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The Internet is a funny place.
You will come across new buzzwords finding the limelight for a few months and tuning down eventually. One buzzword, however, that has managed to retain its spot is SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Optimization is a process that enables your website to rank better on search engine results. Ranking on top of the SERPs is important to ensure discoverability and gain visibility among your target audience.
Many businesses opt for blogs and guest posting as their SEO assets. While they are amazing instruments, no doubt, one missing asset that can yield desirable results are Press Releases.
Press Releases are often a perfect addition to the strategy as it gives your existing efforts a boost. They might be considered fleeting, but they serve their purpose well when planned accurately.
In layman’s terms, a Press Release is an official statement that covers the information given to a journalist about a notable event. It helps keep the audience and stakeholders impressed and updated. When you progress and make upgrades, letting your audience know not only helps you gain popularity but also establishes you as an authority, as compared to your competitors.
In order for your Press Release to work for your SEO, you need to be smart when strategizing. A great course of action can help you get extra backlinks and attract relevant websites. This in turn improves your credibility in front of your audience.
You can use an SEO competitor analysis tool to see how fruitful your results have been.
If you want to get twice the bang for your buck, you need to put in a little effort from your end. But before we can go on about how you can do it, let’s discuss why you should be doing it.
Benefits of a Press Release for SEO
You can get your Press Release to not only give you media coverage but also make your SEO better. Here are a few advantages of a Press Release for your SEO.
- Expand your reach
Your Press Release is the perfect opportunity for you to find and attract more customers. And who doesn’t like a growing audience?
When you write your next Press Release, don’t just write it for those who know about you or your brand. Write for the mass. Write for the unexplored audience that you are yet to identify. Because it’s out there.
Optimizing your content and magnifying your distribution is bound to bring you an improved ROI.
- Induce trust and gain visibility
The more achievements are spread about you across channels, the more visibility you’ll gain. When you optimize your Press Release for search engines, you give your existing SEO efforts for your blog and website a boost.
When new prospects come across your brand’s achievements and progress, you will automatically be established as a leading brand for them.
This can help induce trust among your consumers.
- Establish yourself as an authority
We have already discussed how a Press Release can help you establish yourself as an authority. But why should you strive to do that?
Establishing yourself as an authority is perhaps the most underrated ‘growth hack’. When you share your knowledge, do good work, and truly help your consumers, it is then that you will be seen as an authoritative figure.
If you see, all the steps you take to establish yourself as authority help your consumers find a solution. This enables them to have a great customer experience. As a result, they turn into your brand advocates.
We all know how useful referrals or mouth-to-mouth publicity are.
- Improve Sales
Now that your reach is expanding, your customer base also has higher chances to improve.
When your customers turn into your brand advocates, they tend to refer your brand to others. When our friends recommend a brand, we are more likely to buy that over that of their competitors.
Thus, when you optimize your Press Release, reach more people, establish your authority, and gain consumer trust, you will also see it impact your sales (positively, definitely).
Now that we know that writing Press Releases for SEO is only going to bring improved ROI, here’s how you can do it. You can also find an SEO company that offers SEO services to make the process less tiresome for you.
How to write Press Releases for SEO
If you have decided to sit and pen down your own SEO Press Release, don’t worry. I’ll help you make a checklist of everything that needs to be done.
- Add relevant keywords
The first step to optimizing your Press Release is to incorporate keywords into the piece of content. What are keywords? Keywords are nothing but those phrases or words that your potential audience is search for in the engines.
When you are incorporating keywords, try to add the ones with high volume and less search competition. This will make it easier for you to be more discoverable and rank better. If you already know SEO, this should be a walk in the park.
- Make your first 250 words catchy
Now, your SEO doesn’t always have to be ‘technical’, so to say.
Your content matters. The way it’s written, the words used, the flow, all of it matters. You need to make sure that the actual meat of your message is unfolded within the first 250 words itself. Why? To keep the algorithms search engine happy.
It will portray your Press Release as relevant for your potential audience and thus, help in ranking your page better.
You should also focus on your actual readers. If they get hooked to your initial sentences, they are more likely to read the entire piece. It further helps in optimization.
- Add your keywords where needed
We already talked about the fact that you require keywords to create an SEO-friendly Press Release. But where are you supposed to incorporate these magic phrases?
Your headlines/titles, initial hundred words, and your content body should have keywords spread across them.
You should also add a meta title and meta description that has proper, well-placed keywords in place.
- Make the keywords bold and add anchor text
Once you have placed your keywords well all across your piece of content, you can choose to highlight it.
You can make these particular phrases bold in your content.
One important thing that you should not miss out on is adding your anchor link. An anchor link is a link that you will be adding to certain words/phrases (preferably your keywords only). This link will help take your readers from the Press Release to your website.
This way, you’ll have additional footfall (traffic) on your website. Just make sure you are not spamming your content with links. Just add a couple, 2-3 links. This should suffice.
- Use multimedia
Different people are attracted to different content.
In today’s time, there are so many options for you to choose from. You should use a mix of video, images, and textual content for your Press Release.
This will make your content look more appealing as well as make it easy for readers to stay on the page for a longer time.
It helps improve your inbound leads.
- Choose a newsworthy topic
This is a very basic tip. The more ‘newsworthy’ your topic is, the better crowd you’ll attract. But what is this newsworthy topic? You’ll know the answer to this question when you think of your audience while finding it. It all depends on who you’re catering to at the end of the day.
A few examples of some ‘newsworthy’ categories include:
- Awards and achievements
- Giveaways or contests
- Expansions or improvement in business
- Launch of new products or services
- Charitable donations
- Magnify your Press Release distribution
While uploading your Press Release on your website will attract a few eyes, it is best to still maximize your reach.
You should attempt to spread your Press Release across different channels and platforms. This way, you will not only be reaching your audience that you know of. This will open gates to an unexplored segment of potential consumers for you.
Moreover, the more you share, the more people will see. More traffic on your website will further help boost your SEO efforts.
Conclusion
To wrap it up, we can say that optimizing SEO has its own set of benefits. It not only helps you expand your reach but also enables you to establish yourself as an authority. You can use this content asset to build trust among your audience.
Adding the right keywords at the designated places, choosing the right news, and magnifying the distribution are the right tactics to make your Press Release work for you and your SEO.
