Writing Press Releases: Key Technical Aspects to Get Right

A press release has always had two jobs: tell a busy journalist something worth covering, and do it in a format they can use without having to rewrite it. That much hasn’t changed in decades. What has changed is the audience reading it. Alongside reporters and editors, press releases are now increasingly scanned, indexed and quoted directly by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. Getting the story right is still the foundation, but getting the technical execution right is what decides whether that story ever reaches anyone at all.

This article walks through the practical, technical decisions that shape whether a press release performs: how it should be structured, whether it needs multimedia, which voice to write in, how to handle links responsibly, and how to make sure both human readers and AI systems can find and trust it.

What Is the Correct Format for a Press Release?

A press release follows a fairly fixed seven-part structure: headline, dateline, lead paragraph, body copy, one or two quotes, a boilerplate, and media contact details. This format exists because it mirrors how journalists have been trained to scan a document for decades, using what’s known as the “inverted pyramid” wherein the most newsworthy information sits at the top, with supporting detail and background trailing off underneath it.

Each element carries its own technical requirements:

• Dateline: Opens the lead paragraph and follows a fixed convention — city, state or region, and date, followed by a dash and the first sentence of the story.
• Lead paragraph: Carries most of the weight. In roughly fifty to seventy-five words, it needs to answer the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why. The information must be clear enough that a reader who stops there still understands the story. Most people never make it past the first couple of paragraphs, so nothing essential should be held back for later.
• Body copy: Expands on the lead using the same descending order of importance, typically in short paragraphs of three or four sentences, with one clear fact leading each paragraph.
• Quote(s): A well-placed quote, ideally from a company spokesperson and, where possible, a second voice such as a partner or customer, adds a human, usable soundbite that a journalist can lift directly into their own piece without needing to contact anyone.
• Boilerplate: A short standing paragraph beginning “About [Company Name]” that gives context on the organisation, closing out the release.
• Media contact: A dedicated contact block so a journalist can follow up quickly.

How Long Should a Press Release Be?

As a general guide, a press release should land somewhere between 300 and 500 words. Industry surveys of journalists consistently show a strong preference for shorter releases, with a clear majority favouring anything under 400 words. Anything much longer risks burying the news itself; anything much shorter often fails to give a journalist or an AI system summarising the story  enough substantiated detail to work with.

Length should flex slightly depending on complexity. A straightforward personnel announcement can sit comfortably at the lower end of that range, while a funding round or product launch with several supporting data points may justify pushing towards 500 words. The discipline to apply either way is the same: every paragraph should contain one clear, necessary fact, not a restatement of something already said elsewhere in the release.

Using Active vs Passive Voice for Press Releases

Active voice should be the default. In an active sentence, the subject performs the action — “the company launched a new product” — which reads as direct, confident and easy to process at speed. Passive voice shifts the emphasis onto the action or the recipient instead of the doer — “a new product was launched by the company” — which tends to soften the message and slow the reader down. Since journalists and AI systems alike are scanning for clear, attributable claims, active voice generally serves a press release better throughout.

That said, passive voice isn’t a mistake to be eliminated on sight. It has legitimate, occasional uses: when the object of a sentence is genuinely more newsworthy than whoever performed the action, when a headline convention calls for it, or when a statement needs to be handled with more care, such as in a sensitive or crisis-related announcement. The goal isn’t to ban passive voice outright, but to default to active voice and reserve passive constructions for moments where they’re doing a specific job.

Do Press Releases Need Photos or Video?

Press releases benefit a lot from having multimedia, and the effect is measurable. Releases that include visual elements are considerably more likely to be picked up by media outlets than text-only versions, with industry estimates putting the uplift at somewhere around 45%. Journalists are working against the clock, and a release that arrives with usable assets attached removes a step they would otherwise have to chase down themselves.

The most effective visuals are functional rather than decorative: product shots from multiple angles, executive headshots, event photography, charts or infographics that clarify a data point, and a high-resolution company logo. Everything should be clearly labelled and supplied at print-ready resolution (300 DPI is a sensible minimum) so an editor doesn’t need to come back and ask what they’re looking at.

Video works a little differently. It’s best kept brief and purpose-led, whether that’s a product demonstration or a short message from leadership, since its real value is explaining something faster or more memorably than text can. Instead of uploading heavy files directly to a server, it is better to host videos through a platform such as YouTube or Wistia for speed and shareability, but also keep a version on your own site so visitors aren’t sent elsewhere to watch it. Wherever the video sits, link to it directly within the first paragraph of the release rather than leaving it buried at the bottom.

How Many Links Should a Press Release Have, and Should They Be Nofollow?

Keep the number of links modest, and treat them as nofollow by default. Search engines, and Google in particular, class press releases in much the same category as paid advertising when it comes to link value. Anything that looks like an attempt to pass search authority through a press release — several links pointing at one domain, or anchor text stuffed with target keywords — is flagged as an unnatural pattern and can work against the site it’s meant to help.

The safer approach is to link sparingly, use nofollow attributes on those links, and choose anchor text that reads naturally: your brand name, a plain call such as “read more”, or a short, genuinely descriptive phrase of around two to five words, rather than a keyword phrase repeated across every link. Where more than one link appears, give them room to breathe rather than clustering several into a single sentence. None of this reduces the release’s real value — the links that matter most are the ones a journalist adds voluntarily once they’ve decided your story is worth covering, and those links carry far more weight than anything embedded in the original release ever could.

How to Make a Press Release Easy to Find in Google Search

Discoverability starts with restraint rather than keyword density. A headline should include the terms a reader might realistically search for, but phrased the way a person would actually write or speak them, not stitched together for algorithmic effect. Keeping headlines to roughly seventy to a hundred and ten characters helps them display in full across Google News and social platforms rather than being cut off mid-sentence.

Publishing the release on an owned newsroom page, rather than relying solely on a wire distribution service, gives far more control over how it’s indexed and how long it remains discoverable. It also allows for proper on-page structure — clear headings, a logical hierarchy, and a URL that matches the story — all of which help both search engines and readers understand what they’re looking at within seconds. The same restraint that applies to linking applies here too: an over-optimised, keyword-heavy release reads as unnatural to search engines just as it does to a person, and can quietly work against the coverage it’s meant to earn.

How to Get a Press Release Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Other AI Tools

Getting a press release cited by an AI system depends on how easy it is to extract information from. That starts with the opening paragraph, which should contain at least one specific, verifiable fact that stands on its own, since AI tools often pull information at the section or paragraph level rather than reading a piece in full. The same logic applies throughout—a release dense with concrete detail (figures, dates, named sources) is far more usable to a model than one built from broad, scene-setting language.

Tone also matters more than most releases account for. Analysis of press releases that do and don’t get cited by AI systems points to one consistent pattern: the ones that get quoted lean noticeably more on objective, factual statements, while the ones that get skipped lean on promotional language and use phrases like “industry-leading” or “revolutionary” that carry no verifiable content. AI systems appear to treat that kind of language as noise and simply filter around it.

Quotes deserve particular attention here, since they are one of the highest-leverage elements in a release built for AI citation but only when they carry a specific, citable claim rather than generic enthusiasm. A line expressing excitement about a partnership gives an AI system nothing to extract; a line that states a concrete outcome or figure gives it something worth quoting directly. Beneath all of this sits the technical groundwork: structured data markup (schema.org’s NewsArticle format, for example) helps AI systems and search engines alike verify and categorise the content correctly, and confirming that AI crawlers aren’t inadvertently blocked is a small technical check that’s easy to overlook and costly to miss.

Precision Decides Who Sees Your Story

The fundamentals of a press release haven’t moved much in a century, but the standard for technical execution has never been higher. A well-structured, factually dense, sensibly linked release with the right multimedia attached now has to satisfy a journalist scanning it in under ten seconds and an AI system extracting facts from it in milliseconds — and increasingly, one leads to the other. Getting the technical details right isn’t a box-ticking exercise; it’s what determines whether your announcement is read, picked up, and repeated, or simply passed over.

If you’d rather have a team that lives and breathes these technical details handle it for you, get in touch with us to talk through your next release.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What’s the single most important part of a press release to get right?

The lead paragraph. If it doesn’t answer who, what, when, where and why within the first few sentences, most readers — human or AI — won’t get far enough to find the rest of the story.

2. Is it ever acceptable to write a press release in passive voice?

Occasionally, yes. Passive voice can be useful when the object of a sentence is more newsworthy than the person or organisation behind it, or when a statement needs to be handled more carefully, such as in a sensitive announcement. As a general rule, though, active voice should be the default.

3. Do I need a professional photographer for press release images?

Not necessarily, but the images do need to be functional and high-resolution. Product shots, executive headshots and event photography taken with reasonable care and equipment are usually sufficient, provided they’re clearly labelled and supplied at print-ready quality.

4. Why should links in a press release be nofollow?

Search engines treat press releases similarly to paid advertising for the purposes of link value, and flag heavily optimised or keyword-stuffed links as unnatural. Using nofollow links and natural anchor text keeps a release compliant with search engine guidelines without reducing its news value.

5. How is writing for AI citation different from writing for SEO?

Search engine optimisation is largely about matching search intent and earning a ranking position. Optimising for AI citation is about structuring content so a model can extract a fact cleanly — specific figures, dates and quotable statements set out plainly, with promotional language kept to a minimum.

6. How often should a company’s boilerplate be updated?

It should stay broadly consistent between releases so it reads as a stable, trustworthy description of the organisation, but it’s worth revisiting periodically — after a milestone, a rebrand, or significant growth — to keep it accurate.