This is the third and last installment in our series on DIY online press release

writing, syndication and optimization. Our first post discussed why online press releases were a good weapon to add to your marketing arsenal. The second installment discussed several press release syndication services and how to take best advantage of them. Today we want to cover a few points on optimizing your press release. This can be viewed as an added-value blog post; as you can take many of these tips and use them for optimizing any copy you have (website, blogs, newsletters…tweets…Facebook…yes work keywords into your social networking messages – preferably the same core key phrases you are targeting in your other online campaigns).

Optimization — Where do you start?

Absolutely, every single time, you start with key phrase research. This is a two part process. You begin by creating a list of phrases you would like to be found for on the search engines. Then you employ a keyword research tool into which you feed in this preliminary list you have created. (An easy one to use is the Google AdWords keyword tool.) You will be surprised at two outcomes:

1)    Some of the phrases you listed won’t return much if any search volume (might sound terrible but we’ll address this in a bit).

2)    You will discover variations on your phrases that you never thought of (this is great).

The keyword research tool gives you insights into what people are already searching for. Of course we would like to give people what they want, to increase our chances of conversions (sales, free trial downloads,video views, etc.) The top tip here is even if a phrase is highly searched, be sure it is also highly relevant to your business. This is important because you want to include these phrases within anchor text links in your release, that link back to associated pages on your website. So, if your release is about inventing a flexible laptop, then you research the phrase, and for example you find that people are searching a lot for ‘flexible laptop computers’, then link from that phrase in your release to the page on your site that discusses these machines. Check with your syndication service on how many links they allow in each release. Usually it’s 3-5, and they will often ask you to spread them throughout the release.

Carry this idea now throughout your release. Ensure that the title of the release begins with your primary keyword (or place it as near the beginning as possible). Make sure the release subhead includes the primary phrase. Include the primary phrase as well within the first paragraph. Have at least two secondary phrases that you have researched, and sprinkle them within the release copy.

If you find that some of your key phrases return little or no search volume, ask yourself if any of these phrases are relevant to your business. If they are, add them at least as secondary keywords to your release. Sometimes a keyword tool cannot determine what a human analyst can. If it’s a very important phrase to you, use it in conjunction with other phrases that are well searched.

Look within the syndication service tool you are using for opportunities to add keywords to the URL of your release. After you syndicate the release, as we stated above, your tweet should include the key phrases you selected and a link to the release.

One last point on the usage of keywords within your release…They aren’t just for search engines. They will make it easier for readers to scan your release and pick out the main ideas, so you get double the value from your key phrase research.

A good press release isn’t extremely long; 500-700 words is a good length. A good format rule of thumb is:

Headline

Subheading

Initial paragraph leading off with City, State and Date

Quote from principal (someone at your company with a relevant comment to make on the topic of the release)

Additional details paragraph (Include anything else you would like the reader to know before summing up)

Final summary paragraph

Contact information (Name, address, phone, email of the person you want readers to contact)

Extra Tip #1: Don’t forget to attach PDFs, images, Word documents or other supporting materials if your distribution service allows it (most do).

Extra Tip #2: Don’t forget to seek out pertinent videos from your YouTube account to embed (some tiers of syndication at distribution services allow this and it is highly recommended to include a relevant video to make your release more interactive).

Last, but certainly not least: You want to track your press release campaigns and in addition to the reporting provided to you by your distribution service, you can add tracking code to the links. It is very helpful to add tags to your links so they don’t get lumped in with Direct Traffic reporting in Google Analytics. Use the Google Analytics URL Builder to help you build these tags so you can tell which release they came from. Especially read the very end of this post to get more insight and get tagging those press release links! Just be sure for each release that you tag all your links consistently following one format, so it’s easier to follow which release they are from.

We hope we’ve shared some useful insights in this blog series on online press release writing and syndication. While we of course would love to work with you on producing your press release campaigns, we understand that DIY works for many companies. Don’t forget that you can hire us on a consultative basis as well, and still be a DIY master! Contact us today for all of your online PR, website copywriting, social media marketing and Goal Focused Marketing needs.