March 18th, 2010 by Susie

The relevance of press releases to a search engine optimization campaign is not always immediately apparent to businesses. Indeed, to many, they seem to be a quite traditional and dated form of communication. However, press releases can actually be an integral part of a company’s SEO strategy and online reputation management. Good online press releases help to generate hits and backlinks, build your brand and elevate your site higher up the search engine result rankings.

For one thing, press releases on the internet take on a very different form to those offline. The speed and interconnectivity of the internet means that press releases are a great way of building online brand awareness. To appear in high positions in the search engine result rankings, your press releases will need to be fine tuned to your target market, consisting of high value content and relevant keywords. This is in contrast to a traditional print press release, which usually has a very broad focus. Being specific in this way can help to attract backlinks from other webmasters and bloggers in your company’s field, which in turn naturally encourages traffic to your site. Both are strong factors in the determination of a website’s search engine result rankings, which makes press releases a very useful part of an SEO link building strategy.

Indeed, while traditional offline press releases tend to place the emphasis on business rather than on snappy readability, the opposite has to be largely the case for online press releases. On the internet, readers need to quickly feel that the press release is of relevance to them if they are to keep on reading. By all means, your business message is still important; it’s just that it has to be a secondary priority to that of pleasing both the human reader and search engine spiders. To achieve this, your press releases will need to be eradicated of the jargon-laden ‘marketing speak’ that internet users tend to both be highly aware of and distrust. Online, it is instead best to adopt a more personal and amicable tone, communicating clearly, simply and concisely. This brings your press releases closer in style to the more naturally informal format of blogs, online message boards and review sites in your industry, removing barriers of communication and encouraging interactivity between your company and your consumers.  Social media elements can be integrated into your press release, linking or uploading videos, audio clips, podcasts etc.

There are, of course, potential pitfalls with online press releases: you will need to be careful not to saturate yours with hyperlinks or keywords as this can appear ‘spammy’ and reduce your content’s human value. There are also issues around duplicate content to consider if you intend to post your press releases around the internet, as search engines regard third party reviews and recommendations as much more reliable indications of a site’s credibility than an endless series of clone articles on press release distribution and social media sites.

Don’t be afraid to get in touch with a professional search engine optimisation company for more help to write and use press releases, as well as for more information on other effective SEO tools and services.