The press release is an essential part of the online PR toolkit, but it’s evolving. When writing a press release it is essential to remember that you are writing for more than just reporters and a target audience – but also spiders, search engines and robots.

There are a number of tactic’s that can make a press release more attractive.
Use bold type, bullet points and underlining to break up the text and make it more interesting to read. Interesting formatting is a great way to highlight key points in the release.

Breaking the content up into digestible sections will also provide cues for ‘skimmers’ to gather meaning as they scan for relevant information.

Always pay close attention to the length of headlines and text – will the headline draw the targeted audience in? The headline should not be no longer than 22 words, generally it’s been found that Google will not index headlines in Google News if it’s longer.

The release in itself should be a minimum of 125 words long. Again it’s unlikely to qualify for Google News if it’s shorter, however Google has not provided an exact word count. It is also a bad idea to start out with bullet points and offer little narrative.