Does Your Website Have a News Room?
Late last year, I wrote a post detailing the pages you should include on your website. The list covered the usual suspects: home, about us, products, FAQ, contact, testimonials, guarantee, and site map. Looking back on the list, I realized I left one important page off…a page that can help you drive more search engine traffic, enhance your credibility, and even earn you media coverage.
Which page am I talking about?
I’m talking about the news room. In this age of online news releases, the online news room plays an important role in media and customer relations. A strong news room let’s everyone know that your company is staying active and relevant, and it gives the media the information needed to create stories about you.
A good news room can also help you increase your website’s search rankings. By targeting specific keywords in your news releases and creating a strong internal linking structure, you can use your news to climb the search rankings while attracting quality traffic that includes buyers and media.
What needs to be in your news room?
A news room is more than just your latest press releases. It’s a comprehensive section that gives visitors all the information they want about your business. Here are some of the things you should have in your online news room.
- Press releases—It’s important to publish company news on a regular basis. This gives visitors the impression that your company is active, relevant, and moving forward. It also gives you an opportunity to target more keywords to further bolster your website’s search engine rankings. Just make sure you actually have news to share and that your press releases aren’t just advertisements.
- Company profile—Give a basic overview of your company’s history, mission statement, and outlook for the future. This is basically like an about us page, but it’s designed to give the media those little details they may need when covering your company.
- Staff bios—You don’t need bios on everyone at your company, just the key executives. You also don’t need to go into great detail in these bios. A paragraph for each key member should suffice. You can also include a headshot with each bio.
- Case studies—Case studies can offer specific details about how your products or services solve problems and benefit customers. They’re great tools for building credibility with buyers and for helping the media find unique story angles. Just make sure your case studies are straightforward and based on the facts.
- Prior media coverage—If your company has been featured on TV, a newspaper, magazine, blog, podcast, or anywhere else, try to find the source online and link to it. If you can’t find it, consider uploading it yourself as media coverage is another good tool for making your company seem more credible.
Do you have a news room on your website? What else is in it?
August 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
This is actually wonderful data, many thanks.
August 14th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Interesting & clean looking web site, saved!
June 14th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
I think that having a "news room" page on your website is a very important way to market yourself without knowing it. Visitors to your website came to your site for a reason. Either they were doing an organic search for something specific and stumbled across your site, they were referred to your site by someone, or they saw an advertisement that made them go to your site. You need to have a "news room" in order to keep them there and to win their business. This is your chance to put something on your website that brags about what your company is great at doing and why the visitor should pick and trust you!