Writing Press Releases for maximum marketing benefit

Press releases boost visitors to your website. Advice for press officers

The primary aim of a press release has always been to attract print media interest. If as a press officer you can learn to adjust your copy style a little, your releases can also play a major role in delivering targetted website traffic for your company. Here are the do's and don'ts of writing press releases for search engine optimisation purposes.

Firstly, decide on your key words and use them in your your headline. The closer your keywords sit to the start of the headline the better; but in this, as in all things related to press releases, ensure that readability and comprehension are not compromised. Needless to say, you should never use jargon in a press release.

When Writing Press Releases, emphasizing critical words and phrases is another excellent way of boosting your copy's SEO potential. Do this with the 'em' rather than 'bold' tag (ask your webmaster!) or better yet, set keywords as hyperlinks (again ask your webmaster how to do this). If you do create links within the body of your copy, make sure they point to relevant landing pages, preferably within your own website.

If your press release is long and time is short just consider the first 255 words and edit those for maximun keyword effect. Search engines give more weight to the start of a release, so make sure that this at least is optomised.

When writing Press Releases you should aim to get those key phrases repeated in the top of the press release, but at the same time ensure you don't turn great copy into unreadable junk. Press release writing and editing for Search Engines is a a bit of an art form, requiring you to think not only of the jornalist who you hope will read your releases, but also to think of the search engines that will help them find the release in the first place.

The only really big mistake you can make is to decide not to bother with all this. If you think you know how to write a press release and that web optinisation does not concern you, think again. Modern Press Officers who earn top wages are required to write for the benefit of the company and gaining web traffic has a real and measureable benefit.

Also remember that PR traditionally suffers in an economic downturn from shrinking budgets. This is partly because of the difficulty in measuring PR's effectiveness. However, if you write with SEO in mind as well, you can ensure your resulting traffic and clear contribution to the company can be easily measured. This means that adding an SEO element to your Press release writing skills also benefits you as an individual in the longer term.

Finally, remember that writing press releases should be enjoyable. Relish the words you use and the phrases you conjour up. If you enjoy playing with language it is likely that your readers will enjoy reading the words you write.

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