Mickie Kennedy
by Mickie Kennedy
Google’s Panda updates have created a real stir in the public relations world. Many press release “farm” companies have been forced to totally change their ways or go out of business as the old ways of doing things are falling by the wayside. If you’re not careful, your own press releases might head down the wrong path.
If you were working in PR before Panda, you may remember how prevalent the Keyword Way of doing things was. So long as you stuffed as many keywords, links, and anchor phrases into your release as possible, results were almost guaranteed.
Suddenly that’s going out the window, and the PR world is headed down a different path. If you’re still stuck in the past, it’s time to take a cold, hard look at what you can expect.
Web-Only Just Won’t Cut It
For years PR websites, including my own blog, touted the advantages of the “web-only” press release. Why not, we would say, go after the web market? That’s clearly the way things were going – use keywords and graphics and link like crazy — and why not? After all, it was the way of the future.
Then Panda hit. Since it’s drastically moving away from keywords and heading towards real contextual searching, all that talk of web-only press releases looks foolish. Before, you could pump out several press releases filled with keywords and be seen all over the world. Post-Panda, though, you have to concentrate on real, vibrant, relevant material.
This means you can’t just pump out a press release and send it off to your favorite blogs and repost it on your own blog and expect good things. Your focus should be to get noticed and picked up by the big kahunas in your industry – if not a newspaper then a website that already gets big attention.
Otherwise, you’re going to be relegated to the backwaters of the web, especially in the near future as the algorithm continues to evolve. Context is key, and the fact that a site that thousands of people already read will be a big part of that context.
Focus on the Story
That newspaper or a big website in your industry won’t pick up your press release, though, if it’s uninteresting. This is why Panda is great for all the real writers out there –millennials can’t just pump out nonsense and get away with it. While websites like ours had to change and adapt, we see it as a good thing and embrace the challenge.
So should you! Consider how relevant your press release really is before you sit down and actually write it. Never has the question “Is this real news to readers?” been more important. If the subject of the press release won’t raise eyebrows in some way by being interesting, funny, weird or even controversial, then you should wait until you have a real news item.
If not, you run the risk of getting everything you write shoved into the back of the web. Hopefully this leads to a more vibrant and amazing PR community that puts out great material rather than heading down the wrong paths with their writing.
How has the Panda update changed your own writing?
