How to Use Press Releases to Boost Your SEO Efforts

Historically, press releases were an official statement to newspapers about one’s stance on a subject. It saved everyone time by eliminating the need to give different interviews, and it gave those publishing a press release control of their message and content. It turned into a way to get one’s message out quickly and a marketing tool in and of itself. Here’s a little information on how to use press releases to boost your SEO efforts.

One of the benefits of a well-crafted press release is the fact that your brand name, product names and other desired keywords can be referenced in the document and end up shared across the internet. Even when you discuss a specific event like a product release, hiring event or charitable act, you can mention the company and the brand name in a way that gives it more weight with search engines.

It also improves brand recognition with readers of the press release, whether or not they’re familiar with your brand. Press releases stand out when it comes to repetition, since they so often end up sharing the same content through different channels and are likely to be read by the same people again and again, imprinting your brand name in their subconscious.

Press releases when done right by services create high quality backlinks. When their press releases are posted to news sites that search engines trust, the press releases are distributed to news aggregators and end up in front of readers and bloggers alike. If you ensure that the press release mentions the company’s website, and especially if you have a link to the company’s homepage or promoted product page, you’re creating backlinks that get spread across the internet organically through various channels that search engines won’t penalize as spam.

Compare this to the practice of bad PR firms that slap press releases up on content farm websites and say that the quantity of links matters most, ignoring the fact that too many spammy links ends up getting the site you’re referring hit with a link spam penalty.

Suppose your company wants to correlate your brand name or product name with a key phrase. You can write a lot of copy doing exactly that, though if it is all on your domain, it may not be picked up by search engines. Or you can use the specific keyword in reference to your brand name or product name and blast it out across the media as part of a series of press releases. As the search engines pick up the content across many different sites, they start to associate your brand or product name with the search phrase you want to dominate. You’ve just created your own SEO.

Press releases are an excellent way to generate a “splash” across the internet. Good press release services will send the press release through various channels nearly simultaneously. You get the SEO effect of viral content but without the hit-and-miss that can come with trying to create funny or edgy content. Note that you can amplify the effect by sharing links to the press release on your social media channels and asking others to share it.

A side benefit of press releases is that you’re able to use them to promote the brand with your existing followers, such as when you issue a press release on the winners of a contest or mention a new marketing campaign. You can double up on marketing content like company-approved white papers by putting out a white paper that mentions and ideally links to the white paper. Or use a press release to promote your company’s new app or your new book.

Press releases are an easy way to generate immediate visibility for your brand or increase brand awareness with any given audience. They’re an excellent opportunity to build credible backlinks and give your company more weight with search engines.