How to write a SEO-friendly press release
June 30, 2009
Today it is more important than ever to understand and appreciate the nuances of how authoring content for the web differs from old-school press release and marketing copywriting. Gone are the long and elaborate introductory paragraphs. As search engines treat the information at the beginning of a string (i.e. title or sentence) with greater importance than the copy that follows later, it is critical to be terse and to the point. Get your message across as efficiently as possible and you’ll be sure to reap the benefits of this new thinking. The way in which Twitter has become a real-time search engine further underscores the fact that brevity has its merits.
Mike Kalil recently wrote about this topic over on SEOmoz.org. The following is an excerpt from that post:
Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don’t try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what some releases were even about. If you’re looking for a creative outlet, press release writing is not the avenue. Try writing a short story.
At least pretend you’re objective. Obviously, you have a vested interest in what you’re writing about, but it’s still important to craft your releases like down-the-middle news stories. Avoid unnecessary adjectives; most adjectives are unneeded. You don’t want your release to read like an advertisement. Pick out the newsiest element and concentrate on that.
Speak English. I see releases all the time that are stuffed with industry jargon that most people do not understand. Don’t assume that what you’re writing about is a familiar subject for the people who’ll read your release. Dumb it down. Assume your release will be read by the densest guy in the room.
Send it out manually. Instead of just dumping your releases into submission sites and hoping someone important notices, email it yourself to media outlets and bloggers you think might be interested in it. If you’re publicizing a new product, send your release to newspapers in the company’s area. If you can, find out which reporters cover the relevant beat and send it to them directly; that usually only takes a phone call.
Have good timing. If you’re looking for coverage, sending your release out on Election Day or after hours on a Friday is goofy. Those are good times to release bad news you’re obligated to report – any White House spokesman will tell you that – but it’ll do you no good unless your story is wildly sensational. News outlets are typically more desperate for copy during the summer months and around holidays.
Act like a human. Interactivevoices’ post about getting a link from CNN.com – the only PR10 news site – illustrated this perfectly. There’s no harm in picking up the phone and calling reporters directly to see if they’re interested in your story. For all you know, the only thing preventing your news from being published is an over-finicky spam filter.
Don’t beg. When I was working as a reporter, I didn’t realize why some sources were so hellbent on me including links in my stories. Now I know. If your link is relevant to the story, the reporter will probably include it. If not, you’re still getting good publicity.
Of course, all of this will only help if you actually have something worthwhile to say. If you think there’s nothing interesting to say about your enterprise, you’re probably wrong. You just need to think long and hard to figure out what it is.
In the end, content generation is about providing value. Give you audience something they can use and they’ll be sure to be back for more.
Why Building a Flash Website is a Bad Idea
December 29, 2008
Even though its widely accpeted in the SEO community that flash based websites are not search engine friendly, this information isn’t universally known, let alone properly understood. A recent discussion on this topic convinced me that this subject was worth revisiting.
Put simply, the way search engines work is that when they get hip to your site (usually via a URL from another site they’re already indexing) they will index your site. The indexing process involves the scanning the content of your site (called “crawling”) and then associating the text content and meta data to a relational database. This is how search engines decide what your site is about and how to include it in their search directories.
The important distinction here is text. Search engine “bots” can’t read images, let alone text trapped in images.
As FLASH content is image and animation based, its content is almost completely invisible to search engines. Its fine to use flash for media players and cool effects, but its a very bad idea to build the site entirely in flash. While accessibility is one thing (mobile devices, disabled users, etc can’t display/understand flash), not even showing up in search engines is a whole other issue.
Phaseous Phact: If you want your website to show up in search engines when users search for your proucts and services (not just your company name ur URL), do not build your entire website in flash.
When not to rely on SEO
October 23, 2008
While investing in SEO in today’s market can be one of the most cost-effective and import things a business can do, there are certain cases where it may not be ideal. As discussed over on searchengineguide.com:
If you have created a completely new product that serves a completely new niche, there simply may not be enough people searching for it to make search marketing efforts worthwhile. If this is the case, you’d do far better to spend your money engaging a good public relations firm or working on a social media strategy that will help you break into the marketplace by engaging your customers in the places where they have conversations. You’ll have to educate them before you have any shot at selling to them.
Akin to balancing your financial portfolio, its important to properly balance your marketing strategy. Sure, SEO can be incredibly impactful, but its not a magic bullet. Its critical to perform the necessary market reserach to best determine how much search volume there is about your particular area and what the best course of marketing a promotion should be in your case.
Google and Dynamic URL Rewrites for SEO
September 23, 2008
The general consensus in the SEO world has held that search engine friendly static URLs are indexed more effectively than complicated database-driven (and seemingly nonsensical) dynamic URLs. However, according to a recent post on Google’s Wemaster Blog, that assumption is not exactly accurate. As most major websites today are based on database driven content management systems, it would be completely impractical to rewrite and manage all URLs so that they would appear to be static. To that point, attempts at such URL rewrites may actually hide information from Googlebot that otherwise could have assisted in the indexing process. While URL rewrites can be beneficial to the end-user experience (those pages to tend to have higher click-through rates), they are no longer required as Googlebot has become much more capable at well-indexing those database driven dynamic URLs.
The following in an excerpt that addresses certain dynamic URL’s myths with respect to Google:
Myth: “Dynamic URLs cannot be crawled.”
Fact: We can crawl dynamic URLs and interpret the different parameters. We might have problems crawling and ranking your dynamic URLs if you try to make your urls look static and in the process hide parameters which offer the Googlebot valuable information. One recommendation is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static. It’s always advisable to use static content with static URLs as much as possible, but in cases where you decide to use dynamic content, you should give us the possibility to analyze your URL structure and not remove information by hiding parameters and making them look static.
Myth: “Dynamic URLs are okay if you use fewer than three parameters.”
Fact: There is no limit on the number of parameters, but a good rule of thumb would be to keep your URLs short (this applies to all URLs, whether static or dynamic). You may be able to remove some parameters which aren’t essential for Googlebot and offer your users a nice looking dynamic URL. If you are not able to figure out which parameters to remove, we’d advise you to serve us all the parameters in your dynamic URL and our system will figure out which ones do not matter. Hiding your parameters keeps us from analyzing your URLs properly and we won’t be able to recognize the parameters as such, which could cause a loss of valuable information.
Following are some questions we thought you might have at this point.
Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
That’s our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems. If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases. If you want to serve a static equivalent of your site, you might want to consider transforming the underlying content by serving a replacement which is truly static. One example would be to generate files for all the paths and make them accessible somewhere on your site. However, if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good. Feel free to serve us your standard dynamic URL and we will automatically find the parameters which are unnecessary.
Content is King
June 9, 2008
People often ask me, “What are the secrets to Search Engine Optimization?” When I inform folks that the technology and techniques to properly optimize content for the web has been around since practically its inception, they are quite surprised. With all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding web site design over the past several years, many designers and programmers have lost sight of what is important. They are too concerned in how something looks (want to make something “great”) and pay no attention to how the public will actually find the site they are building! To put it simply, content is king. Without quality, relevant and timely content, no search engine is ever going to find your site. Through the proper use of META data (meta title, meta keywords and meta description) at the point of document publication, combined with how the actual page copy is authored, make all the difference in the world. Especially so, when it comes to how search engines find, index and ultimately serve up your information.
Phaseous Phact: Write into your marketing plan a strategy for regularly releasing new information, content and updates about your company progress. Keep it fresh..keep it real!
The Truth About Links
June 2, 2008
The more credible sources you cite in making any argument, the more sound your argument will come across. The same can be said for how search engines gage your online reputation. If a search engine considers a particular site an authority on any given topic, (for Google this is called “page rank”) it links to content on your website. Chances are those same search engines will put a higher relevance on the content of your site than your competitors. The old-school belief that any inbound link is a good link is out of date. Search engines have become wise to the many link-farms and link-spammers that have appeared all over the internet in recent years.
Phaseous Phact: Seek out major blog sites and media outlets to provide links to your site, since they are more credible.
Why META Data is Important
May 27, 2008
So you’ve invested a lot of time and money in your website. You’ve got a great looking logo and professional copy. One problem though…..no one knows your website exists! Many of my clients have been in theis scenario at some point, and often the solution is (thankfully) quite simple. Once quick look at the source code of any web page reveals that there is not META data entered. Even worse, the exact same META data exists on every page of the site! Search engines look negatively upon both of these situations since they look to META data for clues as to how to index page content. In the case where there is no META information, the search engine is left to figure out what your page is all about. Without meta titles, keywords, descriptions and header tags showing search engines the way, chances are your content is not going to be indexed well. In the case where there is the same META content throughout the site, search engines look at this as spamming….an act which they look down upon and will ultimately penalize your ranking in search results pages.
Phaseous Phact: Don’t leave indexing up to the search engines. Provide accurate META content each time your website is updated.
Invent a Word and Own the Space
May 12, 2008
As traffic and the resultant competition on the internet is growing exponentially each day, we need to devise new and creative ways to make our content stand out. Regardless if you’re engaging in organic or paid SEO tactics, if you’re offering the sames services that everyone else is, it will become increasingly expensive to play in that space. If you invent your own space, you own it.
Phaseous Phact: When coming up with new products and services, or even when naming your new business venture, invent a new word that doesn’t appear anywhere else on the net.
Why You Need Your Own Website
April 28, 2008
Some might wonder what’s the point in having your own webiste, when there are so many free options out there. With all the benefits that Facebook, MySpace and the rest of the social networking sphere have brought to the internet, keep in mind you’re using a free service and you don’t really own what you’re working with. To that point, you don’t have complete control to steer your messaging and influence whatever discussion you’re participating in. This is why I suggest all my clients that want to participate in the social networking space first and foremost establish their own personal websites with professional branding and design. We’re not talking about the glorified online corporate brochures of yesteryear. Rather, this is your platform for begining and controlling the discussion you wish to have. Add all of the SEO benefits of a personal blog site or the like and you’re well on your way to steering the discussion your way. Just be sure you properly optimize your content.
Phaseous Phact: Get your own brand and website first. Then hit the social networks to further enhance your web presence.
