According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 50 million Americans get news online on any given day. In comparison, only 27 million Americans watch network TV news on a typical evening. The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source over television, magazines, and trade publications.
News web sites like Yahoo News, Google News and MSNBC Searchbot receive millions of visitors every day. If fact, Yahoo News ranks ahead of MSNBC.com and even CNN.com, while Google News ranks ahead of USAToday.com and the NYTimes.com.
You can tap into these massive traffic sources through the use of press releases. Additional benefits of distributing your press release include possible media exposure, pickup of your release in online publications, increased link popularity to your web site, additional search engine rankings on your target keywords, and increased traffic to your web site.
However, there’s much more to press release marketing than simply whipping up an article and sending it out to the world. You must take time to optimize your press release properly.
Press releases should be optimized in much the same way that search engine optimization specialists optimize ordinary web pages to achieve higher rankings. In doing so, you will receive much higher visibility.
For example, one press release from MarketingExperiments.com resulted in 2,200 visitors and 5 interview requests by journalists. This is the power of a highly optimized press release.
Listed below is an outline of how to create an optimized press release for your own website and how to distribute it for maximum exposure.
The first and most important element is to search for keywords and phrases that are likely to deliver qualified leads to your website. A good press release combines targeted keywords with creative writing that makes for a compelling read.
To find these lucrative keyword phrases, begin brainstorming what people would search for when looking for your products. If your products or services are targeted to a particular geographic area, you might want to include these locations in your keyword phrases as well. It is best to target up to 3 keyword phrases.
Once you have done this, you can head on over to do some additional keyword research. Simply type in your list of potential keyword phrases and this tool will give you a list of related keywords and how many times they are searched for per day. This information can aid you in choosing which keyword phrases will bring your press release the highest amount of exposure.
Now that you have chosen the best possible keywords, it’s time to integrate these targeted keyword phrases into your press release. You should include your keywords in the headline, the title, sub-headings and the first two paragraphs. Search engines place much of their emphasis on the title and the beginning paragraphs.
Your title should reflect your strongest keywords, not the name of the company. Include local modifiers if possible. Although it’s often nice to see your company’s name in print, it’s unlikely to bring you the exposure you deserve. Instead, use targeted search phrases that are likely to be used by your potential customers.
You should also optimize your press release by integrating targeted links within the content. Many press release distribution services and news wires now offer the option of purchasing a hyperlink. You simply convert a keyword phrase within the release into an active hyperlink. This will increase search engine visibility for that keyword phrase and also drive additional traffic back to your website.
