How to Optimize your Press Release for Google
Imagine Google as a beautiful girl. You want to win her heart, so you shower her with attention and ply her with gifts in hopes that she will ignore her other suitors and pick you.
But things go wrong. You grow obsessed, appearing at her door in the middle of the night with a brain surgeon after she complained earlier of a slight headache, and she ditches you. Instead, she falls for the man who charms her grandmother and wins over her friends.
That is how search engine optimization (SEO) used to work with Google, and how things have changed. Previously, getting on page one of the tech giant’s search results involved spamming your press release with countless links and filling it with more keywords than a wannabe socialite namedropping her famous friends. But since 2012, with an update in May 2013, Google has changed its search algorithm to penalize underhanded SEO practices, while rewarding content created “primarily for your users, not search engines.” Helpfully, they provided a list of things that your release should do in order to achieve this:
- Use natural language
- Be easy to share
- Have “compelling and useful content”
- Be focused on a topic
- Include images or videos
Using natural language
Past SEO practices involved stuffing a release with the same keyword over and over again. For example, if you’re selling cars, and you want everyone and Google to know that your cars are the best cars on the market, you would insert cars in every sentence, thinking the search engine would pick up on the word cars and associate your press release about cars with every “cars” search term.
This, however, comes across as clunky marketing speak that no one likes, especially not Google. Instead, speak to your audience by writing in the language they use. This includes colloquial terms, synonyms, and even slang, which flows more naturally. Your goal is to write for the man, not the machine.
Making it easy to share
Chances are that when you enter a search term into Google, social media sites would be the first few results that are spat back at you. And this comes as no surprise, as a survey from McKinsey found that 91 percent of Internet users in China have visited a social media site in the past six months, compared to 67 percent in the U.S. Additionally, the report found social media had “a greater influence on purchasing decisions for consumers in China than for those anywhere else in the world.” If this isn’t a greater incentive to get Renren or Facebook talking about your products or services, you might as well close down already.
To drum up social media hype, Google embraces content that would create a “word-of-mouth buzz,” driving readers “to direct other users to it.” As the search engine considers interaction on social media relevant and up-to-date, this increases the chances of your release being ranked higher in search results, which results in more visibility.
Creating “compelling and useful content”
No one, however, would read your release if it was boring. To get readers onboard, Google recommends creating “compelling and useful content” that appeals to your audience. This includes pandering to their interests, or carving out a niche that is unique to you. Most importantly, you should keep your content fresh. Nothing screams laziness like a post from two years ago.
Focus on a topic
Some press releases try to cover a wide range of topics in the hopes of reaching to a broad audience. But unless you’re Wikipedia, doing so will cause your message to lose focus and readers along with it. Instead, Google believes organizing your content in a way that “visitors have a good sense of where one content topic begins and another ends.” And there’s always something called a paragraph. Use it.
Include images and videos
Your content may be captivating, but nothing brings a release to life like an image or video illustrating it, as research confirms. Having graphics also allows your release to be easily shared on social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Weibo. If all else fails, everyone loves a good cat video.
Have relevant anchor text links
As important as your audience is to your release, Google needs to be shown some love too. This can be achieved by including relevant anchor texts, or clickable words that appears as links. Unlike the gorging of press releases with links during SEO’s yesteryears, proper and judicious use of anchor texts can help Google determine your content through the links you provide, and rank it in their search results depending on the validity of those links. These anchor texts can be sources, links to more information, or a way to buy whatever you’re selling. However, keep anchor text to a minimum; any more than two and you risk Google’s scorn.
Photo by Flickr user Staciaann Photography
Roger Chen 