Very interested at the moment in the best way to make press releases more SEO-friendly. Now there is a completely separate debate about the worth and indeed future of the traditional press release, with the anti-argument never more succintly made than this article from a couple of years ago now. I’m a passionate advocate for the death of this kind of press release, but the press release in some kind of social mediarised (mediafied? are these words? they should be), or at least the power of the written word as a way to communicate messages, is going to be with us for a long time to come yet.
With that in mind, I was interested to read a post from Sarah Evans about optimizing press releases. Here’s a summary:
- Don’t use jargon
- Use keywords
- Hotlink and bold critical words (and phrases)
- Research free SEO tools
- Use anchor links
- Optimize first 250 words
- Patience
- Engage customers, journalists and bloggers
- Write great copy
- Be newsworthy
