Press Release SEO Part 3 Of 3
Exact Methodology Behind Our Top 5 Press Release SEO Strategies
Hey everyone, it’s Bucky here again with the BIGdeal Marketing Solutions team, and today I wanted to share with you five of the ways that we use press release syndication to influence the SERPs. And yes, press releases are still very valuable as an SEO tool… IF you use them correctly. To make sure that your press releases are actually beneficial, we’re going to share with you a few of the exact methods that we use on our own press releases to get safe and effective results.
But First, Let's Briefly Talk About What A Press Release Is Not
It’s not your main link building strategy.
If you use press releases solely for anchor text rich links, please keep reading.
It’s not a panacea for bad press and negative reviews.
You can’t put a band-aid on a bullet wound.
It’s not a magic bullet to propel you in the SERPs.
Press releases, by themselves, can’t rank a website.
How Do You Really Use A Press Release For SEO?
1. Brand Links And Mentions From Authority Domains
The majority of the backlinks you receive from a press release will be no-follow and will not pass page rank or juice or link equity or whatever you want to consider “value” from a link. But that doesn’t mean that these links aren’t valuable for search engine optimization. On the contrary, these links can be game-changers once you know how to create them and use them to your advantage.
A careful analysis of Google’s Link Quality Patent shows that it was employed specifically to “rank search results” and that no-follow links, even non-hypertext-linked brand mentions, are still weighed and evaluated by this same algorithm that weighs “juiced” links. In other words, you aren’t going to get any page rank or link equity from press release links, but Google will still see your brand mentioned and linked from these sources and their algorithm will account for this when it comes to your rankings.
A press release will give any SEO an affordable means to acquire valuable branded links and mentions from domains that carry a lot of weight in terms of referring domains, organic keywords, and real traffic. Take a look at these Ahrefs snapshots to get an idea of the power of the domains that you’ll be getting links from.
How To Work This Press Release SEO Strategy
The biggest factor here is making sure that you are using safe brand anchor text in the body of the press release. If you would prefer a keyword anchor, link out to properties like your social profiles or citations used in the company’s JSON-LD script under “same as” section.
It’s recommended that you only use two links in the content of the release:
Branded Anchor Linked to Homepage or Location/Service Page
Keyword Anchor Linked to Top Social Profile or Citation Listing
You’ll get a third link opportunity in the contact section of your press release during syndication, and this will always be a naked URL link back to your website homepage. This contact section is extremely important to your local SEO/GMB ranking efforts – we’ll talk about why further below.
If this method of link building sounds too good to be true, here’s the catch: premium news sites will only keep your release up for a short time. You’ll get powerful brand mentions from authority domains, but these premium news sites will purge their releases after 60 to 90 days. So expect to see link drop off around this time and prepare for it by having a new release ready to syndicate.
2. To Push Keyword Relevance To Important Silo Pages
There is another ranking factor that comes into play when you have enough authority sites talking about the same keywords or key phrases linking back to your page; even if these keywords aren’t hypertext links. This is called RankBrain. RankBrain can use the Hummingbird algorithm and the Semantic Web to rank search results.
If enough sources link to a site, and the surrounding content on those sites is keyword specific, the linked site becomes more likely to be associated with those keywords. This can also increase the SERP position for those related or LSI keywords because the pages linking back to your own are able to pass on that keyword relevance in addition to any link equity that you might be getting.
And this is what a well-optimized and well-written press release should do: correlate a target page or site with a certain set of keywords and their respective LSI variations. Check out these images to get an idea of how we used a press release to create keyword relevance for our site, even though we only used branded and naked URL anchor text for this release.
3. Build Brand Prominence For GMB Ranking
One of the easiest and most affordable ways that you can increase your Google My Business listing rankings in local maps results is by using a well-targeted local press release to quickly boost your online brand prominence. Let’s take a look at how to make sure that your release is optimized to boost your GMB.
In a previous post I talked about how brand prominence is one of three major Google My Business ranking factors. Multiple tests and multiple SEO professionals all agree; local press releases work exceptionally well for increasing prominence.
The effectiveness comes from stacking the brand’s links strategically within the press release. We use a keyword anchor to link to the Maps CID URL first and foremost for business with or without a shown address. As our second link, we want to use a variation of our main keyword and link this to one of our top citations or brand mentions. And finally, for the third link, we’ll be using a naked URL to the homepage or location page used on our listing. If you remember from earlier in this post, we mentioned that the third link of every release is a naked URL in the contact section of the release.
Be sure to treat the NAP in the contact section of the press release the same way that you would any important business listing. Consistency is key, as these count as unstructured citations and brand mentions, so your business info needs to be correct or you could be creating ineffective links.
4. Embed A Google Places Map Inside The Press Release
If you plan on using press releases to increase your 3 Pack rankings for your GMB listings, you should make sure that the press service you’re using allows you to embed a Google Places Map inside of the release.
This does a couple of things for you. First, it helps you to convince local search algorithms of the increased prominence of your brand thanks to mentions from authority news sites. Second, you’re linking to the brand’s Google Maps listing in a white hat method, also for increased prominence. And finally, it acts to drive even more exposure (and traffic) to the business’s maps profile. All of this makes the map embed in a press release a particularly powerful strategy when it comes to increasing your GMB rankings.
As a part of our GMB optimization tactics, we are always on the lookout for ways to include a map embed in our creatives. You’ll notice in the GMB campaign that we include the map embed in the press release, as well as our citations, social accounts, brand links, and more. Not all of the accounts we create allow for this embed feature, so it’s important that we utilize it where we can during the campaign. Press releases in particular are a powerful option for boosting our listing this way thanks to the power of the authority news sites, and the volume of nice brand mentions that we will receive at syndication.
5. Forget Crowd Search, Press Releases Drive Real Traffic To Sites
The goal of any SEO effort is ultimately to drive traffic to your website. When you use a quality newswire syndication service, you should expect to receive real referral traffic to your targeted page(s). Authority news outlets and placement on Google News ensures that you’ll get more targeted traffic that you can plan to incorporate into your search optimization campaigns for a quick and easy win for your clients.
Our press release reporting is twofold; not only will you get a report of all the sites on which your release has been syndicated, with links, but you’ll receive a report of the traffic generated from your press release as well.
This isn’t the limit of a press release either. You can also use press syndication to effectively launch jack and to siphon traffic from trending search terms. So while you might be getting only temporary nofollow links from press syndication, there is still value to these backlinks and a world of possibilities for how you can work this mini but mighty SEO tactic into an ongoing local or organic SEO service.
Take a look at some of the traffic we’ve obtained from a very niche-related press release. Forget using risky crowd search type platforms and use a press release service for real traffic results without the hassle or the uncertainty.
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