What Is The SEO Benefit Of A Press Release?
There are a number of SEO benefits in relation to publishing a press release. SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, involves trying to make your content the best it can be, so it will attract the search engines such as Google and reward you with a high position on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
While it is true that press releases no longer carry the same weight with search engines as they once did, they can still be a valuable marketing tool that can extend the reach of your brand.
Marketing with press releases
In order to report about the important things going on in your business, journalists have to know you exist. Then they can give you a media pickup if they think their target audience will be interested in your news.
In order to do business with you, people have to know you exist. You can market all day, every day, on social media and via email, but you can never hope to surpass the number of people a good media pickup can expose your brand to.
This being the case, the more media pickups you get, the better it will be. A well-written press release that follows the rules by sticking to facts, not hype, is exactly what busy journalists are looking for so they can use the information to create their own article and meet their deadline.
A well-written press release that you publish at your own site as part of your media center can be exactly what search engines are looking for when someone enters a particular query about your niche or industry.
Press releases and SEO in the past
Press releases became very popular about 5 years ago, when the Google algorithm, or formula, for determining page rank, was influenced by the number of links to a particular page. The more links, the more popular and relevant the page. However, marketers started to overdo it, publishing poor-quality press releases just for the sake of the links and jockeying for top spots on the SERPs. Google, therefore, changed their algorithm to lower the value of links, and press release distribution services set their links to “nofollow” to make them invisible to the search engines.
Press releases and SEO in the present
However, there is still some value to links, and you can certainly publish your press releases at your own site to get SEO credit even if the distribution services are using the nofollow command. Whenever you publish a press release, let your email marketing list know. Inform your social media followers. Create a new page, and add a link to your media center. Keep your media center up to date with all the latest news. Use its URL when contacting journalists, not your home page, so they can learn more about you and see that your content is worthwhile and professional.
Recency
Google rewards recency, that is, fresh new content, so publishing a press release whenever you have something new to report to the wider world is a good way to get your content to the top of the search engines.
SEO Essentials
When creating your page, use a keyword in:
- the title of your page
- the headline of the press release
- the subheadline of the press release
- the name of any image or media you use
- the alt tag of any image you use
throughout the press release in a natural way, not a repetitive one, which is called keyword stuffing and will be penalized by Google.
Write about your topic naturally, and you should soon gain the attention of humans and search engines alike.
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