How to syndicate news

April 2010

‘Syndicating’ a news release means submitting it to lots of well-known news websites. By including links to your website in the body of your news release, you can get these websites to link to your own, which boosts your search ranking.

This is how you do it:

1. Think of an idea for a story

Few journalists will actually read your news release on one of the syndication sites. They tend to get their stories from other sources: their contacts, Twitter, press releases that you have sent them directly, and so on. It’s because you're writing your syndication news release for a search engine, and not for a person, that nearly anything you have to say about your company and products qualifies as news.

So there's no reason why you shouldn't syndicate a story about something relatively mundane – you could announce a speaker appointment or a minor improvement to one of your products, for example. But keep a sense of proportion: news wires might reject your story if you’re just announcing where you’re having your office party, say, or that you’re buying a new stapler for the stationery cupboard.

2. Write your story

If you already have a news release that you plan to issue to media contacts, that's a good starting point. There is, however an important difference between writing a regular news release and a story for syndication, and that’s the use of keywords. You should start by choosing five or so keywords from pages on your website – terms that you already know your target audience uses when searching for products and services like yours. Work these keywords into your story. If you don't already know what your keywords are, try using a keyword generator tool online.

3. Submit your story

This costs around £100, depending on which newswire you use. Visit PRWeb, SourceWire, RealWire or your news wire of choice, and navigate to the page where you can submit your news. Copy and paste your news release copy into the form. Anchor-link your news release keywords, to make them link to the pages on your site that use the same keywords.

4. Be patient

It takes time to build the number of news sites whose news releases link to your company website, so don't expect to jump to the top of the search rankings overnight. Things should look different after 12 months or so.

To find out more about how to improve your search ranking and engage audiences using social media, please contact us.

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