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Press Release Optimization
Leverages Traditional Public Relations Practices

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - What is it?

Today, popular news search engines are playing a powerful role in cost-effective online marketing, because that is where people and reporters go to find information. Whether it's an editorial listing or a sponsored link, a top search engine position can mean thousands of page views for your release and more press coverage. The problem with most press releases is that the content fails to emphasize the relevant keywords that will give it better web visibility in the news search engines and on the web. The solution is to optimize the content of the news release and to properly submit it with one of the online newswire services.

Backbone Media pioneered a tactic called Search Engine Press Release Optimization, which incorporates basic search engine marketing practices such as keyword research and page optimization with the latest and greatest online press release distribution methods. When done correctly, it can dramatically increase online market share, press coverage, leads, and sales revenues for your business.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - Why do you need it?

To do business on the web, the customer and seller need to speak the same language. Don't expect your customers to speak your language to find you on the web, use theirs. Simply, talking the talk of the customer means that they know what you have in stock and that you can sell them what they want. The Problem is…in some cases, your customers are asking a search engine like Google for "Lemonade"…but your web site says: "Yellow Water". In search engine marketing lingo "that's not an exact match" and your page is NOT going to make the coveted editorial listings.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - How do you do it?

Fix your Language and web site design architecture.

Examine the lead language(keywords and phrases that are likely to deliver qualified leads for your sales team) in your communications and see if it really matches how your customers search for you. Keyword research will prove that "yellow water" is searched quite infrequently compared with search strings for "lemonade stand," "pink lemonade" and "ice cold lemonade".

Find the gaps in your language and replace them with your customer's own words by building a dictionary of your customer's language. You can start out by gradually working the most valuable key phrases into press releases and news releases that are in the pipeline.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - The Benefits

Leverage Existing PR - You may already have a wealth of PR and marketing communications documents that are simply hidden from view of the search engines. With a little tweaking, this content can be repurposed and optimized to match the high value terms and phrases that your target audience uses every day. From a PR Agency perspective this alone can add tremendous value by giving your archive of carefully crafted press releases a second life.

Here are some recent numbers related to online news reach

128 million American adults go online
-88% use a search engine to find information
-70% get news

54% of American adults go online daily
-31% use search engines
-26% get news

98% of journalists go online daily
-92% for article research
-81% to do searching
-76% to find sources/experts
-73% to find press releases

Increase the Chance of Press Coverage - It's a fact -- reporters use search engines too. A now famous example that illustrates this point is Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times who was asked "How did you get onto the Enron story so early?" He replied, "Google."

Pay Per Click Advertising Can Get Expensive - Pay Per Click advertising is one way to get exposure in a search engine and we advocate this practice as a way to augment search engine presence while we build up the editorial listings. If you're familiar with Pay Per Click advertising, then you know that PPC charges can add up fast especially if you're bidding on a popular term.

Search Engine Optimization Equals The Playing Field - Instead of paying anywhere from $0.10 to $4.00 per click with a PPC service, optimized content can attain a valuable editorial listing for free. For example, Art.com is bidding $.50 per click to be listed in the #1 sponsored listing in the Overture network (msn, yahoo, altavista, lycos ). According to Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool, the term "posters" was searched 320,828 times during March 2003. If you use the basic sponsored link metric of 5% CTR then you can surmise that Art.com received approximately 16,000 clicks that month at a cost of $96,000 annually.

Now take a look at what search engine optimization can do. Our client, International Poster Gallery has a top editorial listing in Google on the term "posters" as well as top positions for dozens of other phrases that are important to this vintage poster dealer. IPG hired my firm three years ago to achieve that listings, and the listings are still at the top search engine positions. As you can see, the value of just one well-placed editorial listing is literally worth a hundred thousand dollars. A search engine marketing and PR Optimization strategy casts a wide lead language net to achieve top search engine positions.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - How it Works

Content that is not optimized may be indexed, but a top position on "yellow water" won't get you very far. That's because the search engine's main purpose is to provide the searcher with the most relevant result. I've been doing search engine marketing since 1995 and one thing remains true: if your content is deep, and relevant, search engines will reward you for it.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - Step 1 Develop Keywords and Key Phrases

This step is the most important step in the Search Engine Press Release Optimization process. It may appear to be a simple task, but you really need to get this part right, or the rest of the steps will not deliver the results you need. Start out with the goal of understanding the terminology that you use internally and marry that with the language that your customers, clients, people outside the company use to describe the categories of products and services you provide. Interview key people inside and outside the company. Then build a list of the most useful terms and do more research to see if those terms are searched at the search engines. Use the most relevant and popular terminology so that if you optimize for it, it will yield results.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - Step 2 Integrate Key Phrases into your materials

Search engines like Google and MSN use "spiders" to crawl around the web and index content. The algorithm that a search engine uses to sort the listings continues to be a moving target, but one thing is certain… deep content that uses the customer's language wins. Now you can start integrating the terminology into your corporate communications, and all marketing materials. Make sure that when you are looking at a document, you understand what term best describes it. Integrate that term carefully into the document, but be careful not to overdo it so that it could be considered spam. There are specific ways to optimize a document or web page, and specific tags that work to your advantage while others work against you.

Search Engine Marketing Press Release Optimization - Step 3 Train corporate culture to use the Key Phrases

In the future, work to train key members of your organization to understand and adopt the new terminology. This means that executives should know the correct terms when speaking with the press, and marketing people should use them when communicating with the outside world. Technical people should use the terms when they discuss products or build web pages. Target and optimize your PR. The future results of your PR will depend on it.

How to get your company's Free Search Engine Marketing PR Optimization Report

If you would like more information on Search Engine Press Release Optimization or would like to speak with Backbone Media President Stephen Turcotte about helping your organization optimize your PR, speak at an event, or train your corporate culture to start optimizing your PR, then contact us at (781) 899-4050 x 206 or through the form below, and start optimizing your PR today.