I found this post from last year’s PRSA conference at the Top Rank Online Marketing Blog. Here are a couple of good examples of how applying best practices for optimizing press releases for search pays off:

Symettricom, a developer of extremely niche technology chips, optimized a release around an admittedly unpopular, but extremely relevant keyword with a corresponding link to a form page.  Predictably, only 8 inquiries were seen.  Unpredictably, one of these leads accounted for $200 million. (Author addendum: This also speaks to the importance of not neglecting the long tail of search.)

Southwest Airlines had previously only optimized releases around corporate nickname “Southwest”.  Upon optimizing for “Southwest Airlines”, and implementing tracking pages, they were able to account for approximately 2.5 million in ticket sales.

Most press release wire services have SEO optimization built in, but it still pays to know press release SEO fundamentals. MarketWire has great SEO implementation tools built into its interface, and one of hte benefits is that it posts your release onine permanently in a library.

For suggested methods of what and how to measure ROI from organic search – to which press releases contribute -  Dan Nedelko has the following suggested metrics and ROI calculations:

A Total Amount of Search Traffic
B Total Amount of Converting Search
C Conversion Rate from Search
C Life Time Value of a Conversion (is it CPA or LTV)
D Converting Terms (focus on these)

Determine total Search Traffic = 1000
Determine the Converting Search Ratio: B/A (10/100) = 0.10
Use the Total Converting Search Numbers = 100
Determine the value of the Conversion: C = $200

Planning out your goals before optimizing your releases will help you determine how successful your optimized press releases meet your campaign’s marketing goals.