(Photo – Flickr Creative Commons: Yandle)
When you publish a news release, you have to win two types of readers with your first paragraph: your human readers, and search engines.
For the latter, links are the way to go. Google places a high value on links in the first paragraph of a release. But you can’t just put any willy-nilly link at the top of the page and call it a day. This stuff has to be done right. Here are a few tips:
- Use anchor text – not the actual URL.
Here’s an example: Bill got a great deal on a rental car. Here’s what you don’t want to do: Bill went to www.enterprise.com and got a great deal on rental car.
- Use a keyword phrase in your anchor text
Here’s a perfect example of a Yoga company using one of its keyword phrases in its anchor text. In the first paragraph of this release, they link the word “exercises” to their homepage – instead of linking the phrase “Dahn Yoga.” Well done!
- Send the reader to a specific page that reinforces your keywords
In this release, Wpromote is announcing and promoting their new tool, which does SEO audits. Instead of linking to their home page, they are sending their readers directly to a page specifically designed to further promote and explain their new SEO tool. Does that make sense?
So, make sure you link (and link properly) in the first paragraph of your next release. It’ll pay big SEO dividends for you and your company!
Did I miss anything? Get anything wrong? Have these tactics worked for you in the past? Comment!
