What Should You Keep In Mind While Choosing Keywords For Your Press Release?

Generally, press release marketing is not part of Search Engine Optimization strategies. Yet, the inclusion of keywords (product of SEO mechanism) in press releases is gaining momentum in the content development circuit. It cannot be disputed that keywords help people find the particular release and the pertinent information, whether they search it on social media or browse for images, videos, and relevant data, including keywords in the press release, amplifies the possibility of it reaching your audience.

Did you know that you can use a press release to complement your existing SEO strategies? Sounds interesting, right? But before you go on that voyage, you need to get a head start regarding the intent of a press release.

Before writing a press release, there are two critical questions you must reflect upon:

Do people need to know about the topic?

When writing a press release, you must recall the age-old saying, “Say something meaningful or don’t say anything.” Hence, when you write the press release, take a moment and wonder if you have anything worthy of the news; if yes, go ahead, and if not, you need not write a press release at all.

Is writing a press release the best way to share this information?

A press release intends to share something newsworthy for the interested parties. However, there are more ways to share certain information with an audience like blogs, articles, infographics, etc. Therefore, you must decide whether a press release is suitable for sharing this information. It must not fall short of meeting the qualitative expectations of the audience.

How does Press Release Impacts SEO?

Press releases serve more indirect value than direct value, its most significant SEO benefit. Direct value is when the press release URL ranks on the SERP, and it is rare. For instance, a press release appears as “News” on Google SERP. Therefore, it will drive more traffic to your site and generate brand awareness. You can even get direct value from the link to your press release. That being said, the actual metal of press release lies in generating indirect value; if the piece is unique, valuable, and catchy, then it will get featured in outside sources like newspapers, media outlets, and other blogs from where you will be able to generate genuine traffic and not merely from the submission site.

In a nutshell, a press release offers several benefits to SEO like,

• Natural links from outside sources (i.e., the stuff that builds backlinks and site authority)
• Brand Visibility
• Brand / Name recognition
• Referral traffic

There are five points that every SEO agency in Dubai has to ponder when thinking about how to choose keywords for your press release. While it might not be possible for you to run the keywords by all these five pointers, do remember to consider them while reviewing or writing your next press release piece.

Review your current keyword list

First, let us review the keyword list you have curated in the status quo. Ask yourself these questions:

• What are you targeting in your marketing strategy at present?
• Are these keywords relevant to the information your press release carries?
• Do these keywords support the press release’s goal?

If the answer to these questions is yes, you have picked the right keywords as far as relevancy with content and marketing goes.

Keywords that the audience is using to find you

The next stop under review is your analytics. The keywords you have curated are not as important as the keywords through which your audience is coming to you. It is what they find relevant, and you must be interested in what they are interested in. Ask these questions to get the correct assessment:

• What keywords are your customers using to find you?
• What are your most famous content pages, and how is the audience finding them?
• What keywords are your prospects using?

You will be able to get these answers from the organic search results in your analytics mechanization. So the answer to these questions is the keywords supporting your press release’s goals and helping it reach the right audience.

Keywords in vogue

When in the content industry, you cannot deliver anything that has gone out of style. Therefore, you must reflect on the keywords you curate and ask yourself, “Are these keywords good enough to gain more traffic and attention?” your press release must be logically connected to the latest trends, news, and events.

Branding keywords

Brand keywords that directly relate to your business, including taglines, business names, trademarked words, or phrases. This is an effective way of marketing and making your press release more brand resounding.

New Keywords

Finally, you should seek assistance from keyword research sites to help you identify new keywords and achieve the goals you aspire for in your press release. These keywords could be your second or LSI keywords. You can use online tools for keywords like Google AdWords Keyword Tool or SEMRush and curate both specific keywords and long-tail keywords.

To grab your readers’ attention, always try to place the priority keywords in the headlines along with the brand name and branding keywords. Then other keywords can be used in the first paragraph and the remaining body of the content. Also, you must tag the images with proper descriptions and keywords too.

Proper keyword research is beneficial in optimizing a press release for SEO purposes. When you make a press release, including at least one keyword target and that keyword being used in the headline, first paragraph, and one anchor link, however, be cautious of not stuffing your content with keywords, as not only does Google penalize such practice, it also deteriorates quality in the eyes of a customer. Therefore, the intelligent practice is to think about keywords in the context of users, not search engines. You must consider what people might be looking for, not what Google wants to see.