Businesses that issue online press releases should incorporate search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to ensure their news stands out, an expert has advised.

Writing in a post on the Mashable blog, Sarah Evans of Elgin Community College noted that over 2,000 releases are issued by the five main US wire services every day.

She recommended that press release writers refrain from using too much jargon and to instead use the terms that their target audience is likely to use when conducting online searches.

Keywords should also be incorporated into the release and should not be too far apart from each other in headlines, while using bold text to highlight critical terms and including a link to another site for information is also good for SEO, Ms Evans said.

"The first 250 words of your release are essential to both your overall search results and it’s also about the time you will lose a reader if your content is not interesting," she went on to add.

Kevin Dill of Marketwire told the Online Marketing Blog last year that including links to multimedia like podcasts and videos can also help to improve press release SEO.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.