Press Releases

Press Releases should be 500+ words and on “news worthy” topics/themes that relate to your business and draw an audience.

Many press release sites want only unique content to be posted and you should try to cater to their rules.  Google prefers to see original content anyways and this will help get your press releases indexed faster with your backlinks too. Plus brainstorming isn’t really an issue as you can easily write multiple, unique copies of specific events or news topics stemming from your business.  Don’t spin em, but just write multiple versions of release worthy events that are currently happening.  The more recent a post the better, press release sites want “breaking” news type of themes.

Keyword rich ideas for press releases:

• New products or services launch
• Discounts or coupons
• Expansion of business
• New customer features or updates
• Newsletters
• Mergers and business acquisitions
• New employees and internal changes
• Client successes, news, and releases

Most press release sites want the topics to be current and an event, so don’t try posting general information or conceptual based content.  You’ve got to write about current events that just happened and are relevant to the public, something they may slightly be interested in.  Then make sure to write the copy completely in 3rd person and do not be too biased toward your business.  Keep it politically correct and you’ll see that it is well received.

Press Release sites want 3rd person, breaking news style articles with media when possible, the more content you add the better results you’ll see toward your search engine rankings.

Press Release Basics:

• Stay on topic, write on subjects that are “news worthy” and reflect the press release site requirements
• Break up your content with bullets, lists, quotes, and images
• Needs to be written in 3rd person
• Write at least 500+ words for best search engine weight
• Do not spam links, read the rules
• Make sure to fill out complete profiles for best indexing

Since Google’s latest Panda updates, we’ve seen a strong push toward heavier content and higher quality contextual backlinks as a precedent.  Duplicate and scraped content has been getting nailed, so its best to write individual posts for each site.  Which isn’t that bad seeing that an average PR is around 500-750 words.
Press releases can bring some really quality backlinks as many of the domains offering free and paid PR service are high ranked.  That is probably the most difficult part about press releases, some charge high fees per release.

Is it worth it to pay for press releases?

Sometimes.  And, you can get some really nice perks such as:

• Google news and other media site distribution
• Extra backlinks
• Keyword rich anchor text
• Included media features – more videos/images
• Higher view count -featured post areas and such

SEO Tips for Press Releases

• Find free or low cost press releases that allow 1 or more links
• Put keywords in title, description, and body regularly
• Add original images with keywords in tags
• Make anchor text targeted on keywords you’ve research and want to rank for

There are a ton of PR sites on the web ranging from page rank 0 to page rank 8.  The fees associated with each site ranges accordingly as well, providing you a lot of different options and benefits.  Top PR sites like PRweb may charge as much as $100 or $200 dollars per press release.  Just be sure to research some of the best options, my favorites are listed below, and see what works best for your budget.

What are some good Press Release sites?

• PRlog.com
• PRweb.com
• Free-press-release.com
• PressMethod.com
• PR.com
• OpenPR.com