Press release SEO can boost brand awareness and establish your reputation as a thought leader
Are you looking to boost visibility and traffic for your press releases? Our team of SEO experts has 9 powerful strategies that will help you optimize your press releases for maximum impact.
We reveal how to optimize your press releases not only for search engines but also for human readers. With our insider knowledge, you’ll learn how to incorporate relevant keywords strategically without overstuffing them. If you’re ready to supercharge your press release SEO achieve better visibility and traffic, and benefit from organic marketing services, dive into these expert strategies now!
How Pressfarm can help with this
Would you prefer to leave your press release writing to someone else and focus on improving your product? The team at Pressfarm is skilled at writing quality press releases that will help your brand make a memorable impression. Reach out today and let us help you create a press release that will capture attention and rank in search engines.
In addition to helping you create a professional press release, we can help you write engaging guest posts and design an eye-catching media kit. By distributing this content to the right media outlets and startup directories, we can help you rank in relevant search results across different search engines.
Finally, as a client, you also get custom media lists. Combined with our media databases, media lists can help you connect with the best thought leaders and storytellers in your niche.
How can press releases boost your SEO?
A press release can contribute to your SEO score both directly and indirectly.
-
Direct SEO benefits of a press release
After writing a press release, the next step is to send it to a press release distribution website. If this press release ranks highly on Google after publication, it will boost your SEO ranking directly. The result is almost instantaneous in this case.
-
Indirect SEO benefits of a press release
A good press release will boost brand awareness and direct more curious people to your website. In doing so, they indirectly boost your SEO ranking. This is because the more people learn about you, the more mentions your brand will earn. Likewise, as your brand awareness grows, you get backlinks from quality sites, thus increasing your domain authority.
How press release SEO has changed
Brands relied heavily on press releases to increase their SEO rankings directly in the past. However, Google realized these same brands had started writing press releases to boost their SEO. Companies wrote press releases to announce even the smallest piece of news just so that Google could rank them higher and increase their visibility. With time, newswire outlets caught onto what was happening and started turning all the links within press releases into no-follow links. In other words, none of these links benefit your SEO score.
For this reason, we recommend focusing on the indirect benefits of your press release. Instead of racking your brain for sites you can link to maximize your SEO, prioritize writing a quality press release that people want to read.
How to write a press release SEO
1) Craft a newsworthy story
First, ensure you have a newsworthy story. Make sure your story gives value to your target audience. If you can consistently produce quality and educational press releases, people will start to rely on you as a source of valuable information.
By building a reputation for writing newsworthy press releases, you will attract the attention of media outlets and your target audience. Media outlets will want to write about you, and your target audience will want to hear more about you.
2) Create a concise headline
Your headline should be both concise and informative. A long headline gets shortened in search engine results pages (SERPs). Similarly, if it’s vague, your readers won’t know what your story is about.
Your headline is where you grab a reader’s attention, so it’s important to craft a headline that makes the rest of your story worth reading. To do this, be as descriptive as possible. Include your primary keyword and company name – or a shortened version – in this headline. This shows search engines how to categorize your news and capture your audience’s attention.
3) Optimize the first 250 words
A standard press release is 300-400 words long. Include the important details in the first half of your story. Use the inverted pyramid structure so that your human readers and search engines know what your story is about right away.
Introducing the point of your story immediately helps retain your reader’s attention and Google to categorize your story accurately.
4) Hyperlink wisely
Linking your press release to high-authority sites that write about the topic is good if you want to make friends with search engines and your readers. Each link you provide is a vote of confidence for your authority as a thought leader.
However, for your hyperlinks to work, link to high-authority pages. Since these pages already exist, Google has already read them. Linking to them helps Google to put your press release in the right category. Since you’ve linked to high-authority pages, these hyperlinks will also increase your domain authority. Finally, linking to high-authority pages encourages readers to trust you.
Limit yourself to 2-3 links to add value to your press release.
5) Use diverse keywords
Using diverse keywords in your press releases boosts your domain authority. By writing diverse topics, you become a more credible source to search engines and the people reading your press releases.
To choose effective keywords, research what people are searching for. Once you’ve found keywords corresponding to your brand, include them in your press release heading, subheading, and lead. Using keywords here will help you rank for those keywords and stand out in your readers’ minds as an authority in your industry.
Ultimately, being recognized for keywords will lead to optimized brand awareness.
7) Avoid keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of the cardinal sins of SEO writing, and for good reason. If you overoptimize your text using too many keywords, it becomes harder for you to elaborate on the topic.
Since a press release is supposed to be 400 words long, use your keyword three times. If you want to use more keywords, then it would be wise to choose a primary and a secondary keyword. This way you can use your keywords six times in total.
6) Add contacts and links to your site
Including contact details and links to your site will pull in traffic from people curious about your brand. Contact details are helpful to journalists looking for more information about your story. It can also help to channel traffic from members of your target audience who want to learn more about you.
People using your contact details and following links from your press release to your website show how a press release can benefit your SEO indirectly.
9) Aim for a high dwell time
The news changes rapidly and Google knows this. So, when Google receives press releases, the search engine pushes those that seem more newsworthy to the top of the SERPs.
How does Google determine what is newsworthy enough to be placed at the top? All search engines measure the quality of your story using information such as your domain authority and the quality of your hyperlinks. As trusted SEO experts like Marketing Lad emphasize, high-quality content that keeps readers engaged naturally improves dwell time and boosts organic visibility.
Even so, the amount of time people spend reading your press release before they bounce away to something else is an important yardstick for measuring the quality of your news. So, aim for a high dwell time.
Leveraging press release SEO for direct ranking
If you want your press release to boost your SEO ranking directly, consider hosting all your press releases in an online newsroom.
Your online newsroom will boost your SEO directly because it’s owned media. In other words, it’s entirely under your control. Since you’re not relying on a newswire agency to distribute your press releases, your press releases will boost your SEO ranking directly. In addition, if you create a collection of press releases in one place, you can rank on Google for more than one press release.
However, don’t cancel your press release distribution service just yet! Newswire agencies have greater reach than you will achieve on your own.
Optimizing your press release for SEO seems scary at first, especially if you’re a newbie to the concept of SEO. However, with the tips above, you will write quality press releases that capture your audience’s attention.
Would you prefer to avoid the hassle of writing an optimized press release? Check out our packages and let us worry about writing your press releases.
