Wylie's Writing Tips

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Stop stuffing keywords

Where to put search terms to get your release found

Rule No. 1 to optimizing your news release? Stop stuffing keywords.

Stop stuffing keywords
The right words in the right place Place your keywords “above the fold” in your news release. Image by Pacific Fishery Management Council

“When the keyword is mentioned the first time, the algorithm will take notice,” writes Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team. “The second time, it is looking for relevancy; the third time, it may diminish your results.”

So chose one or two keywords or phrases for each release. More, and you’ll dilute the effectiveness of your keywords.

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“Forget that unique, sophisticated term your marketing folks cooked up. After all, how many people would look for ‘custom designed sports footware’ when ‘running shoes’ would suffice?”
— Barbara Krause, vice president of corporate communications at Krause Taylor & Associates

Optimize for Google and Humans

Master SEO for releases

Optimizing your release can increase the audience for your news by 538%, website visits by 1,900% and tweets by 800%, according to five side-by-side case studies by SEO-PR and Rutgers CMD.

Optimize for readers, not just search engines
Optimize for readers, not just search engines Google never bought a product, voted in an election or covered your news. Image by zoetnet

The good news is, news release optimization takes only a few simple steps. The bad news is, few PR pros know what those steps are. Even some of the best-intentioned pros use SEO techniques that get penalized — not rewarded — by Google.

Bottom line: If you’re still using the SEO tricks you learned five years ago, you are hurting, not helping, your SEO.

At NOT Your Father’s News Release — our two-day PR-writing master class on May 18-19 in Chicago, and on Nov. 16-17 in Kansas City — you’ll learn the latest best practices for optimizing your release to get found and read.

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

  • Keep up with what Google wants. Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird. Oh my! Find out what SEO practices Google rewards — and penalizes — today.
  • Avoid Google’s wrath. Avoid best practices from last year that Google now treats as gaming the system. The penalty: lower rankings.
  • Link for SEO. Learn where to link, how often to link, how to write a release link (it’s different from every other kind) and what you must add to your links to avoid being penalized by Google.
  • Optimize for semantic search. Now that Google’s gotten smarter, as well as tougher, keyword stuffing can’t help, might hurt. So what’s a writer to do?
  • Write for search engine results pages. Help readers click on, as well as find, your release.

Get your entire team on the same page and save with our group discounts. Register now.

Register now

“This is the best and most practical training I’ve ever had. I’ll use all of her tips on a daily basis.”
— Daphne Siefert Herron, senior communications officer, Indiana University, Office of Vice President for IT

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