Tips From Our Experts

SEO PR - Optimize your news releases for search engines

SEO PR is all about optimizing your news releases and other press information for higher ranking in search engines.

Online search is becoming an increasingly important tool for journalists and media. 95 percent of journalists said in a survey, conducted in 2009 by PR agency Arketis, that they used search engines like Google or Yahoo as part of their daily work routine. 87 percent admitted that they use the web to find news sources, whilst 89 percent said they use it to get ideas and suggestions for stories.

When journalists search for a specific keyword, area of interest or topical story, it’s imperative that your news release is optimized for these keywords so that they quickly find your press release or expert contact.

Here are five tips from our SEO-experts for how you can work with search engine optimization when you publish a news release, image, video, blog post or document with Mynewsdesk:

1. Identify your keywords

Identify which keywords you want your company to be associated with and decide which are most relevant to an individual news release. Bear in mind that you need to figure out the keywords you think your target group will use when they search in search engines. One example to think about is not to use the kind of jargon your industry uses, as the journalists might not know the business terms that is unique for your industry. Therefore it's imperative to use more generally descriptive words in addition to key words people in your industry might use: for example, “roadster” and “sports car”. The words you want to optimize for search engines should be included in the body of your news release, and earlier in the text.

2. Headlines and summaries

It is also important to use your important keywords in your headlines and summaries of the news you publish. The headline, for example, should include the most important keyword or phrase you are targeting. This should also occur as early as possible in the text. The summary is also important as it is used by search engines to describe your story. Google allows you a maximum of 160 characters for your summary. The summary is important because it will attract or discourage a reader to click on the link and read your news release.

3. Use tags to attract web crawlers

It’s very important to tag your press material as web crawlers also index content based on tags. Tag each story with relevant words. Between three and five tags should be enough to get relevant traffic, but sometimes a couple more are necessary. You tags become meta-keywords for the page.

If you use Mynewsdesk's Plus subscription (länka) your tags create a tag cloud that is unique for your social media newsroom. It shows the most important tags and works as a means of classifying the news in your news room.

4. Links

By using hyperlinks in your news releases you influence your search engine optimization positively, making your news content richer. You can also use internal links: i.e. you can link to your own press information from, say, your homepage. Text links should include the keywords you want to optimize, but if you create a variety of inbound text links from other sites, you should vary the text in the link.

5. Photos, videos and documents drive traffic

By optimizing other kinds of news content such as photos, videos and documents, you can drive more traffic to your news room. If you write headlines, summaries, tags, keywords and title your file documents with relevant names your material will be even more search-friendly in a variety of search engines such a Google Images, or Flickr.

Remember – Quality news content makes you more credible

One thing that you need to remember as you aim to optimize your content for search engines is that it is important that you are distributing quality content. Make the key news content clearly visible. Answer the basic questions of: What? Why? and Who? The quality of your material influences your credibility and affects your relationship with the media and other important target groups. If your content is good, you’ll also get more links back to your pages, which in turn will give you a higher placing in search engine results. It’s a win-win scenario.

How can Mynewsdesk help you with your SEO-PR?

Two advantages when you publish your news releases with Mynewsdesk is that you quickly get publicity in editorial news feeds and web search services.

It always takes time for search engines to find newly updated content on your website. By publishing your news on Mynewsdesk it is indexed much more quickly as Mynewsdesk is continually indexed by Google and other search engines. News that is published on Mynewsdesk is often found by search engines on the day that it is published.

At the same time, the material is also published in Yahoo and Google’s News Search. This is because Mynewsdesk's News Exchange Site is classified as a news source in many countries. This means that your news is published as part of editorial news feeds, giving you greater credibility. Moreover, this gives you more opportunity to influence how your brand is presented online. This is particularly useful for crisis management as your own statements will be found within editorial news feeds.

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