Press releases have many different functions. Some companies use them to announce a product or service, a new contract, new appointments, or new results.

presspackFurthermore, press releases can also be used to optimise your website and rankings in the search engines by targeting specific keywords and building links back to your website.  Here are five common mistakes that any business can easily fix when writing press releases:
  1. Don’t only link to your main website. The most common link in a press release is the company website in the main release. However make sure you take advantage of every opportunity to link back to other interior pages. For example you may have a page dedicated to a particular product category, service, or offer and so keywords about this in your press release should link directly back to the landing page where that information is held.
  2. Don’t forget to use anchor text. Anchor text tells the search engines what a link is about. Take a few minutes to review your press release and look for words that you want to rank for. Link those words back to related, internal pages as anchor text.
  3. Be very careful with jargon and technical words. You need to 'keep it simple' for the search engines. Flashy words as headlines also hurt a release’s ability to be syndicated, or reposted, on other websites. Use keyword-rich language that is straight forward and easy to understand.
  4. Don’t embed multimedia in your press releases. Send a simple plain text email with a small image attachment for example, then upload the multimedia or larger high res. images on your website instead. Include a link to it in your release. It’d be a shame if people started linking to the press release instead of your site.
  5. Don’t forget to post your press release to your website. Press releases make great company blog posts, and also keep your site regularly updated which is a ranking factor with Google. Furthermore you can get more mileage by adapting the release for your company blog, customer newsletter or other marketing activities.