Archive for April, 2009

How to Use Your News to Drive SEO

Sunday, April 12th, 2009
Search engine optimization is everywhere. You read about on blogs, news articles and forums. Everyone has their own version of how to properly optimize their site to get the best targeted traffic. At the same time, they all say the same thing. SEO is the number one task to gaining net notoriety. The SEO concept remains the same for news articles as it does for blog posts or articles. It just seems that not everyone knows that implementing basic SEO into your news releases can increase targeted traffic to your site.
Using your news releases to drive SEO is the latest in gaining traffic for you site or blog. Millions of Americans are using the internet for their news. They are searching and finding different articles that interest them. Using your news correctly can be the biggest tool in gaining visibility for your company’s site. News search engines like Yahoo News and Google News are a great source of traffic. Optimizing your releases to reach the millions that view these feeds daily could only benefit your online campaign.
Many journalists and online writers use the internet news feeds to find stories to write. Companies could try going the old way and send out emails to these people trying to get into print. It’s just that they are probably just wasting their time and money. These are the people who decide what is going to make into their papers or on the blogs. They are watching the news feeds.
The idea here is that if consumers can search for it. You can optimize it. Basic search engine optimization is extremely easy. It can be as simple as keyword analysis. Knowing what your customers want and then helping them find you. If your reading this you probably already know at least a little about optimization. The following are key points to news release optimization.
• Keyword Research
• Optimizing the content
• Calling your customer to take action
• Effective landing pages
• Posting your releases to the newsrooms
• Media pitches. Get the journalist to publish your release
• RSS news feeds
• Distribution, getting your news out there
• Measuring the success of your campaign
Simple SEO procedures are required here. Remember to optimize to your customer first then the search engines. Having an effective keyword is ideal, but the density is not that huge of deal. One main keyword phrase used 2 to 4 times on a 500 word release is ideal. Using anchored text with the keywords, all pointing back to your site. Using media as part of the release, this could be pictures, videos, and audio, pdf or word documents. All that back up your statements about your company.
When it comes to keywords it is important to use keyword phrases. This is mainly because not many searchers are actually using one or two word phrases to search for. So concentrate on one or two phrases to optimize your news release for. Use keywords in the title, media tags, body of the release, and anchored text.