Optimizing your site's press releases will lead to greater site traffic, search engine rankings, and brand 

recognition, as well as save you money on paid search campaigns.  To properly optimize, you should craft

extremely well-written and informative content, identify and repeat critical keywords, devise economical yet descriptive headlines, refrain from discussing unknown brands, and include hyperlinks to your site.

Press releases are a great way to get your recent news out to your targeted industry audience as well as the general public, and optimizing your release for the search engines means even more eyes will see it. Optimized online press releases not only increase your site’s search engine rankings, but also develop brand recognition, augment site traffic and help save money on pay-per-click campaigns.

Several measures should be taken when optimizing a press release:

1.  Provide informative and relevant news

Press releases complement the news content available online to readers, so make sure your press content is less promotional and more informational. You can actually do both at the same time; perhaps a product or service you are planning to introduce in your release is related to current local and/or national events (i.e. new security system introduced in light of recent increases in home break-ins). Providing relevant news for readers is one way to make sure your releases will be more widely viewed and then digested.

2.  Write well

Releases which are well thought out and written are easier to read from start to end for readers and will probably generate more positive word-of-mouth referrals, leading to more viewing. A well-written account which has news content relevant to your particular industry should attract more qualified readers; that is to say, readers who are particularly interested in your industry, and, by extensions, products and services relevant to it.

3.  Idenfity critical descriptive keywords

These phrases are not only industry-relevant keywords but could be important in other aspects (i.e. local search). Make sure these keywords are in your release headline as well as in the first paragraph. When selecting these words, try to imagine what the searcher is looking for, as opposed to merely trying to promote yourself in your industry.

4.  Repeat these critical keywords

These keywords should be repeated a couple of times in the first paragraph; combined with their appearance in the headline, they will generate more qualified readers of your press release.

5.  Devise an economical but descriptive headline

Your headline should tightly written, as opposed to wordy. Avoid opinions and stay with the main facts. Follow the basic rules of press release writing, particularly in your opening paragraph, where you should be briefly answering the following: who, what, where, when, why and how.

6.  Stay away from unknown brands

Press releases which focus on brands not very well known to the public will generate less site visitors, by definition, than those which feature more generic product and service descriptions. In the latter cases, visitors are at least familiar with those products and services, even if a well-known brand is not mentioned.

7.  Employ the entire http:// in all your URLs

When mentioning your company in the press release, include the company’s URL and be sure that you do not omit the full address with http:// (i.e. http://www.yesupseo.com ). This addition will guarantee a live hyperlink back to the site, allowing for the reader to easily access it.