Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimized press releases have become invaluable to today’s businesses. Press
releases optimized with keywords and hyperlinks have been proven to increase traffic to websites,
improve search engine rankings and secure greater coverage in the media.
When developing SEO‐friendly press releases for your business, ask yourself the following questions:

1. How does this announcement dovetail with my organization’s current SEO initiatives?
2. What are my company’s top five keywords/phrases, and are they applicable to this specific announcement?
3. Are there any additional or different keywords appropriate for this specific release?
4. Are there specific pages on my website that I want to drive traffic to with this press release?
5. Can this announcement be enhanced by rich media content such as videos, photos, podcasts, etc.?

Once you have your SEO priorities in order, consider the following tactics to make your press release as search engine friendly as possible.

1. Determine the best keywords for your announcement. Depending on the news you are issuing, they may vary from previously identified terms.
2. Online keyword tools are excellent resources for determining the correct terms. If your
   organization does not subscribe to a paid keyword service, consider these free alternatives:
   a. www.adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
   b. www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
   c. www.blogpulse.com/trend (to determine words most often used on blogs)
3. Once keywords are determined, you may need to associate more colloquial words with
   them, as company/marketing jargon isn't typically used in search.
4. Use the most popular keyword phrase in the headline, which carries the most weight with
   search engines, as well as in the body of the release and in hyperlinks.
5. Pick one to three relevant keywords and repeat them at least three times in the release.
6. Don’t OVER‐HYPERLINK words. Optimizing releases for words that are not used often in the
   press release can cause irrelevant results and be considered spam by some search engines.
7. Include anchor text hyperlinks in the press release that are your keywords or similar to
   them. Make sure you link these words back to the appropriate page on your website. For
   example, if you are linking a product name, link back to the product page on your site.
8. Make sure the page you are linking back to is optimized for your chosen keywords. If the
   anchor text is “accounting software,” be sure that it is linked to a page containing
   “accounting software” in the title tag and within the text on the page.
9. Place your anchor text links in the first two paragraphs. Search Engines will pick up these
   words more efficiently if they are placed before the “fold” of the screen.
10. Keep press releases short and concise. Most experts agree that the “sweet spot” for an SEOfriendly press release is between 300 – 500 words.
11. Ensure there is a balanced keyword to press release word length ratio. Avoid too many
    keywords and hyperlinks in shorter releases, and vice versa in longer releases.



12. Include rich media content such as images and videos that will augment search engine pick
    up in places such as Google Images or Google Video. Be sure all media‐rich content is
    appropriately tagged with keywords.
13. Include a link (not a hyperlink) to your website. Make sure to include the http:// of the URL.
14. If the release has a subhead, make sure it includes a keyword phrase. Search engines give
    more weight to bolded text (i.e. headline, subhead).
15. Optimize your boilerplate – always include links and keywords.
16. Resist the tendency to shorten terms. For example, if you are writing about your company’s
    branded data management software product, you’ll be inclined to make the second mention
    “the solution” or “the software.” However, people looking in search engines will type in
    “data management software.” Repeating “data management software” as a keyword
    phrase will help your release be found, while “the solution” will not. (But, try to keep the
    writing as “natural” as possible.)
17. If your company or product falls into a particular industry that is often referred to by an
    acronym, include both the full term and abbreviation throughout the release. For example,
    “Customer Relationship Management” should be referenced by its “full name,” and, “CRM.”
18. Post all releases on their own permalinked page on your website in addition to sending it out
    over wire services.
19. Be consistent with keyword use both in press releases and on your website. The website
    should have a keyword density of between 2‐8%. This tool, www.keyworddensity.com,
    allows you to enter your URL and chosen keyword for a complete keyword density analysis.
20. Buy Adwords for those keywords that are very difficult to get in the first page of results (i.e.
    those that are more generic and colloquial, or common industry terms). Putting this extra
    cash to drive traffic to a press release could be vital to helping the impressions of the
    release, increasing visibility and the possibility of greater pickup.
    

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Making Your Link the Place to Click

There are links and then there are links. Usually links are your company
name hyperlinked to your home page, and your company’s site link is
listed with a number of other companies’ links. Sometimes, if you are
lucky, there is a brief description attached to the link.
You should take a proactive approach with linking arrangements.
Explore every opportunity to have your link placed prominently and, if
possible, to have it differentiated from the other links on the page. Figure
16.4 demonstrates how having an image associated with your link
can make your link stand out among all of the other links.
Once you have an agreement with a site willing to provide a link,
you should ask if you could send them an icon and the HTML
for the link. The icon (GIF or JPG format) should be visually
pleasing and representative of your company. Within the
HTML, include a tag line or call to action that entices people
to click on the link. With the icon or logo, the tag line, and
your company’s name, your link will stand out. Again, remember
to include appropriate keywords to add to your link
relevancy score to improve your search engine ranking.

Icon

An image that
represents an
application, a
capability, or some
other concept.

If another Web site is generous enough to provide a link to your site,
your image should be only a thumbnail, for you don’t want to take up
too much space. This image could be your corporate logo or a graphic
from a current promotion for one of your products or services. By having
this image and tag line strategically placed on a Web site, the chances
that a viewer will click through to visit your Web site are much higher.
Here is an example of what it should look like:

<IMG SRC=“images/nameofgraphicfile”><A HREF=“http://
www.yourdomainname.com”> Catchy tag line here.</a>

By adding a small graphic to your link, you can make your link
stand out from the others.

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Tools to Identify Your Competitors’ Links

The following tools can be used to obtain a list of locations on the
Internet that are linked to your competitors’ Web sites:

AltaVista

http://www.altavista.com

To find out where your competitors are linked using AltaVista, simply

enter the competitor’s URL in the search area like this: link:
yourcompetitorsdomain.com. This returns all pages in AltaVista with a
link to your competitor’s Web site.

Excite and Other Search Engines

Just enter your competitors’ URLs and see what comes up. (Be sure to

include http://.) If anything, the search query will include all indexed
Web sites that contain the URL searched.

Google

http://www.google.com
Enter your competitor’s URL in the search box like this: link:

your competitorsURL. The results will contain all Web sites linking to
your competitor’s Web site.

HotBot

http://www.hotbot.com

Enter your competitor’s URL in the search box and change the default
from “all the words” to “links to this URL.” When you type in the
URL, remember to include http://. The results will contain all Web sites
linking to your competitor’s Web site.

Link Popularity

http://www.linkpopularity.com

Simply type in your competitor’s URL and it will give you a list of all the
sites linking to that particular site (see Figure 16.2).

Link Popularity Check

http://www.linkpopularitycheck.com

Use this tool to compare your Web site to up to three other competitors’
sites using their link popularity check. In addition to a comparison graph
of the number of links each site has, it also gives details on where those
links are coming from.

WebCrawler

http://www.webcrawler.com/WebCrawler/Links.html

Enter your competitor’s URL into the search query box to find out how
many links are provided to that page. WebCrawler provides the names
of all the referring sites.

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