A few SEO-related developments have prompted me to write this post. First, we announced today the launch of a range of editorial services including search engine optimization (SEO). With this service, an editor will use a variety of keyword research/analysis tools to optimize the language in a customer release to drive better search results and increased traffic from search.

Second, I’m preparing for a workshop on Friday where I’ll be talking about how to write a search optimized press release.

To help simplify the presentation, I’ve come up with an acronym, to describe a model for the search optimized news release. It contains nothing really earth-shattering but for people unfamiliar to the search optimized release, I hope it proves to be a handy little tool:

1. Size up your goals and audience - Your starting point should be comprehensively assessing your goals in putting out the release, and a closely related point is understanding what audience you are trying to reach. Are you targeting the list to journalists, analysts, or is it for consumers? Do you want the release to be a resource for journalists and bloggers to use to write a story, or is the release the intended form for consumers? Do you simply want to use the release to optimize your Web site for specific keywords? Understanding your goals and audience will inform the language you use in the release, the newswire you use, and the way you evaluate your results.
2. Craft a targeted release - Once you have assessed the audience or audiences you are targeting, you can craft a release that contains content that speaks directly to your target audience(s). Furthermore, news releases go beyond simple text. You write a press release; you craft a news release. Crafting a release also involves the images and video you embed in the release, the hyperlinks you incorporate, and the files you attach.
3. Optimize your release - Once you have completed crafting your release, it is time to optimize it to make sure it performs well in search. Use a keyword research tool like Word Tracker to make sure you are using high-volume keywords in the title and body of your release. Make sure you use a solution (like PRWeb) that allows you to use anchor text in your links and tweak the keywords in your URL to drive SEO even further. Finally, make sure to optimize the other types of content in your release as well. Make sure you have the appropriate ALT tags on your images because they can drive additional traffic through image search.
4. Propel your release further - Once your release has gone out it doesn’t stop there. If you are trying to get media exposure, you obviously need to get started with your media relations strategy (which is a completely different topic). For online visibility purposes, it may be time to consider a social media strategy. Social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can be excellent ways of sharing your news with a broader community. That being said, it is very important that you are truly engaged in these communities and not simply using them as distribution points for your content. If you are going to engage in a social media community, you need to spend some time and energy getting to know the community and participating in it before you start volunteering your own content. To learn more about social media etiquette I would recommend reviewing how to get started with social media.
5. Evaluate your results - Once you have written, optimized and distributed your release, it is time to begin assessing your results.  PRWeb offers analytics that tell you about the reach of your news release, how many times it was read, and even the keywords and search engines that drove traffic to your news release.  This information becomes vital as you begin planning your next news release.