This article originally appeared on WorkinPR.com’s PR Perspective Series in August 2007. It is the third of a three part series. Part Three: Optimizing Online Newsrooms

In the past few Tips, we’ve shared useful information, tips and best practices when it comes to public relations and the fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

In Part One, we discussed “Why and How a Press Release Should Be Search Optimized.” In Part Two, we reviewed “Optimizing News Distribution, Posting & Placements,” the “push” facet of SEO for PR. In this article, our third and final installment, we examine how to optimize an online newsroom, the pull aspect of SEO for PR.

As noted in previous articles, more than 90 percent of journalists turn to the Internet and search engines as their primary news source, and corporate influencers are now relying upon news releases as their primary source of information. It’s for these reasons that you’ll want to optimize your online newsroom.

Good Online Newsroom Content For Search Engines

In a nutshell, good online newsroom content for search engines is also good newsroom content for a journalist. Be sure your online newsroom includes the following content:

• Press contact information (on each page of the newsroom with contact’s email link and phone number)
• Current and archived optimized press releases
  • Ideally, all press releases would be searchable by user keyword queries
• Event listings (where your company will be attending, exhibiting or speaking)
• Corporate backgrounder or fact sheet (or link to this information if it exists on the About Us page of the web site)
• Awards/Accolades/Recognition
• Executive (and/or board of directors) biographies (or link to this information if it exists on the About Us page of the web site)
• Image library (including high and low resolution pictures of products, logos, packaging and executives) along with permissions and reprint instructions.
• Additional content (or links to) e.g. videos, presentations, podcasts, recorded webinars, whitepapers, webcasts
• Teasers to company blog(s)
• Links to FAQs and customer service access for visitors who are not members of the press
• Investor relations (if public company; a link to this information elsewhere on the site also works)
• Press release distribution options (RSS/XML feeds and/or email signup)
• Links to press coverage (offer links to reprints if articles are not accessible online)
  • These links should launch a new browser window so as to not lose the visitor entirely from your site.

Do’s and Don’t For Online Newsrooms

• Consider offering the newsroom visitor the content in more than one format, e.g. downloadable PDFs vs. drill down links to internal HTML content pages.
• Don’t require visitors to register or sign in, as journalists are busy and typically dislike such requests.
• Encourage republication of your content — incorporate legal permissions within the newsroom, but always require a hyperlink back to your site in exchange for use of your content.
• Use unique URLs to track republication visitors vs. just having someone link to your primary domain/home page.
• If using unique pages per press release, try to optimize that web page for the same critical keywords that youve already used to optimize your press release.

What Search Engines Like

What Search Engines See

How Search Engines Interpret What They See

This increases your newsroom’s ability to help journalists and other site visitors to readily search and find relevant content and to easily reach your press contacts.

Avoid complex content management systems when posting releases to your site unless the system is already search engine-optimized. Be sure all news releases issued are immediately if not, simultaneously, posted to your site along with supporting data and/or links, such as analyst reports or quotes, customer testimonials, relevant articles, technical spec sheets, downloadable images, presentations, recorded versions of press conferences, relevant articles, etc. As indicated on the images here, be sure to use alt tags and other optimized image source code.

• Likes
  • Static pages
  • Plentiful, relevant, text-based content
  • Keyword-centric title tags
  • Well composed meta-and alt tags
  • Descriptive & well-architected navigational links
  • Quality inbound links to sites
• Dislikes/Hindrances
  • Frames & i-Frames
  • Images
  • Flash
  • Graphically-rendered text
  • Some dynamic pages
  • Complex content management systems or ecommerce platforms
  • Long URL strings

  If you can, provide a searchable newsroom that allows visitors to search your content by key word. If that is not feasible, then offer categories for visitors to access your information, such as corporate news or news by product group. Integrate access to corporate blog(s) and/or other on-site content.

  Lastly, implement the ability to track newsroom activity. Assuming you’ve instituted the steps outlined in this article, then you now have the ability to monitor, measure and respond to newsroom visitor traffic and trends. Newsroom analytics will enable you to keep your site searchable, relevant and easily accessible to journalists and other site visitors, as well as ensure that you to keep your clients and/or management informed of your SEO PR efforts and ROI.

  Properly implemented, SEO PR will boost client visibility and traffic, enhancing you and your client’s existing image and bottom line.

  Newsrooms Worth Noting

  • Microsoft
    http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.mspx
  • Apple
    http://www.apple.com/pr/
  • Target
    http://sites.target.com/site/en/corporate/page.jsp?contentId=PRD03-001080
  • Merck
    http://www.merck.com/newsroom/
  • Sprint
    http://www2.sprint.com/mr/mrhome.do

  Update 11/1/2007

  As open source blog softwares like WordPress becomes more popular as content management systems (CMS) for corporate websites, you will see more and more companies using “blog” functionality within their online newsrooms. Blog software tends to be well optimized for search engines due to clean HTML code, good titles, metatags, etc. Some examples include: Google Newsroom

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