The document provides guidance on writing effective press releases for the digital age. It discusses Google's rules around links and how to focus press releases on discovery rather than direct links. Press releases should drive traffic and build brands by distributing content widely on websites, news sites, and social media to reach journalists, influencers and consumers. Links should form naturally from interested parties writing articles, not be included or optimized in the release itself. Key topics covered include keyword research, multimedia optimization, distribution channels, and tracking effectiveness.

1. GOOGLE’S NEW RULES
FOR PRESS RELEASES
How to write news content in the digital age
#digitalreleases

3. Lisa Buyer
President and CEO – the Buyer
Group
Columnist – Search Engine Watch
Speaker – SES conferences
@lisabuyer

4. Sally Falkow
President – PRESSfeed
Columnist - CommPro.biz
Publisher – ProactiveReport.com
Accredited in PR
@sallyfalkow

5. PR and SEO
Why is SEO important for PR?
Interested people find content via search -
Journalists
Bloggers
Potential Customers
Investors

6. What goes into SEO for a release?
• Keyword Research
• Trends/News
• Placement of the keywords
• Headline length
• Subhead construction
• First paragraph
• Body of the release
• Visual content
• Links in the release
• Links pointing to the release

7. New Google Rules

8. Google’s Link Rules
“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or
a site's ranking in Google search results may
be considered part of a link scheme and a violation
of Google‟s Webmaster Guidelines.
This includes any behavior that manipulates links
to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

9. Google
“I’m not against doing press releases; press
releases can be a useful part of getting traffic
and building a brand.
For ranking in Google, however, the main
benefit of a press release is not direct links or
PageRank from the press release directly; it’s
primarily the people who decide to write an
article and link because of that.”
Matt Cutts - Head of Google‟s Webspam team

10. Passing ‘Google Juice’ - PageRank
• PageRank measure's a
web page's importance.
• Page and Brin's theory is
that the most important
pages on the Internet are
the pages with the most
links leading to them.

11. PageRank
• PageRank thinks of links as
votes, where a page linking to
another page is „casting a vote‟.
• Pages with higher PageRank
have more weight in "voting"
with their links than pages with
lower PageRank. It also looks at
the number of links on the page
casting the "vote."
• Pages with more links have less
weight.

12. Examples
“Creating links on a page that weren‟t editorially placed or
vouched for by the site‟s owner, otherwise known as
unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our
guidelines.
Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press
releases distributed on other sites.
For example:
There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want
to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You
will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress.”

13. How to do it right
“The best way to get other sites to create high-
quality, relevant links to yours is to create unique,
relevant content that can naturally gain popularity
in the Internet community.
Creating good content pays off:
Links are usually editorial votes given by choice,
and the more useful content you have, the greater
the chances someone else will find that content
valuable to their readers and link to it.”
Google Webmaster Guidelines

14. To link, or not to link?

15. PR Content Discovery
• Press release content helps reach journalists,
influencers, and consumers.
• Almost 8,000 websites, including some of the
world's largest news sites, publish stories as a
result of wire services such as PR Newswire,
Businesswire, Marketwire.
• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Press releases drive broad discovery of your
news message in search and social

16. “The value press release distribution
provides is in discovery, not links.
Driving messages deep into audiences
and generating authentic reads, clicks
and visibility among relevant audiences
and social shares – that's where press
releases add value.“
Sarah Skerik, PR Newswire

17. Journalists want links
“I've been trying to get PR firms to put links
into press releases for many years
because it makes my job as a journalist
easier.
I can quickly find background materials
such as photos, information on founders,
and prior news releases.”
Tom Foremski Silicon Valley Watcher

18. What you can do with a Digital Release
• Drive traffic to a website, newsroom
• Increase visibility of your PR content in search and social
• Lead people/journalists to related content on a blog, newsroom
or website
• Spark interest from a journalist or blogger that leads to a story
and creates a natural link
• Educate and inform your audience
• Build relationships
• Report industry or corporate news
• Use images and video to attract views and natural links
• Embed videos and multimedia assets
• Broaden distribution of the content with paid
• Use social to spread the news – paid and organic

19. What you can’t do
• Generate inbound links
• Add „link juice‟ to your SEO campaign
• Use press releases as part of your link building
strategy
• Optimized anchor text links, Google now says this
equates to unnatural links
• Keyword stuffing

20. What you need to know
• How to find the most relevant and effective
keywords to use in a release
• How to find hot news items and trends
• How to use them correctly in a release
• How to write a headline
• What becomes the title tag
• What becomes the description tag

21. • What becomes the title tag
• What becomes the description tag
Title tag

23. Google Search

24. • How and when to
use hashtags
• How to add „rich
snippets‟
• How and where to
host your release on
your website –
online newsroom
best practices

25. • How to use photos and images
• How to optimize images for search
• How to optimize a video for search
• How to optimize news content for social
media messaging
• All the new paid social syndication/content
promotion options

26. Gaming the system is yesterday's
news.
Today's press releases still work.
They are the natural, social, and
mobile way of tomorrow.

28. Table of Contents
• Introduction: What makes news SMART
• The New Media Landscape
• Adapting Your News Content to the Digital World
• News Search and Web Search
• The Convergence of Social and Search

29. SMART News
• Keyword Research
• News Hooks
• Trends
• Monitor conversations
• Writing the content
• Headline and Subhead
• Writing the body of the release
• The Digital Media Release Format

30. SMART News
• Multimedia
• Images
• Video
• Tags
• Tech Tags: Schemas and Rich Snippets
• Distributing the content
• Newswires
• Syndication
• Social Sharing

31. SMART News
• Finding New Audiences for your Release
• Sharing the News
• The Role of the Online Newsroom
• Tracking and Measurement
• Examples
• Resources

32. Questions?
@sallyfalkow
@lisabuyer
sally@press-feed.com
lbuyer@thebuyergroup.com