Paul from the UK came today with a question : Does anyone have any experience of writing search engine optimised releases?
So far, I push my press release among my selected and beloved journalists, but his question is definitely becoming more and more important.

I’m not really a SEO wizard, but here are a few ideas.

[entering in Geek mode]

there is several way to answer the question.

1/ the content of the press release

• I would first recommend you to include tags that could be easily identified by Search engines at the bottom of your release (such as – Tag: Mobile, RFID, Distribution, Payment, etc, etc)
• Second, I would recommend you to have the shortest title possible, with the name of the company / product in it.
• I would finally recommend you to link your press release to social news site (Digg this, Add this to del.icio.us, Stumble Upon this, etc, etc. – dozens of services exists on the web as a widget to include on your pages). The more you spread it, the highest ranking you’ll have on the Search Engines.

2/ the format of the HTML support

• Your press release will probably be hosted on the company website, somewhere on the press room. To be well identified, the meta tag of the HTML page has to be clear and well formatted, as well as page title, etc, etc…

[/geek mode suspended]

I know that some of my client are experimenting, with a lot of precautious to implement link to social news site (look at IBM corp press release).

Does anybody has ever created a press release optimised for search engine ?
Shouldn’t we try to think about it when writing the press release to our clients ?
Maybe should we create a toolkit for these questions to our client (when I’ll have 5 mn, I promise I’ll draft something – hell ! I don’t have 5 mn so far :/ I’ve to find them).

Pierre from Paris.