A Search Engine Optimized Press Release can be a powerful Internet Marketing Tool with SEO Benefits, as well as a benefit for your audience and journalists alike. This presentation from Lauren Pesko, at The Net Impact, includes guidelines to make the most of your online news release learned at SES San Francisco 2010.

1. Is Your News Getting Lost? “How Optimized Press Releases Will Get Your News Found Online”

2. SES San Francisco 2010

5. “Something like 25,000 press releases have been sent to me, resulting in no stories. Instead, I think about a subject that I want to cover in a column or an article, and I check out what I can find on blogs and through search engines.” David Meerman Scott in his bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR

9. For Your Press Release to Gain the Strongest Visibility by Search Engines, Your Target Audience and the Media … Optimize Your Press Releases

12. Directly reach your target audience

13. Increase your website’s visitors from news search engines

14. Increase your visitors’ database through your website’s newsletter or contact form

16. Tips for Optimizing If your release is more than a few paragraphs long, include a subhead with a keyword phrase. It makes the release easier to read and search engines give more weight to bolded text. Resist the tendency to shorten familiar terms. (example: St. Louis or the city) Post your release on your site, on its own page, in addition to sending it out over wire services and other distribution methods.

17. Tips for Optimizing Include 3 Anchor text links -One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website. -One to product/event page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about. -One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion. With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content.

18. Don’t Forget to Include … URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process. PRWeb allows you to customize this. Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag). Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization. If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. Alt-tag – an alt tag helps images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately.

21. Use Videos to Engage Visitors As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video. In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases. But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out. *PRWeb has seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages when video is included in a news release.

28. Remember, Without Quality Content Your Press Release Will Fail

31. Ranking Depends On … -Localness of Story -Freshness (most recently updated) -Quality & Trustworthiness (% of original content) -Reader’s preference

32. Headline. If the headline of your press release looks and sounds like ad copy, then it will stop it from getting included in news search engines. Release Date. Press releases that include a date in the lead paragraph (first paragraph) earlier than the actual release date, typically do not get included into Google News. If you prefer to include a date, make sure that it syncs with the actual release date. Length Matters. If your press release is too short (less than 150 words or so), or too long (more than two pages or 500 words) it will be less likely to get included into Google News. News releases that are too short tend to read like an advertisement and are not considered newsworthy. Links. Too many links in the body of your news release is bad. They could potentially be considered spam and make it difficult to read. Good rule of thumb: one link for every one hundred words. Duplicate. Duplicates are not accepted. If a press release has been previously released via a newswire service, and was already included into Google News, then it is most likely not going to be included again.

34. Review Analytics Analytics provide an enhanced opportunity for users to track the visibility of their press release, visualize the geographic location of their readers, benchmark their results and improve the effectiveness of their news release distribution

35. In a Coconut Shell…. And

36. When done well, optimized press releases can be powerful marketing tools with HUGE SEO benefits Thank you!