Technology Toolkit

A press release announces news about a company to the media to generate interest and attention. When you write a press release, you’ll want to have certain goals in mind: to bring attention to new news and events within your company, to drive visitors to your site, and to build backlinks to your site as part of your search engine optimization strategy. In order to have the desired results, however, the PR needs to utilize a specific language, style, and format.

The Difference Between A Regular Press Release And An SEO Press Release

A traditional press release is typically written and distributed with journalists in mind — whether in a local market or on a national scale. Marketing agencies circulate traditional press releases using a specialized email list of journalists or a newswire service. An SEO press release, however, is usually distributed online via a PR submission service. Press releases distributed online aren’t at the mercy of only the traditional news media’s discretion. Online press releases can be seen by your target audience, be displayed in search engine news feeds, and picked up by the new army of desktop journalists – bloggers and website publishers.

This has increased the number of ‘journalists’ exponentially. Website publishers and bloggers have become a new definition of media journalists. While this new stream may be young, the collective influence can be astounding. These journalists pick up on a hot topic and they republish it, open discussions, give viewpoints, and spread the news through social media sites generating buzz that was almost unheard of previously. To take full advantage of this excitement, press releases that would otherwise be distributed the traditional way can be formatted and distributed as an SEO press release as well.

Writing An SEO Press Release

An SEO press release contains certain words, formatting, and links to grab the attention of search engines and readers while creating valuable links for a company’s website. Everything from the title to the contact information at the bottom has a particular purpose.

Writing Your Press Release Title

The title, which often becomes the title tag for the piece, needs to grab the attention of the target audience and convince them to click through to read the rest of the piece. It also needs to contain a selected keyword phrase in order to take a high position in search engine results and appear relevant to customer searches.

Press Release Topics and Writing Style

Even though companies publish SEO press releases as a part of their overall marketing plan, the body of an SEO press release needs to have a news angle rather than a promotional one. In fact, many distribution sites will not accept a press release if they feel it is overly promotional. The writing should also follow AP style and not include the word ‘you.’

Linking Within an SEO Press Release

To generate links and give the reader directions to the company website, news items need to contain anchor text and URLs. URLs are the actual web address beginning with http so that they become clickable once they go live. When certain phrases have addresses embedded right into the text, they are called anchor text. These have far more SEO value than URL links.

When search engines like Google crawl the news item, they pick up the anchor text phrase and associate it with the link destinations. When composing an SEO press release, make sure that your keyword phrases become the anchor text to get the most value. Keyword anchor text also helps direct readers who scan a piece to a particular website or page.

Using Quotes Within Press Releases

Quotes give an SEO press release two important benefits. Most importantly, the quotable becomes the only promotional part of the entire piece. The idea is to explain to potential customers reasons why your company over shadows its competitors, and is therefore, the better choice. It could explain that a particular service costs less, or that your company has superior customer service. Quotes also provide a news item with a human element to make it more interesting and more relevant to the reader. Make sure to include one or two of these in the PR.

When written correctly, an SEO press release can generate more interest in a company than most marketing outlets. The search engine optimization collects attention from the big search engines such as Google and associates the chosen keywords with the author company. Releases build relevance, links, and interest without having to depend on traditional journalism — making it easier and appropriate for companies of all sizes and in any industry.

Who better to contribute informative content to your dental web site than you, a dentist? While this question brings up a convincing argument, most dentists still avoid writing content to promote their dental practice. It isn’t as difficult to write for your website as most dentists think. All it takes is considering a few tips and in turn your written work will enhance your dental web design, easily turning internet searchers into new and profitable patients.

What’s Your Purpose

The first thing to determine before writing a word is the purpose of what you’re intending to write. Every bit of content on your dental web site must have a purpose for being there, otherwise your dental web design has no unity. The best way to come up with a topic (that also serves a purpose) is to imagine yourself as a patient who is searching the internet for a dentist. Think about the questions you would ask and what phrases you would type into the search form to find the perfect dentist. The answer to these questions should give you plenty of ideas for topics. If you follow this procedure before writing, every time you’ll write a winner.

Words Are Important

When writing content for your dental web site, keep in mind that your dental web design is geared at attracting new patients and informing existing patients. It is not geared at other dentists, so keep the dental lingo to a minimum and write in terms a non-dentist can understand.

In addition, use words to direct people to do what you want them to do, especially at the end of your article or other content. For example, directional phrases like “click here to book an appointment today” or “call today to take advantage of our discount tooth whitening special” guide visitors through your dental web site so they know what to do along with creating an urgency for them to do it now. It may sound overly simple, but sometimes just including the simple words “call now” can make a site more effective.

Consider some copywriting basics when writing for your dental web site. First, grab their attention. Second, build their interest. Third, create desire, and fourth, convince them to act now.

Analyze Your Success

Any good online home should make use of an analytics program, allowing you to track a number of statistics involving the people who visit your dental web site. An analytics program will show you which of your pages attracted the most visitors, where they clicked while visiting your website, what page they were on when they left, and how long they stayed on your website.

This information is critical in knowing what’s working and what isn’t so you’ll know the best way to proceed when writing content for your dental web site. Sometimes, articles about dental treatments may be attracting the most visitors or, if you have a blog, you may have regular blog readers who enjoy your wit and writing style.

Your dental web design is often the first communication you have with new patients. With great content, your dental web site can work to build a relationship with that patient before he even becomes a patient.

Good dental website design will bring in new patients for any practice, regardless of size. If you seek to grow the numbers of patients to increase the profitability of your practice, consider using some online marketing techniques to increase the effectiveness of your dentist sites. These techniques will build on your relationship with current patients, will bring in new clients by showing your expertise, and will provide information on new dental treatments to your existing patients, encouraging them to schedule a consultation to see if these new treatments will work for them.

Blogging

An easy an effective way to improve the return on investment is by blogging. A blog gives you the ideal chance to connect with new and existing patients on a personal level. Blogs can work to answer patient questions, inform patients about any sales or treatment discount specials you offer, provide news about new dental techniques and procedures, give information about things happening within your practice, introduce staff members, and much more.

In addition to providing information, blogging can bring new visitors to your dentist website design when written with search engine optimization in mind. While dentist sites usually contain written blogs, there are other alternatives. Video posts and becoming more popular because they are convenient and provide visitors with a sense of your voice, personality, and character so visitors can be visually familiar with you before scheduling an appointment. They also provide potential patients with a look at your office. Audio posts are even simpler to put together than video posts since you can usually record them easily from your computer for quick uploading to your website.

E-Mail Marketing

By integrating an e-mail newsletter signup within your dental website design, you will have an additional outlet for marketing to new and existing patients. An e-mail newsletter can work similar to blogging on your dentist sites. Newsletters serve as a way to provide information about your practice. Another benefit of e-mail marketing is that your newsletter subscribers are likely to forward your e-mails to friends and family, increasing your reach further. In addition, e-mail marketing is cheap, much less expensive than printing a newsletter and paying for pricey postage.

Press Releases And Articles

Another effective tactic for great dental website design includes using press releases and search engine optimized online articles to improve the search engine rankings of your dentist sites. This will also provide you with links that lead directly to your website. Press releases have a wide audience. When submitted through a news service, they can be picked up by any news medium throughout the world, including famous newspapers, television news networks, magazines, RSS feeds, online news outlets like Yahoo news and Google news. Many other websites may even pick up your article or press release to display on their site, providing you with a link where visitors to their site can click to directly visit your online practice.

With excellent dental website design and a few marketing tactics, your dentist sites can show a massive return on investment. With a little promotion, your existing patients will refer their friends and family. Your website will also work to bring in new patients on its own. As you continue to promote your dental website, it will serve as the perfect business partner to make your practice a profitable success.