Journalists and blog writers are always looking for good information for their sites. Press releases are a sure thing if you want to get your name out there. If the media like your information and it gets taken up by blog writers you have a good chance of increasing traffic to your site.

Here are some tips to help you optimise your press releases for the search engines.

Good copy
Good copy is essential. This underlies the basics of your press release and represents who you are as a company. Good writing, spelling and layout are important. Make sure you include the correct date and contact information.   Is there a call to action that you want to include in your copy?

Keywords
Use your selected keywords in the body of your press release. Use them in the title of your press release and in any links or titles to images, videos or audios. This will help your press release rank in the search engines.

Newsworthy
Do you have something newsworthy to say. If not, save your press release for another day. Uninteresting information will not be passed on.

Links
Provide links in your press release that take readers to the best landing pages. Use keywords in those links. Providing links to your website will increase its ranking in the search engines.

Quotes
Journalists love quotes. People want to hear things that real people have actually said.

Website
Put your press releases on your website. Having a newsroom or media centre makes it easy for writers to find your press release. Allow them to subscribe to future press releases easily with RSS.

Promotion
Promoting your press release is essential. Capitalise on your efforts. There are various sites you can submit to:

OnlinePRNews.com
dBusinessNews.com
www.seenation.com
www.google.com/base
www.openpr.com
www.i-newswire.com

Once you have identified your main keywords then its time to use them. Making sure that your main keywords appear consistently in all your online marketing will help to maximise your campaigns.

Optimising your website
This is a technical area. For some people websites are just attractive windows that consumers will enjoy visiting and hopefully engaging and purchasing from. In reality website construction needs the involvement of people who know about search engine optimisation. Keywords need to be embedded in:

• title tags
• headings
• links
• the website navigation system
• document titles, directory names, file names
• the body text

Optimise all your digital output
Use keywords when labelling your videos, audios and all images. These are all included in many search facilities and are becoming more and more popular with the general public.

Social networking
Use your keywords in all your social networking. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, they all allow you to bookmark tags (your keywords) which make it easier for people to find you. This is particularly important now that search engines are using live search results.  Even posts on online forums have search facilities.

Back Links
Using your keywords in links that go to your site is very important as the search engines take this as one very important indication of the usefulness of your site to the readers. Building up good back links takes time, be patient.

Press releases
Use your keywords in everything you put out there including press releases, emails, articles, bio’s. It all counts because it makes it easier for people to find you.

Documents
Optimise any documents you have online with keyword content: pdf’s and word documents can all be used in search engines.

Think in terms of keyword optimisation for every piece of material you produce and you won’t go far wrong.

Keywords and keyword phrases are just as important as they once were. Keywords help the search engines to work out what your website/blog/twitter feed are all about and they use this information to match you to the search queries that their customers are making.  They should be one of the most important elements of your search engine optimisation.

There are various ways to find the best keywords for you. The most important thing when you are first looking is to test everything.

Objective
What is your current business objective? This is the most important question. And your keyword search is based on the answers to this question.

Overall, what are you trying to do? Inform people, get more contacts, get more visitors, make more sales? You may have several business objectives and this may lead to the development of several lists of keywords, each one targeted at a different objective. Once you are clear you can then start to find your best keywords for the job/s in hand.

Brainstorm
Along with your team, friends and even customers, brainstorm what you think would be best keywords for your business and its objectives.

Competitors
What keywords are your competitors with better search engine rankings using?

Keyword Research tools
Armed with your list of keywords the next thing to do is to test them with well known keyword research tools:

• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Insights & Trends
• Google Trends
• SEMRush.com
• Keyword Discovery
• WordTracker

These tools enable to track trends and assess the viability of your chosen keywords.  The Google tools are free and the others have both free and paid tools that you can access via their sites.

Professional Help
Keyword research is both an art and a science. Going it alone is time consuming but can be done. However because choosing the right keywords is a pivotal part of your online marketing it is important to get it right. Professional help will save you time and costly mistages.

Inbound links can really help you get good natural search rankings for your website. There are hundreds of ways in which you can achieve this. Here are a few ideas for your link building campaign:

Fantastic content
Yes, fantastic content itself will eventually create natural inbound links to your site. If you are writing unique and unusual content and its what people want to hear about then your information will eventually pick up an audience. The search engines will rank it well and a regular audience will boost the rating.

Social Networking
Participating in social networking can raise awareness about your company and what it does. Extra links from sites like LindedIn, Facebook and Twitter can provide valuable traffic.  Many social networking sites allow people to search for content with particular keywords.

Blogging
Having a well frequented blog with lots of audience participation can create the desire to find out more about your company. Make it easy for visitors to find your site.

Participation
Participating in online discussions with other bloggers and in online communities can help to feed traffic to your own site. Don’t leave a message without leaving your website or blog details. Equally, genuine communication only is valuable in these circumstances. Leaving links just for the sake of it looks phoney and will not encourage traffic – it will just waste your time.

Capitalise on all your marketing
Submit your blog posts to blog directories. This increases your blog audience which you can then direct to your website.

Online video
Creating online video enables you to have another type of media and audience to link back to your site.

Link Swapping
Swapping links with other site owners can increase the number of inbound links to your site but it is important to choose relevant sites to appear on your site. The sites you link to need to be relevant to your readers.

Article submission
Interesting articles with your details attached to the end can hold links back to your site or blog. Article sites are always happy to get good content to fill their pages.

Find out
Find out who is already linking to you. Often this uncovers sectors that are interested in your work that you didn’t even know existed. You can pursue this avenue by finding out where your audience ‘hangs out’ and targeting them there

Quality links
At all times be aware that it’s not just inbound links that are important, they need to be good ones. The best ones have your important keywords in the hyperlink text as part of the link back.

With so many forms of online marketing now available to you the key to making the most of everything that you do is to fully harness the potential of each and every piece of material you produce.

Keep in touch - the power of RSS
Make sure that everything you produce has an RSS feed link so that anyone who wants to be kept up to date can get the information they want automatically. This applies to all social media (blogs, social networking sites) as well as your website information. Don’t make people have to find you again. Make it easy for them.

Effective Keywords
Choose the most effective keywords and key phrases to use accross all your online marketing. This will make all your efforts more targeted and effective. Who are you audience? What have you got that they want the most at this moment in time? This is the basis for your keywork search and online marketing campaign.

Social Networking
Are you a member of social networking sites? It is very easy to send information to social networks. For example if you write a blog post you can easily send a link to Twitter and Facebook to let your contacts there know about the new information.

Do you have easy links on all the marketing material that you produce so that people can pass your name on to others in their social networks?

Press release
Announce your press release on your website. Make this the link back target so that when people read about you on other sites they link back to your company website or blog.

All information
When you produce a piece of marketing allow people to follow you in the way that best suits them by having all your contact information available: your website, blog, Twitter, Facebook and site information.

Break it down
Think creatively when using multi-media. Your time and money investment can go further if you look at all the options. For example, if you create an online video, then break it down - use the script as a pdf download, use the audio as a podcast on your site.

Conventional Media
If you use conventional media marketing whether its print, radio or TV advertising, add your online details. People like to look you up.