How To Write A Great Press Release

Originally posted in Work From Home Solutions

There are many ways to promote your business online that are cost-effective and even free. One of these is the often overlooked press release. Why writing press releases is ignored by many online entrepreneurs could be because they just don't know how to write them. Maybe they should consider online business training.

 The best part about press release marketing is that it is very easy to do and you reap the benefits from doing work once for a long period of time.

The first way you can get traffic from one press release is from natural search engine listings and getting natural traffic. The second way is actually getting traffic from the submissions services themselves. This happens when good content and keywords application has produced a press release the submission service uses on their site for others to read, search for and use in their own promotions, giving you massive exposure.

But writing a great press release needs to follow a certain set of guidelines that will ensure it meets all the necessary criteria required by submission services.

A press release is basically an announcement or a detailed explanation of a service or product. It is usually made up of four parts:

1. Heading or title

2. Summary

3. Body

4. Call to action

 However, before writing your press release, there are general preliminary steps you need to consider:

1. It preferably should be between 300 and 800 words

2. It should read well ;double space between paragraphs for an easier read

3. It should be targeted to a specific market

4. It should tell a story if possible

5. It should focus on 1 primary keyword and 1 secondary keyword (too many spoil the broth)

 A note about keyword placement density is in order before writing your press release:

1. Have your primary keyword in the headline, summary, lead paragraph and at the bottom

2. Avoid stuffing your content with keywords

3. For every 500 words, your keyword should show about 3 times

 So now, let's get on with the title or headline. Headlines should express clearly what the press release will be about. Being clever here does not pay as certain testing done by marketers has shown less hits on clever titles than on clear and concise subject matter.

Make sure to capitalize all your title letters and omit any punctuation, even at the end. Google actually prefers 65 characters in your headline although you will see more characters being offered. At least keep it within 80 characters, tops. 

The second part of your press release deals with the summary which is usually 2-4 sentences in length. If you have a capture page you are using to redirect your prospects to, it is acceptable to use that as your summary. 

Usually the summary should be concise and have no more than two sentences. Look for about 152 characters. Having more won't penalize you but try to stay within these guidelines. 

Writing the body, part three of your press release, is not any more difficult. Your goal with the body is to give people enough information about your product or service without getting into too much detail, and the only way for them to find out more is to go to your site. 

Again, your capture page comes to the rescue. If your capture page was properly constructed, it should have the necessary information, features and benefits, you need to complete this part of your press release. 

Don't forget to optimize your press release for the search engines, SEO. How you do this is by adding links and anchor texts. But there are specific ways to do this to stay within the guidelines of press release service submitters.

1. There should be one link per 100 words

2. Use mainly anchor text links

3. There should be at least one traditional link

4. No anchor text link in the headline but definitely in the first paragraph

5. Remember to focus your anchor text on your primary and secondary keywords

It's always good to have inks, but where will you be sending these links to?

1. One anchor text should go to your homepage

2. Another anchor should be relevant to your product or service

3. The first paragraph should have one full visible url

4. The other links should be appropriately linked to relevant content

 NOTE: The link strategy may not be so important if you use a free press release service where linking is restricted. 

A last step is your call to action. At the end of your body, you need to have a call to action which will send the prospect to your capture page. This is pretty simple. Just tell them where to go in order to find more information, download a free report, watch a video, etc. 

Don't forget to use a tracking link for your website address so you can evaluate the performance of your press release. 

There is no longer any reason for you to avoid using press releases as part of your marketing strategy. You have to get your feet wet sometime, so go ahead and start writing one now! Try it you'll like it!