How to Write a Search Engine Optimized Press Release

Today’s post was written by Fairy Godmother Janet Meiners, Internet Marketing Specialist. Janet blogs at Newspapergrl and works at Orange Soda.

I’ve been writing a lot more Search Engine Optimized (SEO) press releases again and so it’s on my mind. I’d like to share the steps of writing an SEO press release.

1. Assemble the facts, news angle, and begin writing.
To me, the best quality press releases involve actual interviewing, on the phone. There is so much more information you get by talking to someone. Sure, you can use email and that works, especially because you can’t misquote and you have a record. However, when you interview the right person, their passion for the subject can shine through and you can capture that essence in your writing. It also makes the story unique. But it takes longer.

2. Identify the keyword phrase or related phrase you want to optimize your press release for.
This can be easy if you already know the phrase but most of the time you need to do keyword research to see the competition and demand for a keyword phrase. You may want to go for a niche keyword that you can rank for more quickly. If you choose something like “Internet marketing” then you’re up against at least 100k other web sites who want to rank for that. That’s a long-term investment.

3. Incorporate the keyword phrase into the press release.
You need to make the keyword phrase an anchor, use it in the first sentence, title, and body of the press release. Don’t overdo it or it will look like spam. There are times I take an existing press release from a PR firm and add SEO. Otherwise you may want to start out with keyword phrase first rather than adding it later. I like my press releases to read well and the feel of them to come through first and then add keywords.
4. Submit the press release to a press release distribution service.
This sounds easy, but this is almost as much work as writing the press release. Each press release service has different rules according to how much you pay.
Links – Some won’t allow links, most regulate how many links your press release can have. Even the process of creating links is different for each service (and not always intuitive).

Optimization in the code (you can’t see this because it’s just for search engines) – You might need a list of 20 related keywords and write a summary with keyword phrases. This is SEO that no one sees but is very important.
Categorizing your press release – You may need to categorize your press release by subject and geographic areas.
Social media optimization – You may be able to add tags or other aspects, like Digg, Delicious, etc.
Attachments - If the service (like PRWeb) allows attachments, images, podcasts, etc, you need to identify and upload those.
Timing- Most of the time you need to submit your release a day or more before you want it to go out. For the media, you want to make sure that’s not on a weekend.

When I’ve crafted a great press release for search engines and for people I know that my editorial score will be high so there will be upwards of 50k (conservatively) clicks. Then if company I created it for changes it so it sounds right to them (but messes up the search engine optimization piece). (Sometimes legal, a few VPs, and directors have to buy off. That can seriously affect the success of your release and takes much more time.)

I’ve written press releases for newspapers and the media and we just faxed or emailed them to a list. Not much thought after writing except to target the release to the right people. Writing for search engines is much more technical and takes quite a bit more time.

Feel free to add information that I may have overlooked, or reference your posts about SEO press releases. Within the SEO industry we know a lot and none of this is news to you. However, I wanted to distinguish the difference between regular press releases and SEO optimized press releases.

Here’s a useful template for press releases by PR Web.