SEO-Optimized Online PR Is Winning the Race, Part I

When you optimize and send out a press release to online media distribution services, you can bypass journalists and editors—the goal is to get your info to the people directly via the search engines. The hope is that your release will get picked up as written and shuttled right into massive online channels. We have, for example, sent a press release for a law firm via Marketwire that got redistributed on dozens, if not hundreds, of news sites, including places like a local NBC station in Texas. Shortly after, our PR person got a call from a newspaper looking to interview our client. We have also had lawyers get cases directly from a potential customer seeing the release when searching Google and then calling to sign up as a client.

As usual, content is key here. When you create and submit press releases, part of the goal is to get others to resubmit them on news sites and blogs, thereby creating a viral effect and increasing your website’s search engine rankings and backlinks.

One of the big challenges bloggers and journalists face is finding fresh, relevant news regularly. They are on deadlines and need stories fast. In the modern PR landscape, Google is their main research tool. We have had many clients get media coverage because of our having them ranked well in the search engines. So PR and SEO go hand in hand, and they are easily driven by keywords on a second-by-second basis using a free tool like Google Alerts. This means that everyone in every conceivable niche can now have access to the latest press releases the second they are released. That’s just wild.

Offline PR also drives people to your website, but often they will simply hear about you and later search for you using Google. When a story about you or a press release about your company appears in a search on Google, Google News, and Yahoo! News, you win! The important thing is to make it easy for consumers and journalists to find you.

Have you seen any good press releases lately?

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