If yes, your business is structured for a pre-Internet world, and unfortunately this means you will always be at a disadvantage compared to agile competitors designed to take advantage of a connected society.  An inescapable truth is the web rewards companies (and people) that are nimble.

People interact deepest with thoughts and ideas that have character and personality.  And if there is one thing that removes this, it is the superfluous layers that design by committee creates.  It rips the personality from content piece by piece as it passes though each filter, and is the antithesis of agility and what makes for compelling communications.

With social media topping the most popular digital marketing tactics of 2009, there are many challenges and opportunities for marketers.  Concurrently one of the largest challenges and opportunities is the idea of being agile, a quality that defines brands and individuals who have leveraged the web to become industry leaders.  This runs counter to the past - decades of marketing in a pre-digital world have created unnecessary redundancies, since previous generations of communications tools and processes moved slowly by comparison of what we have today.

As we see businesses and marketing ideas designed to take advantage of new systems permeate our world, the previous models become more dated and disrupted.  This is the natural order of things in a society undergoing changing technology and communications trends at an accelerated pace.

What hasn’t changed is that share of voice matters as much, perhaps more than ever.  Right now, it’s being siphoned from the overly cautious to those able and confident enough to move effortlessly.  Survival for marketing professionals depends on their ability to find a way to work around the artificial barriers that can’t be removed and carve out a path of least resistance for their external messages.  In essence, they need to become more agile.  Companies that attain influence in the social web are defined by this.

Fresh content only happens as a by-product of being agile

As Lee previously noted regarding developing a social media and SEO friendly website, fresh content is an essential element of popular sites:

To play the search and social media game, a web site must be in the content publishing business. Search engines and participants of the social web respond favorably to the signals created from frequent updates.  Participation in off site social channels can be brought into the corporate web site through RSS or widgets providing web site visitors access to additional forms of information and interaction with the company.

Consistency with publishing fresh content - without sacrificing quality - benefits both social media and SEO.  More content simply means more potential entry points from the engines and consistent publishing plays naturally into building a brand and subscriber base in the social web.  You don’t achieve consistency and quality in a timely manner without agility.

Every company is now a media company

As more businesses realize the truth, that every company is now a media company, the number of organizational entities contributing content to the web will continue to increase.  Yet as the supply of content increases, the aggregate amount of attention available remains static, meaning the fight for attention is an aggressive, daily battle across the spectrum of niches.

Media companies, businesses and individuals are all vying for that finite amount of attention, and the most responsive and active (with a purpose, of course) reap the traffic, links and attention of the social web.  Thinking like a new media company - being agile and quick to adapt, is the right mindset for success.

Being agile let’s you jump on opportunities at the intersection of digital PR and SEO

Capturing search traffic from journalists, bloggers and other web influencers by responding and reacting to hot news items in your industry is only possible if you’re able to move your responses quickly from draft to publish status.  You’ll get on the radar of journalists covering a trend story this way before the competition.  According to a recent survey from the Arketi Group:

When asked how journalists use the Internet:

• 95 percent say search (Google, Yahoo!, etc.)
• 92 percent say reading news
• 92 percent say emailing
• 89 percent say finding story ideas
• 87 percent say finding news sources
• 75 percent say reading blogs
• 64 percent say watching webinars or webcasts
• 61 percent say watching YouTube
• 59 percent say social networks

Nearly all journalists use search as a research tool for discovering content related to their story.  The very real result of being an agile web publisher is gaining visibility amongst reporters, which leads to placement as an expert within a story and puts you on the path to develop a relationship with that reporter as a reliable source of information. It’s an area that has been proven time and time again to be true - traditional media, social media and SEO are interconnected in a symbiotic fashion and being weaved together tighter daily.

Hedging negativity

A few companies have been able to prevent a groundswell against their brands by being free to respond directly to consumers and rectify negative situations before they reached that unstoppable tipping point several unfortunate companies have experienced.  So agility doesn’t just help build your brand, it’s also a factor in social media reputation management.

As the Internet shifts into real-time, the advantage of even being slightly more agile goes up

What makes real-time compelling is the immediacy of information, and consumers are being trained to demand content from media, businesses and each other instantaneously.  Agility is the only option here - and if you can become even slightly more agile than competitors, you can position yourself ahead of them with ideas, products and content time and time again.

Conclusion

Agility mixed with the right content marketing strategy and long-term planning is a surefire formula for success, and is the mindset we’re excited to see more and more companies and forward-thinking marketers embrace.  Enabled by the web, individuals have long used the fact that they are able to be more agile than media to level the playing field with traditional gatekeepers.  Now savvy marketers are doing the same thing for their clients and companies.  Embrace agility from the top down and watch your social marketing efforts soar.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Influencing The Social Web: Agility Is A Factor | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Topics during these events will emphasize the practice areas of our agency: Search Marketing, Online Public Relations and Social Media Marketing. Locations will range from New York to San Francisco to Minneapolis.

May 19: Media Relations Summit, Crowne Plaze Hotel in NYC (event info)

4:30 pm: Mastering SEO, Google AdWords and Other Search Tools to Increase Visibility
If you’re ready to vault your website, landing pages, corporate videos, blogs, press releases, and online newsroom into the top of the search rankings, take in this one-hour bootcamp. You’ll learn all the latest tools, tips and tricks for making Google and Yahoo love you.

Panelists:  Howie Jacobson, Consultant/Author, “Google Ad Words for Dummies”, Bill Barnes, EVP, Business Development, Enquiro and Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing 

Tweetup Monday 5/18

May 28-9:  Private Company Training Engagement, San Francisco (Contact TopRank for our on-site training services)

• Social Media Monitoring and Brand Positioning
  
• Search Engine Optimization Skills for Corporate Marketing & Public Relations
  
• Social Media Roadmap: Strategies and Tactics for Large Organizations

Presenters: Susan Misukanis, President, Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manger, Lee Odden, CEO (All from TopRank Online Marketing)

Tweetup Friday 5/29, location TBD 

June 2: ClickZ Online Marketing Summit, The Depot in Minneapolis (event info)

3:30 pm: Twitter and Advanced Blog Strategies
The Social Media Road Map:  Many companies are jumping off the cliff of Social Media, while others fear directly engaging customers.  Learn how to strategically align your marketing objectives with long-term social media strategies that work.

4:40 pm: Big Brands, Big Plans Panel
This is the highlight of the day… join a  round-table panel comprised of  the world’s leading brands and practitioners and get the inside scoop on how leading brands are driving success through social media, SEO, websites, and testing, and how you can apply these principles to your own initiatives. 

Panelists: Jeanniey Mullen, CMO Zinio, Founder of Email Experience Council, Kevin G. Espinosa, eBusiness Platform Manager, Caterpillar Inc., Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing, Keith Dieruf, Manager, Online Marketing, Ameriprise Financial, Matt McGowan, Vice President of Marketing and Publisher, ClickZ

Tweetup - meetup 6/2

June 4-5:  Social Media Smarts, DMA Seminar Facility, NYC (event inf0)

9:00am - 5:00pm Introduction to the Intersection of SEO and the Social Web Through Strategy, Tools and Tactics
Intensive, 2 day workshop will help companies better understand the social web and how social media and SEO can help increase brand awareness, improve customer relationships and compliment both PR and marketing efforts at growing business.

Tweetup June 4, location TBD

June 10: PRNews Webinar (event info)

1:30pm (EST):  Boosting Your Bottom Line with Online News & Other Cost-Effective PR Tactics 

From savvy email marketing campaigns to press releases that attract media attention, there are simple, cost-effective strategies that will help you increase revenue. This webinar promises insight from a mix of expert practitioners in a wide range of areas including: 

• How to generate buzz and word of mouth around your small business
• Integrating PR efforts with marketing and advertising to increase sales
• Driving traffic to your website through search engines
• Building a strong community around your brand
• PR’s role in uncovering customers’ needs for new products/services
• Getting buzz and coverage among bloggers and citizen journalists
• Best/worst tactics for holding media or customer events for your business
• How to effectively leverage Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & MySpace
• Blogs and Video sites: what you need to know
• Pitch your stories to bloggers and to the Twitter community
• Writing social media press releases that work
• Conducting keyword research and finding the keyword sweet spot
• Optimizing PR content online, posting it and building reciprocal links
• Linking techniques: from blogs to social networking pages
• Identifying the most popular search terms for your campaigns
• SEM tools, resources and SEM for-hire checklists
• Email marketing Do’s and Don’ts

Panelists: Idill Cakim Vice President, Golin Harris, Sally Falkow Principal, ExpansionPlus & Senior Fellow Society for New Communications Research, Greg Jarboe President, SEO-PR, Lee Odden CEO, TopRank Online Marketing, Sophie Shiatis
Vice President Ecommerce, PRWeb, Moderator: Courtney Barnes Editor, PR News

If you’re attending any of these events and you would like to connect, please @ or DM on Twitter: @leeodden

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Learn SEO, Social Media, Digital PR from TopRank | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Measuring the effect of SEO for Public Relations benefits should start with well defined outcomes. To get a good handle on SEO effectiveness, it’s important to match the purpose for the effort with specific metrics.  For example, if improving brand visibility is a goal, then documenting brand mentions in connection with news & PR content at regular intervals can demonstrate the effect of content promotion and link building. 

Online PR metrics and tools often include:

• News wire service metrics (see screen capture below)
• Web analytics for landing pages and web site
• Google and Yahoo alerts
• Monitor blog search engines (via RSS)
• Press release landing page conversion tracking
• Social media monitoring
• Inbound links
• Pickups on blogs
• Pickups on other web sites & online publications
• News and Standard Search Engine Rankings
• Conversions: Less likely sales, more likely white paper downloads, webinar signups, newsletter subscriptions, demos, etc

As I’ve mentioned, the specific metrics and tools to use should match the news content being optimized and it’s purpose. For example, a press release that is keyword optimized and announcing a promotional offer of some kind, should have tracking codes added to the links embedded in the release. Those links should point to landing pages designed to convert visitors from the press release to the desired outcome. Ranking is not a worthwhile metric in this case but conversions are.

Capturing various measures and key performance indicators isn’t enough to gain support for optimizing news content in many organizations.  These efforts belong within the Public Relations effort and should emphasize goals consistent with PR objectives. Sometimes it takes a little creative packaging of analytics to help other departments or upstream executives “get” the value of  optimizing PR content for search.

Here are a few tactics to use in order to sell the value of SEO within a PR effort:

• Show competitor social search visibility vs client/company
• Show competitor’s optimized news content ranking in various types of search engines where the company/client is not (and probably should be)
• Research a keyword glossary and run a ranking report on those phrases. Show the lack of search visibility for what search audiences are actually looking for, relevant to the business
• Run a test of a few news items, whether they be blog posts, press releases or a digital asset like video. Take a benchmark measurement first and then show progress.
• Set keyword ranking goals for news content and estimate the cost to achieve the same goals with PPC advertising over time. Demonstrate the cost of organic search traffic vs PPC traffic.  

If you can’t get budget approval for an overall search campaign as part of specific PR efforts, then using a competitive example or a small scale test might be enough to demonstrate the value of incorporating SEO with Public Relations.

That wraps up our series of posts on Top Ten SEO Tips for News and PR where you can find an index of all 10 posts as well as the PowerPoint deck that inspired it.

Please share your opinions on the series. Not just the content and whether it’s useful, but the the format of posting a themed series. Did you like the series? Was 10 posts too many?  Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Measuring the Value of Search Optimized PR | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The opportunity for Public Relations is to understand that leveraging social media as a distribution channel to attract buzz and earn links is as important as keyword optimization of social media content to improve visibility on standard search engines.  Simply put: SEO and Social Media go together like peas and carrots.

The nature of the social web encourages participation: sharing, voting, commenting and linking. Popular social content gets exposure, traffic and can result in a substantial number of relevant inbound links.  Keyword relevancy plus aboundant inbound links to content equals improved search engine visibility. Whatever keywords that are used to describe optimized news content that becomes popular within social channels like news, bookmarking and media sharing are what that content will tend to rank highly on in standard search engines.

 The lesson for Public Relations is to ensure news content is not only search engine friendly, but social media friendly.

Social interactions and media sharing amongst social network participants tend to create the kind of content that can improve a brand’s visibility within search results through profiles, videos, blog posts, or other media. There’s no reason the same kinds of activities can’t be deployed by Public Relations practitioners.  However, this does not mean pushing standard press releases or media relations pitches to social networks, news and media sharing sites. They key to news content on the social web is participation first and a focus on packaging information in useful, creative ways.

Making optimized news content “social media friendly” can be a matter of adding social features such as RSS feeds, bookmarking, “Tweet this” and social news submission links. Adding social features to a press release might be another way of saying “Social Media Press Release” but it may not be necessary to go that far in a format change to gain similar effects. It’s best to leverage both traditional and social formats for news releases and measure what’s working and what’s not.

Leveraging SEO and Social Media for PR benefit is meaningful for reaching journalists and consumers alike. In a 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey by TopRank, 91% of respondents reported using standard search engines to perform activities such as research companies, past media coverage and subject matter experts.  In the same survey, 64% reported using social networks, 55% use blogs and 50% use Wikis as social media tools.

Here is one editor’s story of using both standard and social search which resulted in media coverage:

“I was writing a column about the planned partnership between Google and Yahoo.”

 “I tracked down potential sources first using Google and LinkedIn, and came across a white paper prepared by a senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute.”

 “While I could not easily find an e-mail address, I went to Facebook where I located him, then sent a message. He replied and we followed up with a phone interview.”

The increased use of search and social media both by the media and by end consumers should motivate PR professionals to better understand the digital PR strategies and mechanics of successful SEO and social web participation.  Keyword optimize social content so it’s more easily discovered within social search and at the same time, leverage social media channels to promote content that can earn links, increasing visibility on standard search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Live.com.

For more insights on SEO and social media, visit these posts.

• Social Media & SEO Tips
• Improve PR with SEO and Social Media
• SEO Social Media Roadmap

This is #9 in a series of ten posts about leveraging search engine optimization with public relations. Read on for our 10th and final post in the series: “Measuring & selling the value of SEO in a Public Relations Environment“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Making News Content Search & Social Media Friendly | 4 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Besides content optimization and making sure a site’s news pages and digital assets can be found and indexed, attracting relevant inbound links is the next most important tactic for improving search engine performance of Public Relations related content.

There are literally hundreds of ways to acquire good links. There are even more ways to acquire bad links, so knowing the difference can be important. Read more about that below. But first, we’ll describe some general guidelines for news content link building.

Whenever PR professionals execute digital communications, there should be links included in those messages. The best content in the world is unlikely to rank well in search engines if there are no links pointing in. It is essential that link sources (whoever you’re pitching stories to) are informed about the content so they know to link to it. Don’t just broadcast links either, give a reason why there should be a link and make it easy to do so.

 News content creation, optimization and ongoing promotion are all critical for successful SEO efforts.  Promoting optimized content makes potential link sources aware and increases the likelhood of link acquisition for news content.   Where should you include links?  Start with emails pitches, press releases, newsrooms and any other news content being published to the web.

Including full URL links in press releases can often result in an added bonus for link bulding efforts because some content management systems that copy press releases as content from newswire feeds will convert full URLs to a hyper link, but ignore or strip out anchor text links. Making it easy for readers of news content on blogs, newsrooms or elsewhere on the company web site to save, bookmark and share can also add to the link building effort. 

General linking guidelines for news content:

• Earn links with great content
• Promote optimized news content on social networks, vial email, RSS and within past media coverage
• Link up with marketing and business partners
• Include links in pitches and other news content promotion
• Cross link internally
• Embed anchor text and full URL links in news releases
• Social bookmark pickups

Many online mainstream news publications do not link out, but some do and blogs associated with online publications tend to be a little more liberal about outbound links. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of knowing to ask. When a media relations effort results in confirmation that a company, product or spokesperson will be included in a story, be sure to ask if the journalist would link to a helpful resource on the company site. Don’t just ask for the link, but provide something useful to link to. Many times a simple request and having a useful resource can result in the highest quality links you could ask for.

When promoting news content on social media sites (we’ll be covering SEO, PR and Social Media in our next post) it’s important that you’re sharing news content and that it offers unique and/or distinct value. Submitting press releases to social news sites for example, is rarely going to be productive as a way to attract positive attention within the social community. Social communities tend to distrust formal marketing communications. They do respond well to creative, clever and useful ways to communicate information and ideas that are not formal or overtly trying to “sell” something.

For an abundance of ideas on link building for traffic and SEO benefit, see these link building resources.

Have you found useful ways of attracting links to news content such as press releases, newsrooms and corporate communications? 

We’re in the home stretch of our series on Public Relations and SEO. Next up is post #9 of 10: “SEO and Social Media Promotions with News Content“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Link Building Tips for News SEO | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Any content that is published to the web can be optimzed for search and that includes online newsrooms. We prefer to implement online newsrooms with blog software, because of the content management features and inherent search engine benefifts. Automatic RSS feed creation is also a benefit.

Newsrooms should offer easy to find contact information as well as a content categorization scheme that considers keywords as part of the taxonomy. Organizing press releases by date isn’t very useful for searchers. Archiving press releases and other content within the newsroom by categories, chronologically as well as by keyword tag (as in folksonomy, not meta keyword tag) can be quite useful to readers as well as search engines.

SEO and user friendly features of an online newsroom include:

Optimizing an online newsroom is similar to optimizing other types of web content. It’s important to consider the audience whether it’s members of the media, industry analysts or consumers and make sure you’re publishing content that meets their needs. Here’s a newsroom SEO checklist assuming a content management system or blog is being used to host and manage newsroom content:

• Research a keyword glossary
• Keyword optimize title tags (dynamic AND hard coded)
• Keywords optimize category names
• Use keywords in document titles, directory names, file names
• Add social links: make it easy fo readers to bookmark and share newsroom content
• Include an optimized RSS feed to facilitate syndication and ease of discoverability within RSS search engines like Google Blog Search
• Optimize digital assets: images, video and audio as well as other file formats: MS Office docs & PDF

Publishing content to a newsroom typically follows a process. To realize the SEO benefits in the most efficient way, make sure those responsible for adding content are trained on basic SEO and include keyword optimization as part of the newsroom update process. 

Besides keyword optimization, it will be important to attract links to the newsroom from other web sites. If the newsroom is managed by blog software, then it can be submitted to a list of blog directories. It can be linked to within press releases distributed through wire services and included in links published on social web sites. Interesting and useful content that has the best exposure will attract the most links that matter.

Besides using blog software for online newsrooms, many content management systems will support newsroom functionality. You can also purchase hosted newsroom services through companies like: Vocus, TEKgroup International, NewsCactus, iPressroom, PRWeb or a marketwire social media newsroom.

This is post #7 in a series of ten about the intersection of public relations and search engine optimization, “Top Ten SEO Tips for PR“. Our next post is “Link Building Fundamentals for News Content“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Multiple studies have documented that consumers and journalists are searching for and reading press releases. Optimizing press releases for a specific audience makes them easier to find and therefore, more of an asset for communicating news and attracting traffic to the company web site.  As a result, it makes sense for marketing and PR practitioners alike to understand how to make press release content easier to find.

What Process Should You Follow to Optimize Press Releases? Here’s a useful checklist:

• Clearly define the goal and target audience of the release
• Research keyword phrases (1-2 per release)
• Add phrases to the title, sub heading and body copy
• Use keyword phrases when linking to landing pages or other corporate web site pages - not “click here”
• Add media to the release (images, video, audio) as well as alternative formats of the release (MS Word, PDF)
• To count conversions, use tracking codes in the URLs that point from the press release to landing pages
• Post the release to the company online newsroom
• Write a blog post version of the announcement and include a link to the press release
• Distribute the release via a wire service such as PRWeb, Marketwire, PRNewswire or Business Wire
• Optional: create and distribute a social media version of the press release
• Encourage bookmarking of press release pickups
• Monitor release rankings, social mentions, traffic & outcomes

The press releases that are hosted by the wire service offer a nominal amount of direct SEO value because they are new pages without link popularity. However, those releases are syndicated to other search channels like news search engines and can rank well there based on other factors like keyword placement within the release and the link popularity of the site that filters down to the release level.

Press releases are often copied with links embedded into other news web sites and blogs as content and can result in direct traffic as well as links that are detected by search engines. Search engines count and value links as part of the ranking process. A single press release may result in 10 new inbound links or 1,000. It depends on the content and the reach. Compelling content typically attracts more links.

I cannot emphasize enough that it’s important that press releases are optimized for people first and search engines second. A highly ranked press release is of little value if it does not make sense to a person reading it. Few people will link to or pass along a press release that reads as if it were “optimized” for keyword phrases.

The single most important place to add keywords in a press release is in the title tag as shown in the image above. That same text is displayed at the top of the browser and is used as the hyperlinked title in the search results.

For more information on press release optimization, visit these previous posts:

• Press Release SEO Tips from PRNewswire, Business Wire, Marketwire & PRWeb
• Press Releases as Marketing Tools
• 4 Tips for Getting PR Approval on Optimized Press Releases
• Lowdown on Press Release Optimization

This is the 6th post in a series of ten on optimizing content for Public Relations. Be sure to visit us tomorrow for post #7 “Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Essential Press Release Optimization Tips | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Examples of PR content that can be optimized include:

• Press releases
• Letters to the editor
• Online newsrooms
• Media kits
• Corporate blogs
• White papers
• Webinars/demos
• Newsletters
• Real world interviews published digitally

The opportunity to optimize PR generated content extends beyond text to digital assets ranging from audio, to images to video. Digital assets can be optimized and promoted for purposes outside of PR, with benefits such as link building for SEO.

Managing the implementation of Search Engine Optimization principles with content created by PR firms or internal PR staff involves the creation and maintenance of keyword glossaries from which to pick phrases for optimization as well as best practices applied to content creation processs. We’ll cover the business of picking the best keywords and creating a keyword glossary in an upcoming post.

Establishing search analytics reporting mechanisms to gauage effectiveness of SEO efforts as well as to provide feedback is as essential as is ongoing training to stay current with SEO tactics. Measuring the effectiveness of optimizing PR based content is also a topic we’ll cover in this series.

The bottom line for PR professionals that want to take advantage of SEO tactics to extend the reach and visibility of content via search, is to take inventory of the content being  published digitally – in all formats. Include keyword optimization in content planning, creation and publishing. Make it part of the company PR content creation and promotion process.

Need more info on PR tactics that affect search engine optimization and vice versa? Check out this Using news to drive SEO post.

This post is #2 in a series of ten, “Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals“. Read on for the next post which covers, “When is PPC better than SEO for PR?“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Public Relations Activities That Affect SEO | 10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

“If Ihad to pick only one thing to do with my web site to improve it’s search engine visibility, what would it be?”

It’s a question that comes up often and most people asking it expect that there’s one right answer. The trouble is, as web sites and situations are different, so is the “just one thing” answer. It really depends on the situation.

Picture this: A web site with 10,000 pages, 6 years old, 25,000 inbound links and publishes new content daily. Yet the site gets less than 5% of all traffic via organic search. Why might that be?

The “one thing” could be navigation that blocks search engine crawlers from finding substantial portions of the site’s content. It could be that the first 40 or 50 characters of each title tag is hard coded with the site name and nothing else or not title tags at all. It could be many things. 

The challenge is to find out what the issue is, or more likely, what the numerous “things” are, that all contribute collectively to poor performance in search engines. Then, recommend a course of action to fix and maintain.

All that said, if I HAD to pick one thing, it would be to make sure a site is crawlable by search engine spiders. If a search engine can’t find the content, it doesn’t matter whether you use keywords in the right places and frequency, execute internal links perfectly or any other tactic. The content that can’t be crawled, simply won’t be included in search results. At least not in a meaninful or useful way.

Solving such a problem, if it exists, will not only help PR and news related content, but overall company web site visibility.

To see if a site is properly indexed by search engines, the site webmaster can make some comparisons between the known number of pages being published to the web and the actual number of pages found on a search engine such as Google. In addition to that, the site could be validated via Google’s Webmaster Tools which would then provide insight into any crawling errors by Googlebot, Google’s software that visits web sites to supply content for Google’s search results.

Most PR professionals are not in a position to be assessing the health of the web hosting server, content management system, templates or database that make the corporate site work. Ensuring a web site is being properly crawled and indexed should be handled by properly trained and experienced staff.

To help convince those staff to do this kind of work, be sure to check out the following articles on making your web site crawler friendly visit “Ensure Your Site Is Crawlable“, “SEO Tip: Let the Spider Crawl” and “6 Tips for Google Webmaster Tools“.

This post is the first Basic SEO Tip for PR practitioners in a series of 10, “Top Ten SEO Tactics for PR Professionals” to be published over the next 2 weeks. Read on for the next post, “PR tactics that affect SEO“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SEO Tactics For PR: If I Could Only Do One Thing… | 15 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Driven by customers and the consequences of not doing so, the public relations industry has warmed in recent years to the power of search engine optimization for growing the impact of pull based PR efforts.

Now more than ever, journalists, bloggers and industry influentials use search engines to find subject matter experts, research companies, locate past media coverage and to track topical trends. In fact, a recent survey on journalists’ use of search by TopRank reports that 91% of those journalists, reporters and editors surveyed use search engines to do their jobs.

Traditionally, search engine optimization efforts have been managed by corporate marketing departments – either in-house or through an outside agency. However, will all the opportunities to create value in the form of increased online brand visibility, reputation management and internet based media coverage, public relations deserves a seat at the corporate SEO table.

To achieve that, it’s important that PR professionals understand the foundation of SEO tactics as well as the business benefits for PR efforts as well as to the larger organization.  The upcoming series of posts will outline SEO and PR tactics with the most impact, how to choose the best keywords, on page SEO and link building best practices as well as measuring the value of SEO to public relations efforts. It will also cover when PPC is a better fit than SEO, how to combine SEO and social media promotions and the finer points of selling the benefits of SEO to decision makers.

Corporate web site optimization projects require an equal measure of search engine knowledge, understanding of corporate messaging and ability to appreciate and acquire links from credible sources. By learning the fundamentals of SEO and the possible impact on public relations effectiveness, PR departments can demonstrate their competitive advantage.

To that end, here is the schedule of SEO for Public Relations posts that I’ll be doing in the coming weeks:

Keep in mind that while these explanations and examples will be centered around PR and news content, many of the SEO  and social media marketing tactics can be applied to any kind of content whether it be job listings, FAQ/Knowledge Base info or products/services. As each article is posted, I’ll link to it from the list above.

Here is the PowerPoint Presentation:

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals | 11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

[Note from Lee: I edited some of these so any of these that are bad would be my fault. The good Haikus are all Dana and Ashley.]

Search Engine Optimization

Social Media

Blog Marketing

Online PR

Email Marketing

Feel free to share your own Haiku or any other search-inspired poetry, and keep the creative juices flowing!

[Photo credits go to: shapeshift, TahoeSunsets, Juliana S. ]

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Internet Marketing Haikus from TopRank | 8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Review of the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide from Marketingsherpa

A new report on social media has been released from Marketingsherpa with Senior Analyst, Sergio Balegno, as lead author.  Over 1,800 marketing and PR professionals responded to the survey resulting in one of the most complete, data supported guides on social media published to date.

There are numerous books, seminars and “experts” touting social media advice for marketing and PR professionals. Much of that advice is based on experience and even more is based on wishful thinking. This report takes a structured approach to data collection and analysis offering readers the advantage of understanding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to social media marketing and PR.

The guide is unique in that it provides insight for both marketing and public relations and is divided into 5 sections:

• Emerging state of social media marketing & PR
• Planning for social media with strategic goals and tactics
• Social media and public relations
• Social media metrics and budgets
• Web 2.0 and social media

The guide also includes a special section, “Nine Steps to Social Marketing Success” giving a specific sequence of tasks for marketers and PR professionals to follow, much like a social media blueprint. What’s not to like about practical, “act on it now” advice?

As an Internet marketing agency that has been providing companies with advice on social media advice (starting with business blogs in 2004), there is a particular appreciation for good information sources, especially those driven by data more than theory. An informed customer gets more value from experienced consulting and can often do a better job of implementation.

Social media isn’t something companies “do”, it’s something they “are”.

Speaking of data, the survey results showed that 76% of respondents agreed that social media is changing the way their companies communicate.  Marketers are backing up that perspective with budgets, even during the economic downturn. In fact, for 2009, social media and email marketing were the only 2 tactics where companies planned on increasing spending.

With social media a hot topic in every major business publication, blog and conference, companies are motivated yet mystified about where the social web fits within their marketing communications strategies.  They’re also wondering whether their companies are a fit for social media engagement. The Marketingsherpa survey revealed that the biggest barriers to social media adoption by companies are a lack of knowledgable staff and the ability to measure ROI.

“Know it alls”, know very little. Interestingly, 2/3 of respondents that have not used social media marketing or PR indicated that they were very or somewhat knowledgeable. Clearly, there’s a disconnect between being familiar with a concept and having expertise to execute effectively.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. There is a common perception that social media is “free” but the reality is that it’s time consuming, carrying substantial costs for learning curve and labor.  Fixing your own car is free too, but how much sense does it make to figure that out compared to using a manual/guide or better yet, a mechanic?

Many, but not all, situations involving social media are not that different. Effective adoption can be facilitated by companies or consultants that have actual experience and expertise, especially when it comes to developing a social media roadmap.

This notion was supported by the survey which reported that social media specialists are more likely to accomplish goals than in-house teams.  Specifically, social media specialists implement effectively 69% of the time vs in-house marketing PR team 58% of the time.

Easier to measure, harder to get results. Another particularly surprising result from the Marketingsherpa suvey was that the most measurable social media tactics tend to be the least effective. Social media advertising is an example of a highly measurable tactic that has yet to result in substantial ROI. Marketers that are obsessed with tracking social media results quantitatively, often miss the point. They may find themselves using less effective social media tactics simply because they are more measurable in way they are familiar with, instead of emphasizing the relationship, influence and word of mouth capabilities.

Branding loves social media. Survey respondents indicated that achieving branding goals was the most effective use of social media. Reputation, awareness and improving search engine rankings and web site traffic were also rated highly.  Building networks and promoting content within social media channels can certainly result in search engine optimization benefits, but focusing on those outcomes specifically are difficult to sustain.

These insights are the tip of the iceberg in the report and I’d recommend the investment. Between social web participation, research based resources like this report and practical, outside consultants and hands on training like SocialMediaSmarts.com (a workshop offered by TopRank and the national DMA), companies can improve their ability to effectively participate in and gain business results from the social web.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Marketing from Marketingsherpa | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” webinar featuring Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications and Marketingsherpa’s Sergio Balegno discussing new ways journalists are using social media.

MarketingSherpa surveyed 1800 people from both small and large, B2B and B2C companies. In their findings, three out of four companies surveyed feel that social media is changing the way companies communicate. Details of this research can be found in the new Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices report.

The most common social media tactics being used include press releases, social network profiles, blogging and interacting with forums.

In their research, Marketingsherpa found that the most effective tactics were blogs, forums, press releases and company blogs. The most effective tactic implemented is engaging in user review sites. While commenting on user review sites was the most effective tactic in terms of cost and time, it is the tactic least implemented. Companies do not seem to be matching up their tactics with what is effective.

Commentary and reputation management is a hot topic that goes hand-in-hand with social media. When companies were asked if they monitor or respond for negative feedback, 25 percent of companies polled said they don’t monitor social media commentary at all. 31 percent monitor, but don’t respond.

While larger companies are more likely to monitor brand reputation, smaller companies admit that they should also be responding to negative commentary. Google Alerts is a simple way to monitor your brand commentary. With this free service, alerts are sent to you via email when your name or brand is being written about.

So what are the barriers? Why aren’t companies engaging more with social media or tackling criticism? Most said that it was because of a lack of knowledgeable staff. Other reasons included inability to measure ROI, lack of budget funding, management resistance, technical obstacles or they just didn’t feel social media was relevant for their company.

The second part of the webinar covered the social media press release.

Did you know that the first press release went out in 1906 by Ivy Lee, a 102 years ago?!  The basic press release format hasn’t changed too much since then. However, with the changing face of communication, the familiar press release structure needed a boost. That’s where the social media press release came in.

Nearly 50% of B2B and B2C companies surveyed by Marketingsherpa didn’t know what a social media press release was. Out of those who did know about the social media release, only 20 percent actually distribute them.

In this new era of social media marketing and PR, saying things like “we are a leader in”, “we are very excited to announce” and slapping a boilerplate on the bottom of your release doesn’t cut it. People want pictures, videos, links to additional external resources, and all around, more information. 

The originator of the social media press release, Todd Defren, encourages these five principles:.

1. Democratize Access
2. Ensure Accuracy
3. Embrace Context
4. Build Community
5. Be Findable

If you’re a beginner trying to encourage social media marketing and PR within your organization, social media news releases can be a useful tactic to deploy because showing a return on investment is as easy as consulting your analytics report.

An added bonus of including a social media release component to your news distribution is the ability for readers to comment at the source. This will allow an upper hand with brand monitoring and tracking because readers can share their opinion ofyour news, with you watching of course.

No matter how you look at it, the internet is evolving into a social community where people connecting, sharing, publishing and collaborating. Customers are talking about companies, complaining about products, making recommendations and looking for advice. If a company is not engaging with their audience and monitoring what’s being said about them, then they are out of touch with their customers.

Start engaging with your customers and kick start your social media marketing and PR efforts with a social media roadmap.  For even more sage advice on social media marketing, check out ‘Get Social Media Smart with 26  Tips on the Social Web‘ and read what other internet marketing practitioners are recommending.

Speaking of social media and public relations, check out this upcoming conference in New York April 30 - May 1 from the PRSA “Digital Impact“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Adding Social Media to Marketing & PR | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Li Evans, of Key Relevance, hammers home the need for social media strategy within her presentation.

Social Media - done for the sole purpose of traffic or links - probably isn’t social media you should be doing. Social media is not about your marketing message, it’s about what the customer has to say good or bad. It’s about them talking about you.

Whatever you do socially, remember that the end user has control of your message and sometimes your brand. Li goes on to explain that these conversations are happening any way, online and offline, so would you rather be part of it or continue to ignore it?

Imagine if a group of your customers invited you to a party they were having to talk about your product? Would you attend? Of course you would. Or you would be stupid not to.

So when those ‘parties’ are happening online every day it’s interesting how many companies don’t rsvp.

Li reminds the audience, that there are multiple tools to help you engage in Social Media. It’s not just Digg or Facebook or Twitter.

But before thinking about the tools, think about your overall approach.
1. Start with a plan
2. Know where your audience is online
3. Integrate with SEO and PPC
4. Define Goals & Measure, Measure, Measure
5. Take What Works & Improve it

Next, is Beth Harte, of Harte Marketing &  Communications.
She starts by explaining that attention to social media by the PR industry is lacking. Specifically, the industry tends to still focus only on media, dodging crisis and ignoring customers.

It’s no longer just about the journalist. There are many conversations on blogs, forums, social media and PR needs to move toward putting the customer first.

Once you have a plan that rolls up to objectives and strategy, here are a couple ways to dive in:
1. Online newsroom, make it more than a repository for press releases
2. Social Media News Release which is searchable, includes keywords and tells a story

The next step for the PR Person is to connect the dots between offline and online to reach customers in a more effective way.

Rob Key, of Converseon, is here to represent the agency side of Social Media.

The marketing funnel has gone from a very linear approach to a Dr. Seuss type of funnel which includes conversations in multiple destinations and specifically destinations that aren’t always controlled by the brand.

While social media may not be hard to execute, culturally it can be very difficult. Since social media transcends marketing disciplines, it makes it even more difficult.

When developing social media:

• Utilize and engage different groups (comm, marketing, media, search)
• Pilot with low-profile business unit
• Encourage your clients to start listening first, then engage

Social media can be successful when you:
1. Listen
Free tools like Google Alerts can get you started. Conversation monitoring is documenting conversations. Conversation mining is taking the information, creating insights based on sentiment and letting that information drive what you do next.
2. Organize
Social media is an engine of organization transformation. Within client organizations, help them decide who ‘owns’ social media to make sure you have an internal champion and educator.
3. Policy/Ethics
Understand the cultural nuances of the different communities and educate the client on what is appropriate in what channel.
Work with your client to create a code of ethics and guidelines in an effort to increase confidence and cut down on the review process.
4. Infrastructure
Identify what conversation assets you have and what ones you need. How will you make this happen and within what timeframe?
5. Identify opportunities to listen and connect
Every social network is not right for every brand. Select based on where your target market is.
6. Engage with the Right Philosophy
Participate and learn. Identify the elders and come bearing something of value.
7. Measurement
Measure changes in conversation, increase in positive sentiment, share of conversation.
Then identify what a 10% increase in sentiment means to the overall business.

There are many ways to dive into social media, doing so with a plan is the first step to being successful and providing something of value.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SES NY: 3 Approaches to Social Media | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The bottom line for the presentation is that there are opportunities to gain advantage from optimizing content according to it’s purpose or goals. In the case of news content, make it easy for consumers and journalists alike to find your message on the channels and in the format they prefer. That means understanding the difference in search behaviors for consumers vs journalists and analysts doing research on companies/individuals.

TopRank conducted a survey late last year with journalists and reporters to discover their use of search and social media for researching stories. We wanted to know how they found companies and individuals that were ultimately referenced in the articles and media they produce.

Of the respondents (multiple answers were allowed), 95% said they use search to research past stories, 91% to research new sources and 59% to research press releases.  As for the type of search used most often, 91% use standard search (Google, Yahoo), 27% use  news search, 27% use search on social media sites and 18% use image search. There were more questions and answers in the survey than this which I’ll be presenting in the webinar. 

Using SEO as part of a Pull PR effort, ie optimizing news content, puts a company’s news content in the places where the media are looking. Pitching directly to journalists and analysts via email and phone is hit or miss. With thousands of press releases distributed each day, it’s a challenge to stand out. That’s why optimizing news content to facilitate self discovery by the media is a perfect compliment to any SEO or Media Relations effort.

The most fundamental types of news content to optimize are press releases and online newsrooms.  Since most SEO advice centers around lead generation, it’s an important distinction to make when optimizing news content for researchers vs consumers looking to buy.

There are many content types that can get indexed by general and niche search engines. If something can be searched on, it can be optimized for search. This applies not only to news content but also to job listings, FAQ or Knowledgebase content and even events.

The larger opportunity for companies is to realize that by treating content optimization for search holistically, can result in much greater impact than siloing SEO to specific departments or purposes. Common keyword glossaries can be leveraged in the way key messaging is leveraged with PR, marketing/sales and corporate communications. This approach makes keyword optimization a part of routine communications and not only improves search based discovery of company content, but might also improve usability.

If you’re on this blog post after PRWeb webinar, I encourage you to post any questions you have in the comments below.  

Update: Here is the archived News SEO webinar with audio and below are the PPT slides hosted on Slideshare

Please Tweet this post:  “Using Your News to Drive SEO”  http://bit.ly/newseo  and use the hashtag #newsseo on Twitter

Also, feel free to check out these related articles on PR and SEO:

• Tips for Online PR
• The Yin Yang of PR and SEO
• Digital PR and SEO Series: Part 1
• Digital PR and SEO Series: Part 2
• Public Relations Benefits from SEO
• Pull PR - Combining SEO and Public Relations

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Using Online News to Drive SEO | 35 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

[Editor note: Please welcome TopRankMarketing.com Senior Account Manager Jolina Pettice with this guest post that addresses a common issue with Search Engine Optimization engagements: Getting SEO recommendations implemented!]

Optimizing press releases can be an important part of any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program. It’s usually pretty easy to convince clients of the need to optimize news content since these kinds of releases can reach journalists and bloggers as well as consumers. One common question I often hear involves getting optimized press releases approved by the Public Relations department. PR approved news messaging and SEO keywords are often not in alignment.

An additional consideration is that optimizing press releases often crosses over into different departments, creating an additional group of people who need to be convinced of the benefits of SEO.

Making sure that Public Relations team is bought into the SEO process early is the first step. This can be accomplished by helping PR practitioners understand the benefits to their own media relations initiatives, by leveraging SEO. Read this previous post by Lee on optimizing news content on how to benefit media and public relations efforts through news content optimization.

Once you have company public relations staff convinced, or at least willing to acknowledge SEO, then follow this checklist to ensure your optimized press release makes it through to the newswire for online and email distribution.

 4 Tips to ensure your optimization edits sail through the PR department and impact your SEO program:

1. Maintain the PR Goal: Write for the audience first
Whether the target audience includes journalists or prospects, make sure your SEO changes don’t change the objective of the release.

If the copy doesn’t compel the audience to action, the SEO benefits will have less impact to the organization over all.

2. Identify relevant (and popular) keyword phrases in the DRAFT phase
One of the best ways to make sure you can optimize a release is to talk to the PR department first and make sure your objectives are in alignment.

Start the optimization process while the release is still in DRAFT mode and be willing to compromise. Do this by leveraging keyword phrases the PR team already has in mind.

For example, if the release rolls up to a ’search engine marketing’ campaign, don’t go in and optimize the release for ’search engine optimization’.

3. Optimize what’s important, don’t fret over what isn’t
When optimizing, strive to place keyword phrases in the most important places including:

• Headline
• Subhead
• First and Second paragraphs (hyperlink the keywords)
• Boilerplate (hyperlink the keywords)

If you over optimize, a PR person will catch this straight away. Connect the dots between the keyword phrase in the headline and the keyword hyperlink in the first paragraph.

If that’s all you get in the final release, it’s a start. A keyword phrase in the 5th paragraph is not a battle worth fighting.

4. Work together to stretch the newswire dollar
Help your PR department get the most bang for its buck from the newswire by leveraging additional features the wire may offer.

Some features, such as those below, can stretch the newswire dollar by impacting PR and SEO efforts.

• RSS feeds
• Keyword tagging
• Trackbacks
• Attachments (word docs, images, videos)

Features like RSS feeds can help PR initiatives by expanding the reach of the content, specifically to journalists who continue to increase their use of RSS feeds to monitor specific topics.  

Companies that leverage these 4 tips will help align public relations and search engine optimization for improved search visibility of news and the company as a whole. If  PR and marketing work together as a team, both lead generation and media coverage objectives can improve significantly.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 4 Tips for Getting PR Approval on Optimized Press Releases | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Recently I presented on a panel at Affiliate Summit West on the topic of online brand management and it was eye opening for many merchants and networks what goes into a good brand monitoring program. Companies spend huge budgets, time and resources building their brands and reputation. Not paying attention to that investment can be disasterous.

In my presentation at ASW09, I worked to answer several question. The first of which was, “Why is brand and reputation management important in Affiliate Marketing?” Here are six reasons to consider:

Current affiliates are online - It’s important to know how current affiliates are representing the merchant’s brand. Affiliates become the “face of the brand” for those consumers interacting. However, in many cases, there are very specific limitations to brand name use and both merchants and affiliate networks need to monitor what’s being promoted and how. It’s important to know about how affiliates are using brand names and whether there are anti-marketers or infringement issues.  

On the flip side, affiliate marketers that are allowed to promote specific brand names AND follow terms of use, can provide a huge advantage for a proactive online reputation management effort. The ideal situation would involve thousands of affiliates promoting unique product/service information under their own domain names. Such a scenario could facilitate the “ownership” of the top few pages of search results in a relevant way.

Prospective affiliates are online - While the world of affiliate marketing is growing fast, many more enterprising marketers are not involved. Established web sites are now, more than ever, looking for ways to monetize content and affilate marketing is an attractive channel for that. How a merchant’s brand is being represented by affiliates has everything to do with the impression potential affilates have towards a program. Participation on the social web and the intentional effort towards building a positive brand representation is important and best not left to chance or you may get a “bad rap“. The same goes for affiliate networks.

Customers are online - Customers who find products and services via affiliate marketing channels have various experiences. Many consumers blog, write reviews, make comments and share opinions on social networks. It’s important to have a good handle on customers that are publishing both negative and positive information so the brand can monitor and engage in the right way.

Journalists are online - Public and media relations is an effective marketing/communications channel for merchants, networks and in some cases, affilaites. Journalists are increasingly researching stories online and the way affiliates represent brands can influence whether a particular company is considered for a story or not.

Competitors are online - Brand monitoring online and within digital media provies companies a real opportuniy for competitive research. Discover what other affiliate programs are doing to be effective and whether their affilaites and publishing negative information about your brand in order to attract sales from products and services that offer a higher commission. In fact, it may be the realization that not having an affiliate program leads to affiliate marketers presenting certain brands negatively in order to promote the products that do, to motivate the start of an affiliate program.

Future of your brand is online - However you look at it, the trend towards commerce and information consumption will increasingly involve online and digital communication channels. Where consumers can be influenced, companies need to be present and engaged from both a brand monitoring/management perspective as well as participation.

OK, so reputuation mangement is clearly important for merchants, networks and affiliates, what should they do about it? We’ve posted a number of reputation management articles here on Online Marketing Blog addressing online and digital reputation management from a variety of perspectives:

• Basics of Online Reputation Management
• PubCon: Online Reputation Management
• When SEO Isn’t For Increasing Sales
• Digital Reputation Management with SEO, Social Media & PR
• Online Reputation Management for Individuals
• Online Reputation Management for Direct Marketers
• Book Review: Radically Transparent by Andy Beal & Dr. Judy Strauss

What should affiliate managers monitor?  Here’s some sage advice from UK based Envisional Affiliate Monitoring:

• Police inappropriate content and keywords (indecency, obscenity, hate or politics) on your affiliates’ websites
• Enforce compliance with regulatory requirements, company policies and industry codes of practice
• Identify out-of-date or fraudulent offers, wrong or inappropriate marketing material or keywords (e.g. free money)
• Hit back at competitors and criminals who pose as affiliates, divert traffic to their sites and use your domain name or logo to imply authorised status
• Detect copies of your logo, trade marks or domain names that have been adapted or faked and detect any out-of-date logos that are being used
• Evaluate comment on your brand in blogs, forums, news media and IRC sites
• Recruit new affiliates by targeted searching of websites, blogs and forums
• Proactively deal with SPAM from your affiliates

The bottom line for merchants is that by the time a groundswell of negative activity has built momentum and “yourbrandsucks.com” types of sites are starting to rank top ten on the major search engines, it’s going to be VERY time consuming and expensive to deal with. Better to be proactive and begin monitoring more effectively now, as well as pay attention to the creation of content and the aspects of your business that might result in negative experiences. Monitoring can provide an early warning, but it’s best to engage in content creation, the optimization of digital asssets, community building and engangement with the social web to foster relationships that result in the publishing of a better picture of what your brand stands for.

If you work in the affiliate marketing world as an affiliate/publisher, part of a network or as a merchant, we’d love to hear your opinions and experiences with online brand management. Challenges and successes are equally welcome.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Reputation Management for Affiliate Marketing | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

As part of the presentation, I included insights from a recent poll of journalists and editors from a mix of print and online publications we conducted. The poll was designed to get a better understanding about their use of search to find sources, conduct research and any other search function that helps them do their job.

The responses were enlightening. Since the budgets that drive most search optimization work come from marketing and focused on consumer search behavior, there’s not much information about other audiences that use search. Most SEO advice centers around lead generation or sales and justifiably so, because reveneue is what pays the bills.

Search is one of the most useful resources to a journalist or reporter and that presents an opportunity for companies with compelling news. Whether it’s optimizing the text of web pages, press releases or a newsroom plus digital assets like audio from interviews, images and video, there are opportunities for optimization. If a document or media asset can be searched on, it can be optimized.

Take a look at the presentation and let me know what your impressions are. Would you like to see more of this type of content on Online Marketing Blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Writing for the Web: SEO for News Content | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

TopRank Online Marketing will have two speakers presenting on two panels at SES Chicago this week.  

On Tuesday, Senior Account Manager Jolina Pettice (who recently spoke on a panel with Yahoo’s Ron Belanger and Anne Kennedy at DPAC) will be speaking on a session about how to use Public Relations tactics to improve SEO results.  On Wednesday I will be speaking on a panel about Blog SEO.

Here are the session details. We look forward to seeing you there!

Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - 2:45pm-3:45pm 
“Turning PR Efforts into SEO Results”

Most organizations are focused solely on how SEO impacts marketing and advertising and are failing to take advantage of the unique and very impactful results that are generated when SEO is applied to public relations. Organizations that fail to integrate PR into SEO efforts stand to miss out on a valuable opportunity. This session will provide real-life examples to show how organizations can achieve maximum results for any communications campaign through natural search optimization of press releases.

Moderator: 

• Andy Atkins-Krüger, Managing Director, WebCertain Europe Ltd

Speakers:

• Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
• Sarah Skerik, Vice President, Distribution Services, PR Newswire
• Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, PR Web, Vocus
• Jolina Pettice, Senior Account Manager, TopRank Marketing

In this session on how to leverage SEO tactics with public relations efforts, TopRank’s Jolina Pettice will present an excerpt of our Journalist’s Use of Search Survey, shed light on the difference between SEO for lead generation vs SEO to attract journalists searching for experts to include in news stories and offer several news content optimization tips.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - 10:30am-11:45am
“SEO Through Blogs & Feeds”

Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you’re missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to search engine optimization.

Moderator:

• Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ

Speakers:

• Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed
• Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts, LLC

In this session Sally will discuss feed (RSS) optimization, Stephan will undoubtedly cover the optimization of blogs and I will be discussing the top 5 reasons why blogs started with SEO in mind fail, miserably.  And 5 ways to succeed.

Be sure to check out these sessions while you’re at SES and if you blog either or both of these sesions, please @ or dm me at @leeodden on Twitter. I will be absolutely certain to mention your coverage on Twitter and in our conference roundup here at Online Marketing Blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | TopRank Brings 2 Speakers on 2 Panels at SES Chicago | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

The sheer quantity of different information sources online has resulted in a media circus. The various blogs, tweets and mainstream media outlets are like different acts vying for user attention. Online reputation management amid all the chaos can be difficult. It seems only appropriate that a circus insider, Jessica Berlin of Cirque du Soleil, weighed in with some tried and true advice in Reputation Monitoring and Management.

Andy Beal, Internet Marketing Consultant with Marketing Pilgrim and Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and primary author of this blog, also contributed their advice for keeping the positive spotlight on your brand in this session moderated by Todd Friesen.

Why Monitor Online?

Lee pointed out that both your brand influencers and those influenced by your brand live online; your customers, prospects, competitors, etc. What is being said about your brand online can have a huge impact, both positive and negative, on your business.

“It’s not just a search engine, it’s a reputation engine,” Lee said.

Rankings in the search engine results page (SERP) can be as valuable as a hit in mainstream media due to the volume of people who see it. A negative SERP ranking for your brand can come in the form of a YouTube video, blog post, Flickr image, forum thread or just about any format imaginable.

Andy Beal pointed out a wide range of reasons to monitor your brand online, both positive and negative, including:

• Getting product ideas
• Finding new relevant keywords for SEO
• Reaching out to brand evangelists
• Learning blogger sentiment
• Conducting informal market research
• Discovering industry trends

Regardless of your reason for brand monitoring, a brand can be missing huge opportunities by failing to properly monitor and manage online reputation.

What to Monitor

Andy stated that a given brand should be monitoring more than just the brand name in order to effectively manage online brand reputation and fully utilize online resources that can improve brand perceptions online. He mentioned monitoring the company name, individual products, company executives, competitors, clients, industry patents, reviews and more.

Different companies will want to monitor online buzz for a unique mix of these elements in order to serve their purpose. To effectively monitor the online brand reputation of its six different Las Vegas Shows, the marketing team at Cirque du Soleil looks for:

• Customer Experiences Cirque du Soleil considers its customer experience to encompass everything from purchasing the ticket to when they leave the theater. They look online for both good and bad customer comments relating to any part of the overall experience so they can address concerns and build strong brand connections.
• Information Accuracy The team looks into any negative online mentions of Cirque du Soleil to correct any inaccurate information.
• Brand Mention Wording With six different shows in Las Vegas, Cirque du Soleil’s marketing team wants ensure each show is getting mentioned distinctively and not under the Cirque du Soleil umbrella term.
• Sphere of Influence The team looks for indications of how far and wide mentions of Cirque do Soleil spread, to see if one blog post mention can spread into social networks, bookmarking sites or even mainstream media.

Monitoring Tools to Use

With the circus of different media outlets online, brand reputation managers need an arsenal of tools in order to effectively monitor brand sentiment online. All three panelists mentioned several good tools to use in order to monitor your brand reputation. With most of these services, you can set up an RSS that alerts you of new items relating to specific brand names or keyword terms:

• Moreover.com Monitor competitors, industry news and trends with this site’s very granular news categories
• Google.com/trends Monitor up and coming industry trends to get ideas for new products or promotions
• Technorati.com Monitor blog posts and social media mentions
• Backtype.com Monitor blog comments about your brand or a competitor, or blog comments relating to your keywords
• Blogpulse.com/trend Monitor the trending of keyword phrases or your brand name to see if people are talking about you more or less
• Keotag.com Monitor tags of your choice across several bookmarking and tagging sites
• Boardtracker.com Monitor forum posts
• Copernic.com Monitor changes or updates on any given website
• Radian6/Buzzlogic Monitor a variety of different online media outlets and a wide range of social media

Marketers should also monitor their brand name in social media sites like YouTube, Flickr and Twitter to effectively manage brand buzz in multiple media formats.

How to Monitor

Lee outlined both a short-term and long-term approach to effective online brand reputation management. In the short-term, a company wants to ensure positive brand mentions are ruling the SERPs, as the search engine rankings tend to be highly visible. To do so, a company should focus on:

• Creating a brand optimization process
• Optimizing all digital assets including text, video, images, audio, press releases, etc.
• Optimizing across departments to ensure online assets from all departments are optimized. For example, HR should be optimizing job posts

In the long term, a brand should be working to identify, qualify and engage dissenters by correcting any inaccuracies and responding directly to negative mentions.

Jessica outlined Cirque du Soleil’s current online PR practices to illustrate the changes online brand reputation management has undergone in recent years. In particular, she highlighted transparency and building long-term trust between Cirque du Soleil, journalists and fans. Cirque du Soleil actually allows fans to control several of its ‘official’ groups on social sites such as MySpace, and gives them inside information to post as content. They also allow journalists and bloggers greater access to Cirque du Soleil content to build strong media relations.

What are the Results?

Companies can decrease attention on negative brand mentions with effective optimization tactics that result in multiple positive rankings on the SERPs. By directly addressing negative brand mentions in a personal manner, a company can turn a brand de-evangelist into a brand evangelist. Strong and open relationships with content producers in the form of journalists, bloggers and fans can prevent negative buzz and help ensure only accurate brand information exists in the online sphere. The comprehensive brand management advice from Jessica, Andy and Lee can help you make sense of the online media circus and keep a positive focus on your brand.

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more blog coverage of Pubcon 2008 and the Pubcon photos set on Flickr.  Also be sure to visit the video interview on reputation management with TopRank CEO Lee Odden and Mike McDonald of WebProNews.

Other Search Industry blogs covering this session include:

• Search Engine Roundtable - Tamar
• WeBuildPages - The Lisa
• WebProNews - Doug

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | PubCon: Online Reputation Management | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com