Rebecca wrote a good post over at SEOmoz about online Press Releases. The post is quite lengthy so I just picked what I think are the key points:
- Spend a lot of time on the headline. It may be your only chance to sell the news to your audience. The subhead/summary should enhance the headline.
- The body should answer who/what/where/when/why.
- Include 2-3 quotations from principals. The media and bloggers are attracted to these.
- Use a journalistic voice (just the facts).
- Don’t sell—this isn’t an advertisement.
- Know which keywords and phrases you want the press release to rank for, and only focus on 2 or 3 keywords/phrases per release.
- Use the keywords in the headline, subheader, and early in the body of the release.
- Link back to the relevant pages in your site using the keywords as anchor text.
Read the full post here.