailed keywords to specify the intent

ii. Encouraging readers to the first line of the content

iii. Problem-solving intent

Include Keywords

Keywords included in a Press Release help Google search engine to recognize your content to be relevant to your targeted searcher’s query.

So, keywords are the currency for your business and according to a statistics by truelist for searches regularly states that,

“The term “digital PR” has an average of only 320 searches a month. It hasn’t reached the popularity it deserves yet, but being recognized by Google’s John Mueller for its importance equal to technical SEO is a good start”

Things To Consider While Including Keywords In Your Press-Release:

• Avoid keyword stuffing as much as possible.
• Add a minimum of one primary keyword in your headline and subtitles.
• While conducting keyword research, think in terms of what your target audience is looking to find.
• Add keywords that talk about current events and hot topics.
• Also, try to use branding keywords as well.

First Paragraph Optimized

A good Press Release should be short but Attention-catching, meaning it should be interesting, solution savvy, and valuable to the readers.

Written in the third person your SEO PR should have the initial 250 words which must be able to answer the five-W of journalism.

These Five-W’s of journalism must be attempted in your Press Release for SEO as these queries grab the attention of target users to the content as well as the attention of search engines.

Keeping these in mind, your press content for SEO must be short , 800-1000 words, must contain specific details with no irrelevant information on the subject of intent and lastly, your content should directly speak to the users.

Pitch For Your Company

Your company must be at the epitome of your mind when you are releasing a press announcement. That is when you are providing information about your new product and service, your content must show the passion of your company.

So, it must show that your words pitch not only for a new product but a product that your company designed to solve the problem of your company’s targeted users.

Bold The Important Phrases, Quotes, And Statistics

Strengthening phrases, Quotes from the expert in your industry, and statistics which are the most recent gives your Press Release a boost.

These elements are other indirect values that provide authenticity and authority to the information used in a Press Release for SEO.

For example, the article shown in the picture below makes an announcement about some products for babies and the phrase “Delta Children, Million Dollar Baby Classic, Donco, and Little Seeds”

The article’s bolded words are an important part of the Press Release that promotes the brand with the authority of these other highlighted brands.

Similarly in your PR, you should bolden the key points of your announcement to attract the attention of your target users.

Appropriate Hyperlinks For Anchor Text

The hyperlink is a specific keyword that is highlighted in a PR announcement that could be the anchor text for external linking with the other content on your website.
See the example below

This example is from one of my brands’ Press Releases. See how I used a keyword as a hyperlink and redirected it to my service page.

This keeps your target users engaged with your brand.

Keep your anchor text and links usage to a limit within your PR because it could cause a distraction for not only your readers but also for the search engines crawlers that analyze your content.

Look at the picture below showing how your content, here that is your Press Release, can build your organic traffic on a particular page whose hyperlink you anchor text in your content.

The Press Release best practices must include such use of specific keywords to anchor text as a hyperlink rather than using catchphrases of “read more”, and “for more information” which needs you to use descriptive keywords instead of to-the-point anchor text.

Using The Digital Format

When you consider your Press Release to be a single webpage, the format for this content must be according to the demand of the digital layout universally accepted.

Using elements such as headings, bold, and italics to create short sentences and paragraphs.

Look at the picture web format shown by fitsmallbusiness, highlighting the elements that a Press Release must-have.

So basically, you have to consider how it will seem in an e-mail message or you can even emphasize the determination that a piece of good news releases when it is sent on wire service websites to a targeted customer.

The Visual & Other Media

As the SEO goes, the elements of content can highly affect the senses of a human being allowing your optimized content, in this case, the Press Release must contain a picture or short video that tells a story.

Look at the template below that shows various artists together,

Now, this visual media along with Facebook, Twitter, emails, and other sharing buttons shows the optimized announcement to engage the target audience to share your link if liked, which could increase your algorithm ratings and build your online authority.

Work On Timing

When you are going to publish your PR is when most of the audience is able to find your brand’s content online.

So, for your industry audience, the best time that suits to be free enough is between 10 to 2 in the afternoon which drops in the early morning of 6 am to 10 am.

Newsworthy SEO PR

Your Press Release needs to be Newsworthy.

I saved the trickiest part for the end, which is being Newsworthy.

Being Newsworthy means to be relevant among the announcements made by other competitors, among your readers, and other users that would promote your business.

A wide audience is a bonus for your website which published this PR in order to gain more business and traffic unaware of the business or new policies for certain kinds of products and services.

You Can Understand This Better By:

i. Knowing your specific industry

ii. Use customer’s experience for new products description

iii. You can use industry-related topics to discuss such as

• Company’s achievement
• Information resources specified
• Promoting special events by highlighting phrases
• Put up with charity and donations
• Giveaways or awarded gifts
• Change in system or members of your company
• New products and service launch

The writer uses such industry-related topics and elements that can be used to create solutions for the searcher’s query and is the most effective SEO-friendly way to perform and publish a Press Release online.

Bonus Tip

When you are including PR in your company for enhancing your SEO marketing strategies, you must consider setting up a wire service system through some of the tools available online.

Some such automated tools for managing and monitoring media relations are provided for free and paid versions are:

i. Prowly (Free 7 day trial, basic plan starting at $115)

ii. Help a Reporter Out (Free Basic Plan, $19 Standard Plan)

Some Of The PR Service Providers Are:

i. Newswire (PR service provider that distributes among target industry audience)

ii. EIN Presswire (Best PR service provider for small businesses)

iii. IssueWire (Cheapest among other PR service providers)

Conclusion

The Press Release for SEO is the backlinking authority from high-level domains and websites that consider your Press Release regarding a product to be re-published on their websites.

So, your PR must have an attractive headline to clarify the intent of your company with a logo or signature that helps online traffic recognize your company.

And for engaging them and compelling them to follow the SEO PR such as keyword research, boldening to highlight important parts of the Press Release, and appropriate hyperlinks and anchor texts can be used in a web format release.

For more marketing tips and services, you can schedule a free-of-cost 30-Minute Strategy session with our experts. In this call, our experts would discuss your business and provide you with the free strategies that you can use to boost your sales and revenue.