Why and How to Include Links in Press Releases
Most marketers understand how press releases fit into the scheme of
public relations. It’s a very useful tool in that regard.
What they may not be aware of is that a press release can kill two birds
with one stone. Done properly, you can use a press release to help build
natural links to your website that would help your ranking on Google.
In marketing-speak, this is called “link building for SEO”.
The term “link building” may stir up some negative images in your head.
But when you get down to it, link building is simply getting legitimate links
from other websites, to yours. That’s it.
And the more “relevant” links to your website, the more Google (and
other search engines) like it.
Here are how press releases are a great way to build links:
1. Press releases put out on a wire service are picked up by many, many
websites. Some of these sites are directly relevant to your industry and
subject matter. So again, relevance.
2. By their nature, press releases are written about particular topics. So the
words surrounding the links add context. Relevance again!
3. Some news sites will run your press release word for word. Others
will re-write them, edit them, shorten them. So they are creating different
variations of the content for the links on your behalf!
4. Google News links are always useful for SEO purposes. Think about it. Any
story on Google news must have been pre-vetted, so it instantly has trust in
the eyes of Google. Check out https://news.google.com/ if you don’t believe me.
Here’s how to include links in your next press release:
First, always include your company’s URL in the “boilerplate” of your
press release. The boilerplate is the “About Us” section near the bottom.
For instance, here is Firecracker’s boilerplate:
About Firecracker PR
Firecracker PR is an agency that offers public relations, search engine
marketing and social media services. Our “Ignites” strategy creates a
custom rotation of all three services for one low price. Clients benefit from
dealing with only one agency while benefiting from all three areas. Learn
more about us at https://www.firecrackerpr.com.
Second, try as much as possible to use “http://” for links. Without it,
many links won’t be clickable.
Third, you can turn any snippet of text into a clickable link. And this is
really key for link building purposes. Instead of saying “Go to
https://www.firecrackerpr.com to learn more about technology PR”,
you can say “Click here to learn more about technology PR” and make
either this entire sentence a link or just the phrase “technology PR” a
link. In SEO lingo, that is the anchor text of the link.
All you do is highlight the text you want to turn into a link, go to Insert,
then select Hyperlink. Enter the URL and voila, it’s a link! These
instructions are for Microsoft Word, so check with your own word
processing software for how to insert a hyperlink.
Fourth, make sure the wire service you use allows you to have these
clickable links in the text of your press release. Not all of them do,
certainly not the free ones. Our favorite is eReleases.com which is a
wholeseller of PR Newswire. For $299 you get distribution on PR
Newswire’s service that might cost almost $1,000. Other options include
PRWeb with different levels of service.
That’s pretty much it! Now you can get press coverage while
also helping out your SEO efforts at the same time.
If this sounds like too much work, give us a call. Our agency
specializes in helping companies with PR, SEM and social media.
Contact us at https://www.firecrackerpr.com/about-us-contact-us/.