Nearly ninety percent of journalist in a recent survey, conducted in part by Bulldog Reporter, said that the ability to research stories on-line 24 hours a day is the single biggest change in the way journalism is practiced.  You can take advantage of this trend and enhance the visibility of your electronic press releases on the web by using a few simple search engine optimization (SEO) practices.  SEO is the practice of using tags, headlines, content and site links to place higher in search results when people “google” key words and phrases—terms that search engines aggregate and return when individuals run searches.  If you want journalists to find your press release when they search on-line, here are a few ways to increase your chances of reaching them.

Keywords are key
The first step is to determine what keywords will work best for you.  Research your words in advance so you know what words are both relevant to your story and highly searched.  One good way to do this is to conduct your own search using words you’re considering and see what results you get.  You can also visit sites, such as www.keywordfinder.com to see what words are popular. 

Once you have chosen a few powerful keywords (but not too many or you’ll be accused of “keyword stuffing”) you need to tag them.  Keyword tagging is the process of utilizing certain keywords in your press release.  It is important to place your keywords high up in the copy, mostly effectively in the headline and sub-head. 

Put it on the web
Next, you need to get your release on the web.  At PWR, we can put your story on the web, optimize your keywords and deliver guaranteed pick up on key sites like Yahoo News.  All commercial wire services offer this same option. Alternatively, you can visit a site like Yahoo News over a period of time, searching for your keywords to determine what media sites consistently post stories related to them.  Once you have a few target media sites, you can pitch them directly.  If published, your story will appear on Yahoo News and AOL News and, with luck, will spread wider and deeper through the web.  You should be sure to put the story on your own site (or your client’s site) as well—the more broadly it is distributed the higher it will rank in keyword searches.

Although there has been some ink spilled in popular PR publications regarding using RSS feeds to optimize press releases, an idea whose time may yet come, in our recent survey only 20% of journalists said that they subscribe to RSS feeds and the process of “article marketing” is a slow and tedious one.