Writing a well-constructed press release is a challenge in and of itself. There are many reasons you should be writing them and using them in your company’s marketing plan. Simply writing one isn’t enough though. To maximize the exposure your organization can get through press releases, not only must they be well written but they must also be positioned in such a way to get as much exposure as possible.

In the past, I’ve given you tips on how to utilize press releases to increase SEO, now I want to take it a step further and show you how to further optimize a press release to take your releases to the next level.

There are thousands of press releases published every day. Unless you are paying for a premium distribution feature available on popular press-release sites, you have a lot of competition for exposure.

Here are some tips that could help take your press release to the next level.

1. Make sure you’re including all of the components I mentioned in my previous post, including appropriate research, use and placement of keywords. Search engines are particularly fond of the headline, subhead and lead paragraph when indexing.
2. Include deep-links to relevant content on your (or your partner’s) website anchored to appropriate text. Do not link straight to your home page or use anchor text such as “click here”. Search engines are looking for relevance between the anchor text and the linked content.
3. Utilize images in your press release. Images make your release stand out to readers and relevant industry reporters. Search engines are also indexing your image files and your picture’s inclusion in Google Images could actually drive traffic back to your release. For this to be effective, however, you must make sure that the image’s name includes the keywords you are targeting. Don’t leave the image named IMG-123.jpg, rename it to include your keyword(s). This establishes relevance between the image and the keyword for the picture. Images could be of key people in the organization, the new product, company logos, or a myriad of other things.
4. Include multimedia in your release when possible. If your release is about a person, include a short interview. If it’s a product launch, you could include a short demo or ad.
5. Make sure to distribute your release for optimum effectiveness.

According to PR Newswire, “multimedia press releases that include photos, videos or audio generate more views, shares and clicks than text-only press releases. Adding a photo to a press release increases engagement by 14 percent; adding a video and a photo actually doubles the engagement rate. Press releases that contain photos, video and audio generate the most engagement, with 3.5 times more engagement than text-only releases.”

A properly written press release, that includes images and videos that are also optimized for search, creates a release that is more likely to be read and distributed. The combination of text, photos and videos are very powerful and it gives you three times the SEO potential as a text-only release. Give your release the tools to maximize its exposure and reach by using these techniques consistently and the results will be apparent.