Stop Press! (Release Optimization for SEO)

Target an Optimized Press Release Globally

All SEO is PR is one thing, but all PR is SEO?

I suppose that’s another thing entirely that various PR practitioners can thrash out at their leisure.

But there’s no doubt that when it comes to sandwiching the two together, the Optimized Press Release is quite an impressive way for anybody to get their message in front of the right people and more than you would were it not optimized in the first place.

Don’t take my word for it – a Marketing Sherpa survey of 1,900 marketing professionals had them rating the SEO Press Release as their most effective online marketing tactic. (Sadly, I don’t have a link so it appears that you’ll have to take my word for it after all!)

Anyway, About.com has written ten very good reasons as to the benefits of optimizing a press release (and I’m sure they’re pretty much in tune with what most marketers surveyed thought):

“• More and more people are using online news sources to find information on products, services, companies and ideas. Most news stories and press releases are read by the public looking for data.
• A correctly optimized online news release can get you to the top of page one for your chosen keywords in the news engines within 24 hours.
• If there is a relevant and timely news result on a keyword, both Yahoo and Google are displaying this news item above the number one organic position in web search.
• You reach your target audience directly – no reporters or editors to filter your message.
• You know that when someone reads your news release they are interested in that subject – they asked for it by keyword.
• Online releases can be tracked – for the first time you can get statistics of how many times your press release was accessed or downloaded. With the proper web analytics in place you can track click throughs to your website too.
• The article will get picked up and published on other relevant sites increasing the number of people who see your content and visit your site.
• If your article has been correctly optimized, it will have keyword links in it. Every time your article appears on another website it builds more relevant inbound links to your site, which positively affects your search rankings.
• Optimized online press releases migrate from the news search to the web search within a week or so and they can show up in the web search on your keywords.
• If you add the releases to your website and put them into an RSS feed you increase your visibility. Soon your articles will be showing up in news aggregators, Yahoo News and Google Blogsearch.”

So, if you’re a PR agency, a company or an online marketer, what are your experiences or thoughts?

We’d love to hear them!