1.) Do some keyword research to see what keywords people are searching for to find products or services like yours. Make sure that the keywords that you choose have a decent search volume; at least a few thousand searches a months is a good target. Put your best keyword in your headline. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal is a great tool for keyword research. Example – if people are looking to lose love handles and you have released a video on how to do just that – find out how many searches are done monthly for phrases like "how do I lose love handles" or "get rid of love handles", etc. Make a list of good keyword phrases and use half a dozen of the best ones in your press release.
2.) Include what is referred to as a "call to action" in your press release. "Those seeking more information about Annie's All Natural Dog biscuits, or wishing to purchase them, may visit (your website link here)" I try to get a link to the website near the top of the press release and again at the end.
3.) Read the press releases on PRWeb and PRNewswire and Businesswire to get an idea of how a press release should be written, how long it should be, what the headline should look like, etc.
4.) Statistics show that press releases that are sent out on weekdays get more clickthrough then those sent out on weekends, generally.
5.) If you can afford to, pay extra for services like PRWeb and PRNewswire and Businesswire, where they let you embed video and/or pictures, and let you use anchor text in the body of your press release.
Oh, and freebie tip no. 6 – hire me to write your press release. And also hire me to fill up your website with SEO web content, and to write articles for Ezinearticles and Goarticles. You're welcome!
Since I specialize in online publicity, every press release that I write links to someone's website. I always check out the websites that I am going to be linking too. Most of the time, they are well designed and professional in appearance. However, a certain percentage of my clients have websites that look as if they were designed by their fifth grade kid for a class project. Ugly design with massive blocks of text, garish colors, blocks of text overlapping each other because the website was not designed to work well in different browsers…or terrible grammar, misspellings, incorrect punctuation all over the place…
Now, when I write a press release and distribute it online, the goal is to send more people to your website, and to help your website rank better in the search engines so that more people find you. But a few of my clients have websites that are so poorly designed that they should be hiding them, not advertising them. Yes, I always (nicely) let a client know if I see significant problems on their website. Some of them fix it, most don't.
The biggest problem with sending a stream of traffic to a poorly designed website is that the people who are coming to your site don't know you, and THIS is the first impression you are showing them. You are showing them that you can't spell, can't write, and can't afford a decent web designer. I personally wouldn't trust anyone with such a shoddy website with my business, and neither should you.
A decent website doesn't have to cost a fortune. For anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand dollars you can have an attractive, professional looking website. If you need website content written for you, I charge $50 per page of website content up to about 250-words, and there are plenty of other good website writers out there. It's a one-time investment that pays off. And there is no point in hiring me as a press release writer, paying me to write that press release, paying me to distribute it online….until you have a website that is worth sending people to.
Lead Journalist Dana Willhoit, during a recent appearance on TruTV
