To grab the attention of your audience with a great title for your press release, you need to consider and include 7 main features. Some of them are to draw human readers’ attention and some to attract search engines. While keeping the balance, a great title will be the one that does both while remaining natural.

As press release marketing has inherited some features from the past, before the Internet, we need to respect and stick to some of the ingredients that are really effective. On the other hand, we have to modify some other elements or factors to make sure it matches the web readers and search engine optimization facts.

Let me cut it short and mention the list:

1) Your press release title should be engaging.

When a human reader goes through (scans) the titles at a PR website directory or homepage, it should engage him/her. It should address a need he/she has like many others. It should indicate the invention of a solution to such a need. It should talk to your readers’ hearts so that they get persuaded to click on it. Otherwise, it’s very easy to overlook it and go to the next story.

2) Your press release title should be unique.

There are certain news stories that have already become cliches to which nobody attends. They’ve seen it millions of times. They’re just another one of the same type. Time’s important for the web readers. So, they simply skip such press release titles and go to the next one. You should mention something really unique that causes web readers stop and ask themselves, “How come?”, “What?”, “Wonderful!”, etc.

3) You should focus on a single topic.

To help your readers’ attention grabbed to your story, the title of your press release should be focused on a single topic. In other words, it should say one thing, not more. Your title is expected to clarify what it’s going to be about, not confusing. We usually say that an article should talk about one topic let alone a title.

4) Your press release title should be short.

Usually press release titles are written longer than article titles or blog posts. Sometimes they get really long. Considering the patience of web readers being low and the tradition of PR writing, it’s said that a title of 170 characters is good! To me, it looks like a meta description. Well, I would say it can be even less than that in order not to damage the keyword weight in the title, but it should also be long enough to describe what the news is all about.

5) Your brand/product/service name should be present at your press release title.

If a PR isn’t about you, it’s at least about something that is related to you. Therefore, either your brand name (company name) or product/service name should be there so that the overall purpose of the release is reached and maintained. Without these elements, it could be a title belonging to anybody else.

6) Your title should be consistent with the news release itself.

You should remain loyal to your readers by providing the same information that you’ve promised in your press release title. Otherwise, it would be like playing tricks on them: you grab their attention, but give them something else. This is bad for your brand and reputation. On the other hand, it doesn’t work and wastes your resources.

7) Your press release title should be keyword-rich.

The last but not the least, in a blog that talks all the time about organic SEO results and search engine optimization, it won’t be possible to recommend some methods without considering the SEO function on it. Obviously, a skillful SEO copywriting hand is required to craft a powerful search engine friendly title. The main keyphrase of the release is supposed to be present at the title and the closer to the beginning, the better.

Impact of Press Release Titles on Organic SEO Ranking

This fact shouldn’t be overlooked. PR websites are crawled and indexed several times an hour. They are authority sites in the news industry. So, having a link from such sites requires keyword-rich title. One major reason is that you usually see all the words of your title are present in the URL of your PR. So, a careful keyword research is required at the initial stage of writing the news story.

Some PR websites like PRweb, WebWire, etc allow you to include some keywords in your press release. All this can place a great impact on your organic SEO ranking. Of course, there are lots of factors involved in writing a successful PR, but I just wanted to share with you some features that help you write a great press release title.