Purpose and Strategy
Press releases are among the many once-wholesome link-building tools ultimately hijacked and ruined by black-hat SEO practitioners who sought to use them as arenas for keyword stuffing. Consequently, Google’s webspam team has imposed new regulations that sap their former potential to bestow link equity; therefore, it is no longer viable to use them for link-building purposes. That said, the value of press releases to drive traffic to your website, build relationships, and increase the awareness of your brand is as strong as ever.
Topics
As mentioned, the primary SEM value of a press release is to drive traffic to a website, increase brand awareness, and build relationships. Therefore, it is important to choose subjects and tones that will serve one of the aforementioned ends. Good promotional angles for a press release include:
- High-quality, premium content that has been produced
- Company news and announcements that cast you in a positive light
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Philanthropic initiatives
- Awards and acknowledgements
- Partnerships and key business relationships
- Licensing and product updates
Language, Tone, and Keywords
Focus messages with a specific online audience target in mind. Guidelines follow:
- Use the language and targeted keywords that speak directly to your specific audience segments
- When possible, favor keywords with high global monthly search volume
- Write naturally, and not for robots
- Do not overload the document with keywords
Links
Include links to any relevant destinations, including the company website, author bios, LinkedIn Profiles, social media profiles, and anything else deemed pertinent.
- Post URLs in their entirety at the end of the copy text (do not use URL shorteners)
- “Nofollow” all backlinks in press releases in order to avoid penalties by Google. This requires that each link’s <a> tag contain the rel=”nofollow” attribute
- If possible, link the press release to pages that are optimized for the same keywords as the press release itself
Photos and Multimedia
Include high-quality images in each press release. Guidelines follow:
- Ensure that images’ alt text and captions include strategic SEO keywords
- Embed high-quality video and multimedia if available and relevant to the release’s topic
Content Repurposing
Turn press releases into website content in order to amplify messages and reinforce insights to the loyal audiences that read your blog daily.
- Take topics and press release content and turn them into infographics, images, blog posts, charts, tables, and social media posts