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While my degree is in Public Relations, my career has led me down the SEO and Internet marketing route. Since 2004, I have worked in a variety of search engine optimization, pay per click, and online reputation management roles for corporations and agencies, eventually going full time as a freelancer/consultant in early 2009 and now working as a team via Shwapo.

For the past year, I’ve solely focused on online reputation management and Pay Per Click  jobs. I’ve worked with a few PR firms in Michigan and individual clients to manage negative press that appears online about companies, business people, and products. It can be a fairly controversial subject, but I help companies to push down negative results for specific keywords by optimizing positive and neutral results through SEO and link building tactics. I work through PR agencies that have already gone through the crisis management steps with a client, companies that have been cleared from lawsuits that still appear online in top ranking positions, and individuals that are haunted by negative comments left on a blog.

While most negative press cannot be removed and will always show up in top rankings for specific keyword searches, there are certain cases where an ORM campaign is crucial – a negative web site showing up as the #2 result for a company name, a negative article showing up about a person with a similar product/name/company that clients start associating with you, or a lawsuit that has since been settled yet still shows as negative.

While it’s beneficial for clients to work with PR firms to solve their overall reputation issues, we can assist with one part of that equation – the online portion. Through methods such as link building, web site creation, profile optimization, and positive online press, negative results can be pushed down to page 3+ for specific keywords, including company names.

I’m hoping that through this post, I can be of help to PR firms and agencies that would like to offer ORM as a service. The PR community has been extremely helpful to me in the past, so even if you’re not interested at this time, I am more than happy to answer questions about ORM for those who would like to understand it better or that have smaller clients and just need a quick answer.

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To write an optimized press release, start with these steps:

Define Keyword

When writing a press release, identify one keyword that you want to rank for. There are a few free tools that you can use to determine which keywords receive the most traffic, including Google Keyword External, SEO Books Keyword Tool, and ActualKeywords.com. Pick a keyword that is relevant to your site, receives a considerable amount of monthly traffic, and that will be used on the page that you are trying to rank. The keyword should ideally be in the Title of the page, in an H1 tag, included in the body, and used in your internal linking structure.

Include Keyword Throughout Release

Once you’ve identified a keyword, write out a rough draft of your press release, making sure to include the keyword throughout your release. The keyword should be included, at minimum, in the header of your press release, one to three times in the body of the release, and at least once in the “About” section of your press release.

Hyperlink Thoughtfully

For press release services that allow you to include hyperlinks within the release, make sure to hyperlink from the keyword you identified instead of using non-optimized keywords like “click here.” While not all press release services allow html or hyperlinking, most will allow you to at least include a link back to your site in a resource or contact box, or once in the “about” section.

Consider the Upgrade Option

If presented with the opportunity to upgrade, in most cases, do so. Upgrades generally offer you the opportunity to specify the anchor text of a hyperlink or in some cases, include a hyperlink that a free package doesn’t allow. Not all upgrades are created equally, though. Consider the page rank, traffic volume, trust factors, and cost when determining whether to upgrade or not.

Distribute to a Variety of Services

When submitting press releases for link building purposes, don’t submit to just one service – instead submit to a variety. Some press release sites will check to make sure that your release is unique, however, so make sure to distribute to those sites first. Start with the quality sites that have a number of links and tend to be picked up by the press; also re-write some of the verbiage in your release so as to avoid duplicate content. Simple things like re-writing the header or a few sentences within the release can make sure that your release will be picked up by a number of services.

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