What follows is a highly effective set of guidelines that will make your press release writing simple and straightforward. Just follow these simple rules:

A press release is formed of the following sections:

1) Headline

2) Sub-headline or summary

3) Body

4) Company Information

5) Contact information

1) Headline

This is the attention grabber and must get readers attention, but more importantly, to be search engine optimized (SEO), it needs to have the primary keywords that you are trying to rank for in the title itself. It should be written in title case, that is, each word should have a capitalized first letter.

You can rewrite any headline to make it more interesting and optimized for example (my keyword is 'Dance classes' ):

Here is a stock headline:

 'Studio X offers dance classes for all ages!'

Your target keyword: "Dance classes" is now at the beginning of the title – this enables it to rank higher up. Google for your target phrase and I think you’ll agree it’s a more eye catching title.

2) Sub-headline or summary

This should explain the headline but needs to be eye catching and interesting enough to ensure that your reader will continue into the first paragraph of the body. This should be no more than 4 sentences and expand on your title and summarize the main message of your release.

3) Body

The first paragraph of the body should have the date, a specific location such as : City, State / Country, date for example:

Boston, MA, April 13, 2011 -

This should then be followed by one paragraph about why this is interesting to your readers. It should also include your keywords that you are targeting.

The main content should follow and it should be based around the following principle…

· Who are you?

· What is the news?

· Where is it?

· Why is this relevant and interesting?

· How will your solution provide the benefit?

Keep your paragraphs clear, simple and easy to understand. The whole length of the body should be between 300-600 words. Credibility factors in the body can be added by including a quote.

You could either take a testimonial from your site, or even quote yourself.

Call to Action

Include a sentence that asks the reader to do something. Don’t leave it open ended. Remember the release has a purpose and you need to get your reader to your site. Use sentences like 'For a free report on how the arts can help your child to be successful in school',  visit :

'http://www.yoursite.com'.

4) Your company information

This gives credibility. It is important to say what you do, how long you have been doing it and if possible how many customers you have or include any other measure of credibility you can think of. This paragraph should only be 5 or 6 sentences long and should include a link to your website. The link should be clean (no embedding or anchor text) as the release may get printed.

5) Contact Information

Company Name, Contact Name, Address, Phone number, Email and Web address

Note: It’s important to ensure that all of these fields are completed. Firstly a journalist might want to contact you, so you should make it as simple as possible for them get in touch. Secondly, it also tells the reader that you are a ‘real’ business and adds credibility.