Search Engine Promotion for your Press Release

Via eBiz Blog an article from Marketing Sherpa about how Southwest Airlines sold $1.5 million in tickets by posting four press releases online.
The article asserts:

Getting your press release into searchable news sites is a great way to catch press attention � more than 80% of reporters surf search engines looking for news to write about. But reporters are only a tiny percent of this audience. Most search news site visitors are end-consumers.

eBiz Blog offers these steps to optimizing and distributing a press release online:

1. Research your keywords so you know what people are looking for online relating to your product/business
2. Copywrite your press release to (subtly) match these search terms
3. Have special �hotlinks� on hand and use them wisely to track readers and drive traffic to targeted areas of your website
4. Distribute via a wire service that hits the Web
5. Test a variety of releases (this is important if you are targeting more than one audience)

While this is sound advice, posting a targeted press release on the wire and having it read on search engine news sites like Yahoo News is not a guarantee of success. Southwest Airlines online ticket sales figure was from an eight month period, and many more of their releases did not translate into sales. Whether you’re creating a Google Adword campaign or sending a press release on the wire, doing research, targeting your audience and measuring your results is always good practice.