• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 13, 2019

There is a powerful connection between news releases and improved search engine optimization (SEO) performance when it comes to journalists picking up the news or how long readers will remain interested in learning more, according to Sean O’Neal, president of Onclusive, a data science company for marketers.  

And while the study released Thursday did not take SEO into consideration, O’Neal said timing is everything, but optimization shouldn’t be underestimated.

“It is well known that news releases are one of the best methods of improving SEO rankings, both because your brand is being published on a reputable third-party platform, which is positively indexed by search engines, but also because as the release will likely contain multiple backlinks to websites that search engines favor,” he said in an email to Search Insider.

The 2019 Press Release Benchmark Report is relevant to search marketers because volumes of syndicated and editorial articles that news releases produce can significantly magnify the effect of SEO.

By optimizing a brand’s news release strategy -- such as choosing the correct day and time, along with format and targeted consumer -- the strategy will not only maximize a brand’s media pick-up, but you can help search engines more easily discover the news.

The report reveals that a popular time for PR teams to post their news releases targeting journalists is Tuesday at 8 a.m. Eastern, which has 10 times the press release volume of the average hour for the rest of the week.  

The data also shows that after 30 minutes, the volume of releases is just 30% of the volume of releases posted on the hour. For releases at the 15- or 45-minute mark, that volume drops to between 5% and 10%, improving the likelihood of any single release being seen.

The average number of follow-on stories per release is 10. Tuesday and Friday are the best days to put out a release to generate follow-up articles. Tuesday is the better day for general releases. Fridays appears to work best for stories that are less about hard news