SearchEngineWatch has an intriguing article about search engine optimization (SEO) for PR purposes. The article, by Catherine Seda (author of “Search Engine Advertising”) covers a variety of ways to enhance public relations efforts by making content easier to find. Wal*Mart, for example, created a landing page dealing its anti-unionization efforts and enhanced it so a Google search on the topic ranked it as the number two page dealing with the company’s anti-union stance.

What attracted my attention, though, was the reference to press releases, those venerable PR tools so often misused and so frequently maligned. When they actually contain news and are thought through, though, press releases remain a powerful tool, even in the era of blogs that so many people think can serve as a total press release replacement. SEO-PR President Greg Jarboe, interviewed in the article, pointed to two instances when press releases generated jaw-dropping results. In one case, Southwest Airlines introduced new low fares in a press release that produced $1 million in ticket sales. In another, Verizon saw a 438% increase in the number of searches for “florists” on its website after the company issued a press release about a Valentine’s Day offer.

Why are press releases so powerful? According to Jarboe’s presentation, Yahoo! News has a unique audience of 24.9 million people and Google News has a unique audience of 7.2 million. Journalists and consumers are turning to the search news channels for information. Plus, optimized press releases appear in the general search results as well. (Beyond Ink managing partner Anne) Kennedy also pointed out, “When your press release ranks well in a search engine, you control more real estate on the search results page. That’s one more spot your competition won’t get.”

The article does reference blogs. Thirty-nine percent of the top 20 search listings for brands appearing in the BusinessWeek 100 brands listing in July 2005 “were derived from consumer-generated media such as blogs.” Thirty-nine percent is impressive, but in no way suggests blogs can replace press releases and the other channels that represent 69% of search engine results.