Spotlight Your Event With Better Links in Your News Releases
To pull off an event successfully, your audience needs all the details. Make it easier for folks to attend by using links correctly in your news releases.
Are you scheduling a not-for-profit event? Have a speaking engagement coming up? What about that store-wide sale you planned? We have frequently been the victims of poorly marketed events ourselves, prompting us to write articles with best practice tips. In the past, we shared some event marketing case studies. This time, let's talk about using web links in news releases.
Tip #1: Use web links in your news releases.
It’s amazing how many people don’t! Your potential audience is mainly scanning news on their phones and sometimes on their laptops. While you might catch their eye, it’s only for a moment, so instead of overwhelming them with all the details upfront, provide a link for their further perusal.
Tip #2: Don’t use too many links in your news releases.
Incoming links boost a website’s rank, but no search engine will put up with excessive use as an SEO technique. Just write your news release to attract real humans to your event, and you’ll naturally include just the right number of links.
Tip #3: Link to the right landing page.
Don’t use your home page as the default landing page. No one wants to click around trying to figure out where in the menu your special event information lurks. Link directly to the page with the information you promised in your press release.
Tip #4: Build a landing page for your event.
Folks have short attention spans, and they aren’t going to scroll through a long list to find a specific item. Instead of presenting them with an overwhelming calendar, have a page devoted to each event. Website platforms these days make it easy to do.
Tip #5: Use anchor text.
Online news releases don’t need you to spell out the URL of your landing page. Using a hyperlink preserves the flow of your article and highlights appropriate search terms at the same time. For instance, if you write “Join us at Business Expo 2025 in April,” add a hyperlink to the landing page for the words “Business Expo 2025.”
Tip #6: Put yourself in your reader’s shoes.
The person interested in your event probably doesn’t care about other things you want to talk about or your Search Engine Optimization efforts. All they want is information about the event that caught their attention, so give them just those details. Ease and credibility are most important here.
If you’re a business or not-for-profit planning an event in the coming year, you will no doubt be putting a lot of effort into spreading the word. Support those efforts with smart link usage to make it easy for your audience to attend your event by answering all their questions online. Don’t forget that, in addition to information, your website can also take care of registration, ticketing, and other tasks. Give us a call and we can get it all set up for you!
Photo by Monica Silvestre
This article is an update to “You’re Doing Links in News Releases Wrong” dated 1/18/2016.
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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