Do you optimize your press releases to aid your SEM efforts?

In today's world most marketers know that their web site is more than an online brochure.  It's a digital representation of their company, a community, a store and so much more.  Especially in the software industry is this paramount as a majority of our users tend to be tech savvy and prefer to research their software purchases online.  Now, more than ever, the effort you put into your web site is going to provide more impact than many other marketing efforts.

We all try to drive traffic to our web site - through search engines, referrals, direct traffic, etc.  Our companies also try to keep a continuous stream of news flowing so customers, investors and prospects can see that the company is forging alliances, developing new products, securing new business, etc.  Does your PR person/department/agency interface with your marketing department?  They should!

So many companies are putting a lot of effort towards increasing visibility and rankings with the search engines.  There are a million things you can do towards this goal, and one of the things we hear over and over is to continually create new content.  How can you create new content? Well you can write a blog, update your page content, publish case studies and whitepapers, and you publish news.

Whether you are a large or small company, where you have a person, a department or an agency that does your PR - the output is some of the best content that should be added to your web site and indexed by search engines.  Each and every release your company posts should be optimized around your key words and should have optimized links back to your site.  The more you do this, the more benefit these releases will have to your search engine optimization efforts.

And if you are a company whose releases are regularly picked up by the wires, web sites and publications, even better!  The optimized links in your press releases will all be votes for your site and Google, Yahoo! and MSN all look at these - and the more authoritative the news source, the more the vote counts.

Get your PR and Marketing department, or your PR and SEM (search engine marketing) agencies working together!  This shouldn't slow down the PR process at all, and if you have a savvy PR firm, if you give them your SEM goals they should be able to handle it themselves.  Otherwise just having input from the SEM staff on wording and links for your releases can go a long way.

Inboung Marketing site HubSpot has created a FREE new tool called the PressRelease Grader to help you evaluate the SEM value of your releases by following some basic rules and providing an effectiveness score as well as some suggestions to improve the content of the release.  This tool will never replace the expertise of a true PR and SEM professional, but it will help you learn some things to watch out for when writing press releases.

Releases are also a great way to drive people to view your software, so another tip is to include a link to your product page, software demo or even TestDrive online demo - increasing traffic and exposure to your software.

So if you aren't integrating your PR and SEM efforts, take some time and come up with a process that works for your company.  If you aren't sure what makes a good SEM-optimized release, try the PressRelease Grader.  And if you're already on the ball, you're ahead of the game!

How many of you make sure your PR efforts are coordinated with your SEM efforts?