Sarah Sherik, VP Distribution Services, PR Newswire
Sarah Skerik is the vice president of distribution services for PR Newswire. In this role, she is respon- sible for managing the core wire product, content syndication, media relations, customer reporting, and targeted distribution products. PR Newswire Association LLC (http://www.prnewswire.com) provides electronic distribution, targeting, measurement, and broadcast/multimedia services on behalf of tens of thousands of corporate, government, association, labor, non-profit, and other customers worldwide.
PR Newswire provides electronic distribution, targeting, measurement, translation, and broadcast services on behalf of tens of thousands of corporate, government, association, labor, non-profit, and other customers worldwide. Using PR Newswire, these organizations reach a variety of critical audi- ences including the news media, the investment community, government decision-makers, and the general public with up-to-the-minute, full-text news developments. Established in 1954, PR News- wire has offices in 11 countries and routinely sends its customers’ news to outlets in 135 countries and in 40 languages.
Jerri: What are some of the misconceptions about public relations from an SEO perspective?
Skerik: First, let me put a finer point on my perspective. Public relations is not separate from SEO, it is a component of SEO. I’m thinking about all of PR Newswire’s clients, which range from large to tiny. The large companies do SEO really well, and the small companies do SEO really well. Where the missed opportunity lies is in those mid-range companies that are large enough to have silos between the marketing and public relations departments.
Today, companies are spending a lot of time optimizing their sites. And in doing that, there are so many opportunities to really leverage press releases. But it requires a little shift in thinking. For example, about a month ago I was talking to a customer about SEO, and I was trying to under- stand their different departments and services. And what I found is that each person focuses on a different aspect of the company, but no one owned or took responsibility for the public.
Traditionally, press releases have been focused on delivering a message, not on how that message can be connected to search as part of their marketing campaign. And for that to take place what really needs to happen is for organizations to develop an understanding of SEO across the organization. What keywords are relevant? What landing pages are relevant? All of this should be applied to press releases.
These are more involved than just what sits in the marketing department, because at the end of the day, the message is across the organization. Search engines put a lot of emphasis on content. So it’s important to look at press releases not just as press releases, but as content.
For most organizations, content is a problem. That’s one of the reasons that social media has become so popular. Blogs are a power indicator that there’s fresh content here. And if a search engine sees that you’ve got regularly updated, fresh content, then they’ll return to index your site more often.
My favorite advice to tell our customers is to stand back and really get a good understanding of how customers talk about your company and products. Then try to reach your customers using the way they speak and think. You can’t change human behavior. Instead you need to change the content to reach the people.
I would suggest that you march right over to the person in charge of SEO about any keyword research they have done. This helps you determine what keywords your customers are using, and then you can integrate those into your press releases.
Jerri: In integrating your press releases with the rest of your search marketing efforts, should you include links in them?
Skerik: Yes. You have to think of press releases as part of your content, not separate entities. It’s absolutely fabulous to include the keywords that have been identified as productive for what you’re marketing. And you can add extra emphasis to those keywords by linking them to corresponding pages on your web site.
The best practice is to link your press release to a page on your web site that’s related to the keyword. The search engine then infers that the keywords, press releases, and links are all related and relevant.
Be careful, though, because you can dilute your efforts if the keyword is linked to a page on the site that doesn’t contain that keyword. For example, if your keyword is “hot dog” and you decide to link it to a section on your page about hamburgers, reasoning that people who like one would be interested in the other, you actually risk diminishing your audience. Linking to a page that doesn’t strongly sup- port your message is a mistake, because search engines won’t make the connection, and your ratings can suffer as a result.
The search engine will see the press release, see the link, and follow that to the web page to see that there’s nothing related to the keyword. If the search engine doesn’t see something related, then that page won’t get a powerful reciprocal connection.
This is where press releases can be really powerful. You send out a press release with links back to your site and it’s widely distributed. The results will be links back and forth to your site. So the search engines will see the connection and it lends credibility to your site. Web sites that have the highest visibility are those that have hundreds of links back and forth. Here again, this is an opportunity to strengthen your SEO because linking helps to build the overall authority of your site.
Jerri: You said there had to be a shift in the way that organizations think about using press releases. Does there also need to be a shift in the way companies think about using SEO as a means of gaining visibility for the message?
Skerik: Yes. Writing a press release is where some difference in thinking comes into play. Headlines are one area where you can gain a lot of mileage for SEO. Headlines are so important that the New York Times is training their writers in SEO techniques so they know how to write headlines that are search engine-friendly. Instead of the catchy headlines that most media organizations use, the practice now is to use contextual headlines that are relevant to the subject of the press release and that contain keywords.
Search engines read from the top down just like people do, and information at the release has the most importance. If you don’t use keywords in your headlines, then really important real estate.
Clear writing, writing from the top down, including important information at the top of the release, and writing in a natural style are all important to search engines, too. These are the same strategies that work to make content both people-friendly and search engine friendly.
One more mistake that some people make is to try to write a press release to appeal to everyone, and that just doesn’t work. It’s not search engine friendly and so is not meaningful to SEO. Focusing your message is the better practice, from both the SEO and news writing standpoints.
