What is a press release - Summary
A press release announces news about a company, product, service or event. It has a timely news angle (something new has appeared or happened recently or is about to happen soon).
It must not be solely informative, i.e. no "How To...", "10 Best ..." or "3 Ways To..." titles.
Press release titles are more like "XCon Announces ...", "XCon Now Open To ...", "Increased .... Announced By XCon", "New Website XCon Provides ...", "XCon Shows ...", "New Site Offers..." or "XCon Reveals ...".
There must be some timely news in the body text. Compare pure information: "The product has a high quality. It is used worldwide.The features of the product are..." with timely news: "The recent upgrade of the product...", "The recent changes to the site makes it easy for customers to...", "In a few days the new product will be out". In timely news, time is present. In pure information, time is not present.
Not all of the body text must be timely news. Parts of the press release can be pure information, but some part must be timely news and correspond to the news angle of the title.
The press release should be written in third person, i.e. even if you write about your own business you pretend you're a journalist writing about it. Therefore you don't write "we plan to offer...", but "they plan to offer...".
The press release should be written in a restrained way. It should just describe in a non promotional way what has happened or appeared.
The imagined audience are journalists and other media representatives, and the objective is just to tell them some news they can spread, not to turn them into clients or get them to buy the product. So you don't address this audience directly in the press release. You don't write "you will benefit from XCon's new service", but "people will benefit from XCon's new service".
The press release must be original, i.e. it must not be a copy of an earlier published text. Otherwise it will be rejected by Google News.
The body text must contain at least 200 words. It is recommended to put one link within the first 60 words. The reason for this is that the link will then show up in our feeds.
The title should be max 90 characters. Google only shows 65 and for optimal ranking it's best to not go beyond that.
Keywords should be comma-separated. Max 10 keywords per press release.
