Guide to SEO-Friendly News Releases: Download It Today!
Whether or not you choose to put out a Social Media Release, I am quite sure that you want your news to rank well within Google.
In today’s search-centric culture, if you don’t show up on the first or second page of results, it is almost like not being online at all. As Kami Huyse and Geoff Livingston noted during their recent NewComm Forum session, “The 1st page of results on Google may as well be your company’s homepage.”
That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) principles come into play.
While the SHIFT team has always tried to stay abreast of SEO techniques for publishing client news, like most agencies we wound up with a few in-house experts. It was high time we shared the wealth more broadly internally – and more broadly still, with our fellows in the PR industry.
So here’s the latest PDF from SHIFT Communications, for your copyright-free use. A handy guide to SEO for press releases.
This knowledge was collected and collated from across our internal experts, with additional tips provided by both our friends at the wire services and an outside SEO consultant or two. However, SEO is a complicated business, so, Your Mileage May Vary.
Like the brilliant David Armano of Logic + Emotion, and the inimitable Chris Brogan, I often wonder if I’m giving enough back to the community. So I truly hope you find this stuff useful. (And hey, before ya go, if you do get some value from PR-Squared, don’t forget to subscribe!) Thanks!
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Excellent material. Thanks for sharing it with us!
Fernanda
@David Weiner
Ahhh… the anchor text debate wages on!!!!!
Your link (from 2006) indicates that Google is telling people they are going to reduce the importance of anchor text. This is different that that actually happening, or happening in a big enough way to make a difference.
This link is to the “SEOMoz Ranking Factors Survey” from 2007 which surveys the top SEO minds in the world to determine the most important factors for SEO rankings.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
“Anchor Text of Inbound Link” ranked #2 by importance on the list of positive factors (botton left of the page from above link), meaning that all of the top SEO experts think it is an extremely important factor in determining rank. In fact, “anchor text of inbound link” was determined to be of “Exceptional Importance” and there was a “High Consensus” among the 37 experts surveyed.
http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#f35
Also, all the news about Google Bombs (even more recent ones) indicate the strength of anchor text as well.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4029/The-Google-Bomb-aka-Googlebomb-is-Back-for-George-Bush-as-Who-is-a-Failure.aspx
Let me know next time you are in town and we can debate more over a beer.
Great post Todd,
Interesting thing about SEO and press releases is that it still comes down to the basics.
1. Do your keyword research
2. Write your releases well…using that research
3. Use a wire service to distribute the release
4. Have a website or MediaRoom that “autoposts” that release off the wire or at least lets you post it dynamically using a CMS…which generates an html page for that release that is individually indexable
5. Have RSS feeds that update because of that post…even more…have categories of news with their own RSS feeds
6. Have social tag ability on that release/page
Six steps for easy SEO for PR pros that don’t have time for more than that.
Curious about the “sat above the fold” piece. To my knowledge, Search Engines don’t know what is above the fold and what’s not. How does this work?
Very useful and impressive source!