Are you writing regular press releases?  Are you hustling enough to have reason to write regular press releases?  Not only does a press release act as a great brand advocacy tool, if done correctly it can help you create some great SEO results as well.

Optimizing your press release as you create it is an important step you cannot leave out.  Make sure your PR department is  talking with your online marketing department and either implemeting your Press Release SEO rules, or letting you touch the press release before it’s sent out.

Here are some rules for creating great SEO within your press releases

1. If it’s not news, don’t even bother.  You want this to be something a potential visitor or customer would find interesting and worth a read and second look.  Adding a new section to your website is not news, redesigning your website with new features is news.
2. Testimonials or quotes are a great way to “name drop” or feature your brand advocates.
3. Be concise but not TOO concise.  About 300-800 words is good.
4. Bold critical ideas and use bullet points, make the text easy to read.  The SEO doesn’t only come from the distribution, it comes from the pickup, so you want those editors to read, understand, and republish your press release
5. Use keywords but don’t cram them into your text, make them look and sound natural
• Try to get a keyword in your title, your summary sentence, and your first paragraph if possible.  Don’t make your keywords TOO dense, write for people first.
6. Don’t use acronyms and colloquialisms that nobody understands, make this press release user-friendly
7. Don’t skip the boilerplate about your company.  The more legit your company sounds, the more likely your PR is to be picked up.  Take the opportunity to share your social media network links to encourage engagement with your team on many levels.
8. Include optimized images, videos and files if you can.  Make sure your file names are descriptive and contain keywords if possible, include calls to action within your video without being too sales-ey.  Add alt text to your images to further identify them to readers and search engines.
9. Link with good anchor text, once or twice for good measure, but don’t get to many anchor text links in there.  If your Press Release looks spammy, likely it wont get picked up by other news outlets.
10. Place your good link early in the press release.  You don’t want the user or the search engine to get bored and not follow the link into your additional resources or website, so make sure your links aren’t saved up for the end.
11. Publish your Press Releases on your own website and share via your social media outlets.  This can help get the word out to people and businesses in your own niche and expand your chances of getting a pickup.
12. Create a media kit for outlets and editors to use to further learn and promote your business

There you go, a great starter list of steps to think about when you create your press releases.  We recommend our customers do them as often as they have news.  Creating news and hustling to create buzz around your news is a big part of online marketing, take advantage of it.