How to improve your High Impact Press Releases

By John Hicks of Headline Promotions, Press & PR


No matter what business or organisation you are with, you can benefit from well-written press releases. Whether you are announcing a new product, up-coming event, a customer win or a recent award, there are lots of reasons to get the word out.


Properly written press releases can result in press coverage and can drive targeted traffic to your web site – even if there’s no press coverage.

In my early days in the PR business and working for local newspapers, press releases were written for and distributed solely to newspaper and broadcast reporters. Today’s press releases have certainly changed. While they are still being distributed via news wires (BusinessWire, PRNewswire, PRWeb etc.), they now have a much larger footprint.

News wire web sites are constantly being indexed by the major search engines, and bloggers and other sites use RSS to receive automatic news feeds on their selected topics. Sites such as Google News and Yahoo News automatically gather and present press releases in response to user queries.

The net result: your press release now has at least two audiences: reporters and end user prospects who can see your complete press release through one of multiple channels:
• Direct communication from you: email blasts, newsletters, RSS feeds.
• Search Engines: you know that your prospects search for what you offer! Properly written press releases can rank highly in the search engine results pages and drive new prospects directly to your site. The backlinks to your web site remain published forever.
• Blogs: Many bloggers post interesting press releases in their entirety on their blog sites. Once again, search engines index these sites and give your press release yet another chance to be seen by your audiences.

So, what is the impact of all these changes? As always, your press release should answer the usual 5 W’s: Who, What, Where, When & Why in less than 500 words. Online, short is good! When your reader sees the press release, you have around 10 seconds to make them stay. Short sentences and clear, easily understood subheadings help tremendously. So, nothing new there then!

Where I think the main practical change is in writing the headline of your press release (and any articles you write). Search Engine Optimization suggests that you should use the top keyword in your headline, and use subheads to break the release into logical sections. The subheads also give you another chance for keyword placement.

I often use “how to” within the headline. This attracts search engines attention straight away. So, this article is headlined: “How to improve your High Impact Press Releases”. This gives me the power words “how to” plus the keywords “press releases” and “high impact press releases”. Anyone searching for these phrases on-line should be redirected here. Similarly, if this were a press release and the media used the headline in their on-line presence, then again the search engines will pick that up.

My sub-heading again uses keywords that I wish to place.

There are a couple of resources that might help you explore this concept in greater depth:
https://adwords.google.com/select/
http://www.searchingworks.com/
http://www.keywordintelligence.com
http://www.searchengines.com/

If you have found this article useful, or wish to suggest areas I could cover here, you are welcome to drop me an e-mail at: john@headlinepromotions.co.uk