News Release Writing for SEO versus Writing for Reporters


Posted: May 14th, 2007 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Media Relations Tactics, SEO PR Tactics | No Comments

I stumbled upon some good tips from Businesswire for news release writing. They call it Writing for Robots vs. Writing for Reporters. I’ve commented on a few. My comments are in italics.

1. Choose and use your keywords. Think like your reader: What words are most likely to be searched for by people looking for what you want them to find in your release? Choose/use those words multiple times.

2. Use bold, italics, headlines and subheads to make key phrases and keywords more visible. Emphasized text may help your release stand out and can positively impact search engine results.

But don’t overdo it. It becomes annoying and hard to read.

3. Keep it readable. While your goal is to appear high in search engine results, don’t miss the mark by writing copy that’s overly repetitive, spammy or unreadable. You want search engines to find you and for readers to click through to your text. Strike a balance.

It’s an extremely difficult balance. Strive for it. If you have to err, err on the side of readability. It does you little good to have a highly-ranked release that no one wants to read.

4. Be careful with puns, innuendo and double meanings. Search engines, spiders and robots have no sense of humor. Keep this in mind when trying to attract their attention.

In other words … don’t get too cute.

5. Write timely content that provides useful information to readers. Provide tips, advice, or analysis in your press release that is relevant to your industry or your customers’ interests. Search engines are more likely to include releases that are honestly useful in their results.

I haven’t found that the search engines know what’s useful and what’s not. This is excellent advice for getting people to read your releases, though, and also is good advice for blog writing.

6. Utilize hyperlinks and anchortext, but don’t overdo it. Too many links can flag your release as spam and get you kicked out. One link max per 100 words is recommended. Choose relevant links that direct traffic to the specific pages you are promoting rather than generic company links.

7. Be consistent. Some words have multiple spellings — such as t-shirt and tee-shirt, or email and e-mail. Stick with one spelling to avoid appearing illiterate, preferably choosing the more frequently searched spelling.

8. Keep it fresh. As releases age, they tend to drift lower in the search engine results pages. A campaign of several releases is more likely to drive results than a single press release.

Excellent advice that I frequently give my clients. I recommend at least one release per month.

9. Publish on your own website. Be sure to publish releases sent on the wire or EON to your own website also. Since links are like votes, link to them. And work with your web team to make sure your site is optimized.

This is one a lot of people don’t understand. “Why should I link to my release?” This is why. It makes your release rank higher, and thus the links you get back if it’s posted someplace else more valuable.

10. Use Business Wire for the Big Bang; EON for the Long Tail. We’ve witnessed the best outcomes when press releases are sent on Business Wire and EON. Business Wire provides the big burst of attention; EON gives it the Long Tail and allows it to live forever online.

I could do without the commercial, but I included it because they did the work for me on this blog post :)

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