MobilePRWire - a new newswire for multiple platforms

I got a note from Chris Caso that his company, CR Digital Designs, has launched a new press release distribution platform for mobile tech news. Check it out at www.MobilePRWire.com. They're currently working on building their list of media agencies that pick up their news. While it's not fully established yet, the nice advantage of it over PRMac is that it offers channels for both iOS and Android.

The basic press release is $18, or you can add an image and pay $25.

SEO Your Press Release

I sent out a press release a couple weeks ago and a blogger friend of mine shot back a note and suggested an alternative headline that he thought would have been more direct. "Yes," I replied, "but the search engines would have yawned at that one."

Press releases are now written for an online audience of news searchers, rather than just for journalists. Each press release needs to be crafted with the headline and body written to attract attention and click-throughs.

Here's a good article on it from BusinessWired.

"When you are talking about search engines and your press release, optimizing headlines means incorporating your most important keywords. Keywords being the words or phrases you’d like to rank well for in search engines. This is not a simple task, as your headline should also be compelling to your target audience and convey the content of the release.

Since search engines heavily factor page titles when determining rankings, optimizing the headline is the single most important task within press release optimization."

The need to SEO your press release

If you don't understand how to write a good SEOed press release, the result will be either a press release that isn’t optimized at all or one that’s over-optimized and difficult to read. Have you ever read a press release with too much emphasis on trying to impress search engines? Hello Mr. Press Release Writer! Your news still needs to be understood by PEOPLE! Don't obsess over cramming keywords in every paragraph of your press release. Instead, do research on which keywords are effective and use the effectively where it doesn't sacrifice readability. A good press release should be easy-to-read that also just happens to be optimized for search engines.

Google has a keyword tool that you can use to analyze your website to determine keywords that may attract the most attention.

Many newswires, such as PRWeb, will let you embed links back to your site -- and if they're well placed and turn keywords into anchor links that take the reader to relevant pages on your site, then your press release expands its ability to not only drive traffic to your site, but help educate readers by steering them to the right places for more information.

SEOing Press Releases

I've been a customer of PRWeb for years -- back when I first met the founder in his tiny Dallas office and tried to talk him into letting me do his PR. Back then, he didn't have a budget and I didn't have a clue. I remember he had one small server on the floor of his office. Now David is no longer with the company -- it was purchased by Vocus a few years ago.

PRWeb does a really good job, I think, of helping you to create press releases that are search engine optimized. You build-in hyperlinks, categorize your news, insert keywords (or at least you did...recently I haven't spotted that field) and pictures, and can change the name of the URL to include 2 keywords that might help to attract more search engine attention.

Regardless of the wire service you use, if any, your press releases should be written with search engines in mind. Most of the time, your news will be read online.

Benefits of an SEOed press release include:

• Improved search engine ranking
• Publicity in online media
• Increased website traffic
• Leads and sales!

When using PRWeb, I should say that you can pay them extra to get help with making sure all of the features you qualify for (based on the package you acquire) are used. I'd be happy to help as well, having done hundreds of them over the years.

In fact, check out our MobilityNewswire website. This site pulls in our PRWeb RSS feeds from press releases we set up for our mobile software development clients.