Online press releases rely on getting attention to get traffic and media coverage and the most important element in getting that attention is your headline.

 

There are 2 key areas that are vital in creating a compelling press release headline:

• The search engine friendliness of the headline.
• The news element of the headline.

 

We’ll cover both of these in this Post.

 

 

1. Creating Headlines That Are Search Engine Friendly

After syndication, search engines will pay more attention to the headline of your press release than any other element and journalists, site owners and bloggers searching for news are far more likely to find your press release if it ranks for a search term they actually search for.

 

So choosing the search terms to include in your press release headline is critical to its success in multiple ways and for multiple reasons.

 

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they decide on search terms is trying to target search terms that are too competitive.

 

It’s much easier to target 3-7 longer tail search terms with one online press release than it is to target one super competitive search term. Your press release will rank more quickly, get more highly targeted attention and stay ranking high for a whole lot longer when you’re targeting longer tail search terms.

 

So if you’re not familiar with the competition in the niche, you’re writing your press release for the first step is doing some searches for search terms you might want to rank for.

 

If you get back a lot of well-established sites and highly-relevant results that are high-quality and targeted, it will be challenging to rank.

 

When you come across highly competitive search terms like this, it’s best to think of other search terms that people search for that describe what you want to rank for.

Check this as an example…

 

 

 

By being more focused in the keyword there is less competition, and the traffic that comes is more specifically interested in what is being promoted.

 

While this is still a medium competition keyword, you can see there is less competition because few of the sites on page one and page two contain all 3 keywords in the title in any order, and there are some signs as discussed in part one that there is low competition…

 

 

2. Finding Longer Tail Search Terms – A Recap

The more long-tail and niche specific your search terms are, the more likely your press release is to rank for those terms and stay ranking for those terms for an extended period.

 

One way to find words and phrases to incorporate in your headline is to search for a search term you’d like to rank for then look at the Google suggested terms at the bottom of the first page of search results.

 

Here we did a search for “Ear infection treatment dogs” and discovered a pile of different search terms and words we might target in our headline…

 

 

In this case we might find the words remedies, symptoms, antibiotics, and ear mites all useful.

 

 

3. Include A Town Or City Name Or A Location Name

Ranking gets even easier with many local search terms. If you’ve got yelp reviews, really thin content, or content that doesn’t have all of the search terms in the phrase showing up, then it’ll likely be easy to rank

 

 

TIP: Including a suburb, town or small city name in your search term often turns a highly competitive search term into a low competition search term.

 

 

4. Anticipating Trends

In many niches, there are predictable events and likely emerging trends.

 

Another way to choose search terms to target in your press release and your headline is to look for these emerging trends and brainstorm search terms people are likely to be looking for soon due to those trends.

 

Some news stories and traffic trends can be predicted weeks, months, even years in advance and by getting a press release up and ranking just before the story hits you can get a huge spike of traffic and attention when it does hit.

 

As an example these three were entirely predictable:

• The World Cup (soccer)
• Marvels or DC (the movie)
• The winter Olympics

 

deals and product launch you can capitalize on. What event is coming up in your niche that you might be able to profit from?

 

If you plan well you can optimize content, keywords and online press releases for those completely predictable traffic trends long before they become popular:

• You can target keywords ahead of time ready for the burst in traffic.
• You can prepare ad campaigns where competition and ad prices could be very low.
• You can create engaging and interesting content that capitalizes on the buzz (bloggers and journalists are looking for content to cover when a big trend hits).

 

 

5. The Words In A Headline Can Be In Any Order

Here’s one great key that makes it easier to target multiple search terms. The words in your headline can be in any order and still help to rank for a long tail search term.

 

That makes it much easier to rank for multiple long tail search terms because any word you add to a headline might be combined with any other word in the headline to make up a search term.

 

Obviously your headline still has to make sense and you don’t want to go crazy stuffing a pile of keywords into your headline (keyword stuffing will get your press release rejected).

 

But you certainly can carefully choose words that are likely to increase the number of long tail search terms you’re likely to rank for.

 

 

If you have a search term you want to rank for that has some competition your chances of getting a good ranking go up significantly if the words of that search term are right at the start of your headline.

 

Remember the words don’t necessarily need to be in the same order as the search term you’re targeting as long as they’re as close to the start of the headline as you can get them.

 

 

6. Edit Out As Many Non Search Term Words As You Can

Words in your headline that aren’t part of a search term you’re targeting can reduce the ranking power of your headline.

 

Here are some tips to cut down on those extra words:

• Headlines don’t need to be grammatically correct. Read some newspaper headlines and you’ll see what I mean. It’s commonplace to slash out extra words like “is”.
• Replace “and” with “&”.
• Use shorter versions of words that aren’t going to make up part of a search term.
• Look at every word in the headline and ask yourself “can this word become part of a long tail search term?” If it doesn’t ask yourself “can I replace this word with a word that can become part of a long tail search term?”
• Avoid using the same word twice in a headline. That repeated word takes up the
• Space you could be using for another keyword. Or you could just remove it giving more weight to the words that come after it

 

 

7. Creating Headlines That Are News Worthy

Making your headline newsworthy is critical if you want your press release to be approved. Ultimately your press release has to be news…not an ad…and your headline should reflect that.

 

Ask yourself “Is this news? Would I see this type of headline in a newspaper above a news article?” Is it “new” information?

 

Also if you’re doing a news tie in you have to actually tie the business into the press release. The easiest way to do a tie in to current news is with the “Expert says” or “Says expert” style of headline.

 

For example if you wanted to tie a local real estate agent into a national study showing real estate prices were going down you could use a headline like:

 

“Austin Real Estate Prices Going Up Despite Latest Study Says Local Expert” or “Real Estate Prices Rising Despite Latest Study Says Austin Real Estate Expert”

 

How you word your headline will depend a lot on what search terms you want to rank for. Ideally you put the search terms you want to rank high for at the beginning of your headline.

 

 

Check more articles:

5 Top Tips For Writing A Press Release

Press Releases For Ecommerce Store | What You Need To Know

 

 

Headline – Checklist You need to look up

Here’s a checklist of things you might consider when you’re tweaking your headline:

 

• Target 3-7 longer tail search terms instead of one super competitive search term.
• If a Google search for the search term you want to rank for shows a lot of really well-established sites and highly-relevant results that are high-quality and targeted, it’s going to be difficult to rank.
• Look for longer tail search terms with less competition.
• Look at the bottom of Google search results for a search term to find other search terms and words you might include in your headline.
• Use specific niche-related words like “cocker spaniels & poodles” instead of dogs to increase your chances of ranking high for lucrative search terms.
• Including a suburb, town or small city name in your search term often turns a highly competitive search term into a low competition search term.
• Look for emerging trends, upcoming events, special days (like public holidays),deals and product launches you can optimize your press release and your headline for.
• Words in your headline can be in any order and still contribute to long tail search term rankings.
• Words at the start of your headline are most likely to rank high.
• Edit out as many non search term words from your headline as you can.
• Make your headline news worthy.

 

 

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