Press Release: Press For Profits (2)
// May 4th, 2010 // Internet, Press release
WRITING A TITLE FOR YOUR PRESS RELEASE This is one of the most important aspects of your press release. A good title is useful for the following two reasons:
1) Ensuring the search engine indexes the title of the press release with your keyword included.
2) Catch the attention of the user immediately. Let’s go over point number one in more detail. When you are writing the title of your press release, it is very important that the title contains the main keyword you selected earlier. As in the example about the recipe site, your headline title could be as follows:
Top Secret Recipes of Famous Chefs Revealed. This title ensures that your keyword is the first thing the search engine spider reads concerning the content of the release. By ensuring that the keyword is in your title, you’ve now increased your chances of being found in the top ten results in the news section of the search engines. Obviously that’s not all it takes as you’ll soon see as we go further in the process.
Point number two which discussed the aspect of grabbing the user’s attention has already been taken care of as well, based on how the title above is written. If you read the title closely, it gives the user the idea that they are about to learn a “secret” or receive information that very few have. This is usually exciting for anyone, as we all like to know “secret” information. The idea of throwing in the word “Famous Chefs” is a technique of bringing credibility to the announcement as well. Unless you are a famous chef, people would want to know where these “secret recipes” are being derived. We will take this concept a step further when we go over the “body” aspect of writing your press release. On a side note, when writing your press release there is a small section directly below the title that I like to call the “Press Release Summary”. This is about 2-4 lines of text describing what your press release is all about. This section gives you the opportunity to key in on what I call your “Secondary Keywords”. Your title contained your “Primary Keyword”. In the space for the summary, you should include your “Secondary Keywords”. Take note, you do not list your keywords one after the next. That is called spamming and is grounds for immediate rejection. Following along the example we’ve used throughout this report, here’s a summary that can be written for the recipe site. Summary: Closely guarded restaurant recipes are now available. The food recipes, and drink recipes of famous chefs unveiled in an easy to follow book that was just released! Let’s analyze this summary in a bit more detail. In this summary I’ve included three more keywords to aid in your search engine ranking when indexed. Can you pin-point those three keywords? The keywords are restaurant recipes, food recipes, and drink recipes. These three new keyword sets have now been added to the list of keywords we are focusing on, and are called our “Secondary Keywords” as I mentioned prior. Hopefully you’ve seen how I seamlessly integrated those keywords into the summary without making it look like keyword spamming. Simply follow this guideline for writing your title and summary and you’ll do great!
WRITING THE BODY OF YOUR PRESS RELEASE It’s been said before, when writing a press release you must identify the W questions, which are (who, where, what, when and why). Each of these questions should be answered in your press release for it to be fully effective. Note: Do not ever use the words (I, we, our) in your press release. A press release should always be written in the third person or from a neutral point of view, clearly listing the facts. Remember that you are writing a “news” story, therefore you cannot write it as if *you* are trying to sell the user something. A press release is not an advertisement, and it should not be written as one. Your article should be approximately 300-500 words in length. I’ve written press releases that have been 250 words in length and they have been accepted, but as a general rule your release should be at least 300 words. The body of your template, you need to consider as your “selling point”. Yes, I know before I stated it’s not an advertisement, but if you are crafty at creating a press release, you can create a “selling point” without being blatant about it. In your body you should focus on the following:
1) What makes this service or product special?
2) What separates this service or product from the rest?
3) Website Link (this is to ensure that those looking for immediate info can divert to your main site)
4) Conclusion that calls the user to action (to visit your site)
Here is the body text example for the recipe site we’ve been mentioning:
The fascination with restaurant quality recipes has taken a surge in popularity recently with the emergence of “information leakage”. Many famous chefs who have worked at five star quality restaurants have now unveiled many of the top secret restaurant recipes to the general public. The mouth watering dishes that many treasure are now at their finger tips, thanks to the chefs who have been so kind to release such information. This information is now available at: http://www.recipelibrary.info Within the past few months quite a few closely guarded recipes have now become available to the average consumer. The incredible part of all this, is that each recipe is usually formatted in great detail, with an easy to follow step by step chart that allows anyone to whip up famous delicacies right from their kitchen. The top secret restaurant recipes of famous restaurants such as Hard Rock Cafe, The Cheesecake Factory, Red Lobster, and even fast food outlets such as McDonald’s and KFC are now widely available. Are the owners of these restaurants happy about this leakage of information? Probably not, but at this time the recipes are sweeping the internet at a feverish pace. The website www.recipelibrary.info offers many free recipes in a variety of categories. It also highlights “America’s Most Wanted Recipes” which deals primarily with the secret recipes of famous chefs. A strategic partnership with “America’s Most Wanted Recipes” allows anyone to get access to hundreds of the most sought after recipes in the world. You can visit the website below for complete information.
Contact website for more information: http://www.recipelibrary.info
The above press release gives the user enough information about what they can find on the site. It also gives them the opportunity to visit your site multiple times within the press release, by having the link prominently displayed. Finally, it also expands upon the point of the “Secret Recipe” announcement which is our main selling point for this press release.
LINKING FORMULA
It is important that links are placed to your website within the actual body of the press release. When the search engine spiders the news release, it will index the links on the page as well. Therefore your website can get spidered and indexed quickly due to the link being included in the release. I would recommend ensuring that your link appears at least 3 times on the press release. Please do *not* over do it by placing too many links. I would say three cleverly placed links within the release would be satisfactory. Some users have taken this a step further and actually included a link within the summary. I do think this is a good idea as it gives the person the opportunity to click off to your site immediately, which is the goal. It can also speed up the process if your site has side links that you want attention drawn to. For instance all three links do not have to be pointing to the home page. You can have one or two of the links as actual sub-pages from within the site as well. This way you can get those pages spidered quickly.
