The days when press releases were written for the sole purpose of pitching a story to a news editor are over. The consumer may also read the press release at places such as Google News, Digg, and Technorati. There are many more places to submit your press release today and more people are reading.

The Internet has changed news distribution in several positive ways. One such way is by the allowing the general public to get the news directly from the source. It has allowed companies to include hyperlinks that immediately reference quotes, statistics, or facts and has made the news available much more quickly. And there are many more people writing and submitting news stories in every industry.

This overload of information may be good for the consumer, but for marketers it simply means more competition. This competition makes it crucial that writers craft highly focused and targeted copy. Online a poorly written press release will quickly get buried.

If you want a publisher to pick up your release and publish stories about your company, you must write a press release that generates a buzz. This means getting people to link to your press release, blog about it, and publish stories about it. So you’d better be sure it doesn't suck. Otherwise you won’t get one bookmark.

Now you're probably wondering…what makes a press release suck? And the answer is simple: Using your press release to sell something.

If you are selling something—anything—nobody is going to read your press release.

Nobody wants to be told to buy something. People don't like being begged or manipulated. Save the selling for your paid advertisements. News editors and readers don't want whatever it is you're selling. They just want news.

How do you send a press release out about your new product to get people to buy your product? You don't. What you should be doing instead is looking for another angle to market your product less directly. Sometimes you have to create these ways. You can write around the product by talking about something related, without directly selling your product.

Let me give you an example. If you run an online music store, the press doesn’t care about your new website design. It would be much better to write a story about how you gave away $1,000 dollars to support local artists. In this release, you get to mention both your product and the business, without using a sales pitch. On the downside, you’d have to actually give away a thousand dollars.

Now, let's get back to the actual goal of press releases in search engine marketing, which is increasing organic exposure. Traditionally, the goal of press releases was to get them published and read. The goal of press releases in SEO marketing, however, is to have them found in search engines, get them read, and build back links for your business.

To accomplish these tasks, you have to write something that people want to read, using terms that people are searching for and present it in such a way that people want to link to it, which makes your job even harder now. So how is it done?

1.      First focus on creating a compelling headline—preferably using a target keyword if possible.

2.      Write a well-formed release—with proper grammar. Be sure to use quotes and establish the who, what, where, when, and why.

3.      Carefully integrate your keywords and links—Just writing a compelling and interesting release, isn't enough; you need to mention your target keywords for search engine purposes.

4.      Get the release out there—There are many press release distribution services out there—so use them. Publish them all over and hope they get picked up and republished.