The 2012 Community Manager Report

Community Manager is an essential, yet still uncharted territory for many companies that are expanding their presence on the social web.  What should you know about the current state of this position?

• 67% of Community Managers work for a brand
• The most popular city for Community Managers is New York
• 65% of Community Managers are Female

Be sure to check out the rest of this report presented by Social Fresh.

Google & FBI: All Your Social Data Are Belong to Us

For non-geeks, here’s the reference (Zero Wing video)

“Google Privacy Changes: What Do They Mean To You?” Google announced this week that it is rolling out a new, main privacy policy that covers the majority of its products. The company is consolidating over 60 privacy notices into the main privacy policy. User activities across Google web properties from Gmail to YouTube will be used to deliver customized ads. Via WebProNews.

“The FBI Wants to Monitor Social Media” The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations. As with the Google combined service data collection, many people are thinking, “Weren’t they already doing this?” Via Mashable.

“McDonald’s Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories” From McDonald’s PR: While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours. Via Business Insider.

“Twitter Now Able To Censor Tweets, If Required By Law, On A Country-By-Country Basis” From Twitter: Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it up in the rest of the world. Danny Sullivan compares Twitter’s approach towards censorship to Google, which you might find interesting. Via Marketing Land.

The Online Marketplace is Competitive: Tips to Help You Meet the Challenge:

“The Top 51 stats for Generation Y marketers” How can marketers tap into this gadget-savvy, brand-aware demographic? The following statistics, taken from four recent reports listed below, provide an insight into the complex world of 13-24 year-olds. Via The Next Web.

“5 marketing Tips for Putting Customers First” The digital world of today offers many choices to customers, which means that marketing professionals have a tough job ahead of them.  We must not only ensure that our messaging is on target, but also work with our internal team to make sure that our promises can be delivered.  Via i Media Connection.

“10 Essential YouTube Tips and Tricks”  YouTube is currently getting over 3 billion views each day.  This article provides some great tips for getting more out of your YouTube experience including, improved search and better viewing options.  Via Mashable.

“10 Ways to Impress Your Industry’s Influencers” Often times your press releases are in the hands of influencers within the industry.  This article provides some great tips on identifying who these people are, buttering them up, and following their lead.  Via Ragan.

The TopRank Team Knows News

Brian Larson – “MarketingSherpa Research Shows the Avg B2B Deal on the Decline”
We know that B2B sales cycles are longer. The rebuttal from B2B’s has always been ‘the size of our sales are far greater’.  What if that changed? With B2B deal sizes diminishing, do B2B’s need to focus on increasing sales volume or developing new ways to demonstrate value and win back larger sales? Or both? The answers to these questions are sure to influence online marketing strategies.  Via Marketing Sherpa.

Ken Horst – “Social media for the complex sale: Where should you start?”
While most B2B companies are heavily invested in their social channels today; many are finding that for at least Facebook and Twitter, these may not be the best channels for companies with a longer sales cycle.  The good news is that in this post, the author lists 10 other social media outlets that B2B marketers could use to help prime the pump for those longer sales cycle products and services. Via SmartBlog.

Emily Conley – “Google Announces Privacy Changes Across Products; Users Can’t Opt Out”
Google released an announcement on Jan. 24th stating that the company plans to follow users’ activities across the majority of its sites, including YouTube, Gmail and Google search. With no opt-out option, as of March 1st all logged in Google users will be sharing data that will enable Google to create more complete user portraits.  The change opens new debate around privacy and competitive practices.  Via Washington Post.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. | Online Marketing News: Women Dominate Community Management, Google Privacy, FBI Social, Twitter Censorship, McD Hashtag Gone Wrong | http://www.toprankblog.com

After seeing the nice write up by Adam Sherk on Ragan on how to write press releases Google will love, I decided to curate a list of our own Press Release Optimization tips and share them with you. Plus Lee’s added a few more at the end of this post.

Essential Press Release Optimization Tips
Multiple studies have concluded that both consumers and journalists search for and read press releases.  By optimizing your press release for a specific audience the content will be easier to find and therefore attract new traffic and brand recognition .  This post provides a useful checklist and process for creating a better optimized press release.

4 Tips for Getting PR Approval on Optimized Press Releases
Integration of approved news and SEO keywords can be a daunting task.  Including Public Relations in early in the process can help alleviate problems related to SEO approval.  This post includes 4 essential tips to ensure that your optimization recommendations can be approved and impact your SEO program.

Lowdown on Press Release Optimization
Clever copywriting may not always be a best practice approach for optimizing press releases.  Why?  The objective of a press release should be to present a well written article which contains relevant keywords pertaining to the audience that you are trying to reach.

Press Release Optimization and Blogger Relations
The hardest part of news optimization is not always the optimization, it is the measurement.  Traditional PR is becoming more and more difficult as major organizations are shutting their doors or laying off employees.  An online PR strategy encourages sharing and creates a larger audience base for your news releases.

3 Reasons PR & Communications Need to Know SEO
An understanding of the needs of their “customer’s customer” has always been a very essential piece for PR agencies to remain relevant and productive.  Now with the added element of an online strategy it becomes even trickier.  This post dives into 3 ways that PR professionals can continue to provide value through a better understanding of optimizing press releases and news.

Takeaways from Lee:

[Note from Lee: Thanks to Ashley for curating some of our advice on Press Release SEO that we've given over the years. The SEO tips in these posts are pretty much timeless but the increasing influences of Social Media must also be factored in to create news release content that matters to intended audiences and that inspires them to share and link.  In addition to the tips for optimizing press releases above, here are a few things worth considering:]

1. Research Google News specific keywords using Ubersuggest. Other keyword research tools like WordTracker and Wordstream focus on general search engines, but why not find out what’s popular on Google News as well?

2. Focus on a single keyword phrase and 1-3 variations per release. Most important keywords should be first in the title, but not at the expense of a compelling title. Optimize for customers first.

3. Always include an image and attach other useful images using keywords in the file names and annotations.

4. Include video as an embedded element of the release if you can. More engaging content means more shares and reach to attract links.

5. Promote your press release through a distribution service like our client PRWeb, which is very SEO friendly and effective not just because TopRank provides them with SEO advice, but because they are committed to being a great resource for small business marketers and PR professionals.

6. Syndicate and promote the RSS feed of your newsroom (assuming you publish a RSS feed) as well as the RSS feed provided by the press release distribution service. Example tools for this include: Pingomatic, Twitter Feed and posting short form or summary versions of the release with a link to it via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other relevant social channels. Monitor social shares of the release and respond accordingly.

7. Write your news as an article. Try experimenting with creating a timely and newsworthy article format for your news release vs. traditional press release style. It might inspire more editorial pickups and links.

8. Create a series of press releases. Don’t treat your release like a one night stand. Build awareness and momentum with news distribution by creating a series of press releases or at least coordinating releases with other content marketing and online PR efforts over time. One press release is NOT a silver bullet.

9. Archive press releases on your site using keyword categories. Chronological organization of past press releases is only useful for a short period of time.  But if releases can be tagged with keywords and associated with topical categories relevant to your business and the interests of the media and your customers, then they also become useful to search engines that can surface those releases where people are looking.

10. Link to press releases from other media and content. When you publish case studies, white papers, reports and ebooks, consider linking to a relevant press release. Many of those types of documents are MS Word or PDF format and you can embed links within that can be found by search engines. White papers and ebooks are often shared socially and re-published on other websites and blogs. Your document hosted on another domain name that includes links back to relevant press releases can provide a strong signal to search engines for better rankings.

What press release optimization tips have you found useful? Are you including press release SEO as part of Online PR or Content Marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 5 Press Release SEO Posts & 10 Bonus Tips for Better Google Rankings | http://www.toprankblog.com

From the days of talking new features as a super user with founder David McInnis to our current role as search and social media consultants, the focus on innovation and serving customers has always been a mutual focus. I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Vocus Product Manager for PRWeb, Jiyan Wei, Director of Online Marketing, Meg Walker and Vocus CMO Bill Wagner as well as other members of the Vocus team and they’ve been working very hard to make an array of substantial changes to the PRWeb platform to better serve customers.

PRWeb innovated the entire idea of the optimized press release and was in use by hundreds if not thousands of SEOs long before any other wire service thought to start following their lead and offer SEO friendly features. Now PRWeb has launched a new design, site architecture, press release templates and resource center that provides even greater Search Engine Optimization and Social Media exposure benefits.

Here’s a quick video tour of the all new PRWeb that’s worth a look:

More SEO & Social “Built Into” the Template - The press release template that PRWeb uses to publish press releases offers critical opportunities for customer discovery, consumption and sharing. That means making it easier for readers to find press releases by baking in more search engine friendly features, providing more room for media such as images and video, offering social sharing options and optimizing code for faster loading pages.

Centralized News – In particular, the move away from showing over 100 press releases on the PRWeb home page to a dedicated news center with specific industry category pages will allow even more entry points via search and give customer press releases even more exposure, especially in the long term. With over 500,000 pages, implementing SEO friendly design and architecture changes to a site like PRWeb is no small feat. Structuring the news center according to industry categories creates more of a news destination vs. a repository of press releases. Better design and content organization provides a better user experience and will attract more links.

More How To Online Marketing Resources - Another major enhancement for the new PRWeb site is the resource center with a growing collection of useful how to tips, articles, videos, webinars and white papers for everything from press release writing tips to general online marketing topics. Seeing examples of press releases organized by specific industry gives marketers useful insight for making their use of press releases successful.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 3 Things You Should Know About the New PRWeb | http://www.toprankblog.com

In this post, Jiyan discusses the progression and importance of news content in blended search:

Once upon a time, Page 1 had a special meaning for PR practitioners and business owners alike.

It meant that for one day, they had received the pole position in the consciousness of the consumer, who would hopefully transition from newspaper consumer into business customer. For businesses – both local and global alike – Page 1 either meant an outpouring of business or pending doom.

With the emergence of search as ubiquitous, Page 1 has begun to take on added meaning. Business owners are still very concerned about Page 1 but now, depending on whom you ask, Page 1 often refers to search and the consequent generation of a limitless stream of business and leads without having to pay for ongoing PR or advertising.

For many, Page 1 in search has become the new holy grail of business owners and SEO practitioners alike.

When I’m asked the question, “Will PRWeb get us onto Page 1 of search,” I immediately start shaking my head vigorously while hoping no one from the major engines overheard the question.

Of course, nothing can guarantee you will be on Page 1 of search. That being said, as part of a broader online marketing strategy, news releases can be an effective tool to facilitate the outward expression of news and information about a business, which over time can result in the creation of online authority in the eyes of search engines.

Yet with blended search, the picture becomes muddled.

At some point in the last couple years, Google (and now Bing) decided that users want more than just Web results when they run a query in search and so started offering a front page that contained a broader array of types of content including images, video and news.

According to some accounts news performs better in blended results than other forms of media and unlike other forms of media in blended search, news has a distinctly temporal slant. After all, news is really just information with a timestamp.

What this means for business owners, communicators, marketers, etc. is that under some circumstances, news can actually be a viable gateway onto Page 1 of search in a relatively short amount of time by leveraging sites that search engines regard as ‘news sites,’ including news release sites.

All that being said, here are some specific observations we’ve made about news in blended search:

1. If a recent news story is relevant to a query, it is more likely to appear somewhere in the results

This may seem fairly obvious but the devil is in the details. Nailing down ‘relevance’ between a query and results is a tall order but we have found that placing your target keywords in the title, preferably in the first part of the title of your news story, dramatically increase the likelihood that your news story will show up for queries of the target keywords once the crawlers have found the story. As the keywords descend into the story, from left-to-right and top-to-bottom, they become less impactful in terms of helping your story get onto the blended results for your target query.

2. News results can include thumbnailed images and these can improve click-through rates

Crawlers like Google look for relevant images to place in connection with news stories in the news block in blended search. They normally extract images from within the body of the story so including these images can result in having a thumbnail placed in connection with the result.

Who cares?

Well, everyone has seen the heat maps that show the importance of receiving top billing on page 1.

What we’ve found from our own internal tests however is that results with image thumbnails can have click-through rates that are similar and sometimes even higher than results that are actually located higher.

In other words, reader’s eyes are naturally drawn to the thumbnail so even if the news block is located lower down on the blended results page, the inclusion of a thumbnail can mitigate the lower placement to a great extent.

3. Many types of queries can result in news

There are some types of queries that seem to have an obvious time slant: current events, sports, celebrities, etc. However, we have seen news show up in blended search results for query types that seem less obviously tied to a date.

For example, tip sheets and best practice documents can be easily turned into news stories that can have a presence in blended search and drive traffic. With Spring right around the corner, there is a great opportunity to leverage audience demand for content to drive Web site traffic.

For example, a quick glance at Google insights reveals that queries for ‘Spring decorating’ are on the rise.

An opportunistic interior designer could use the opportunity to submit a release with a title like ‘Spring decorating tips from leading interior designer,’ that will have a good chance to tap into an upwards trending query in the blended search results.

4. Individual stories don’t appear in blended search results for long

Using your news to get Page 1 placement is a short-term proposition. As quickly as the story enters the blended search results, it can disappear. We typically see news stories show up in the blended search results for 24-48 hours. Depending on how dynamic the news landscape is for the query (some queries are going to receive a flood of news stories that may wash your story away in hours), the lifespan of your story may be even shorter.

Connect with Jiyan on Twitter, his blog or visit PRWeb, TopRank’s favorite press release distribution service.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | The Role of News in Blended Search – Observations & Best Practices | http://www.toprankblog.com

During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo!
• Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network
• Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release
• The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life

Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media.

1.  Meet audience demand

Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding.  Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives.

There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it.

The steps to meet audience demand include:

Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in?  In what tone should they be spoken to?  Do they appreciate a certain angle over another?  Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release.

Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely.  By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on.

Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry.  By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases.  Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases.

2.  Stay focused

By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media.  As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release.  By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point.  Keep it simple, focused and impactful.

3.  Use images for search

Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%.  It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough.    Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story.

At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles.  We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites.  Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely.

4.  Use videos to engage visitors

By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages.  As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video.  In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases.  But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out.

5.  Optimize your release

Anchor text links – use 3

• One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website.
• One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about.
• One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion.  With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content.

Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately.

URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process.  PRWeb allows you to customize this.

Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag).

Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization.  If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. 

You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search | http://www.toprankblog.com

The outcome exceeded all expectations thanks to the excellent promotions by PRWeb and SEW plus Mike Grehan’s smooth handling of moderator duties amidst technical difficulties. Over 7,000 people registered, there were over 400 questions and 650 Tweets using the #prweb hash tag during the webinar.

The way it goes with many webinars when you’re invited by an organization to participate, is that the topic and title/description are determined beforehand. The speaker adapts themselves to that.  This presentation content focused on optimizing writing for the web with a particular emphasis on optimizing content common to public relations.

As promised, I’ve sorted the bulk of the questions out and will present several here along with my responses. I hope they are useful.

If I’m not currently optimizing my site and I have a limited budget, where do I start?

The first thing any marketing activity needs to start with include setting goals, understanding your audience and the market. The lowest cost method of outsourcing that kind of activity where search engine optimization is concerned, would be to hire a consultant or agency to do an audit.

An SEO audit represents the initial evaluation and research along with recommendations to be implemented by the client. Typically this involves: competitive research, keyword research, web site code/template evaluation, content optimization recommendations, link building research and recommendations, tips on content creation/promotion/repurposing and to varying degrees, social media recommendations. Web analytics, monitoring and ranking tools are also often recommended.

An audit does not take the place of consulting since it’s an evaluation and recommendation, not implementation and guidance on an ongoing basis. It is however, a cost effective start. Here are a few resources:

• Top 3 Tactics To Improve Search Engine Rankings
• Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
• Do’s and Don’ts of On-Page SEO for Public Relations
• 5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010

Should your newsroom blog be placed under the site’s domain, or maintained separately under the blog software’s domain to allow for incoming links to your main site that are coming from a different site?

There are two parts to the answer for this question. First, the reference to “blog software’s domain” sounds as though the blog is hosted with a third party service such as blogger.com or typepad.com. Example:  yourblog.blogspot.com or yourblog.typepad.com

My advice is to avoid using third party hosting services for your blog. If you’re too invested in such a service or have other reasons for using them and cannot use something like WordPress installed on the server where your web site is hosted, then use domain aliasing options so that your blog URL is part of your company domain name or a domain name that you own. Example:  yourblog.com or yourblog.companydomainname.com. This puts you in a position of more control since the blog content lives under a domain name you own vs a domain like blogspot.com, which is owned by Google.

While links from your blog/newsroom hosted on a blogspot.com to your company web site do count as inbound links, there’s not as much value from many links to your site from one other site vs many links to your site from many other relevant web sites.

Which leads us to the second part answer to where the newsroom should be hosted. My preference is to host the newsroom either as a sub-domain or a sub-directory of the main company web address. Example:  newsroom.redcross.org or in the case of TopRank, it’s toprankmarketing.com/newsroom/

The links that you attract from other relevant web sites to your newsroom pages will build PageRank back to the rest of your web site. This is more true with the subdirectory than the subdomain. Also, keeping your newsroom address as part of your company web site address is useful for branding and user experience.

Some advice on subdomains and subdirectories from Matt Cutts of Google and here’s a good post discussing the SEO pros/cons.

Should you post press releases on your own website (before distribution)? How do search engines deal with the duplicate content issue in this case?

If you’re a publicly traded company, publishing financial announcements need to happen on the wires first, or at least at the same time as publishing the press release on your own web site.  For other companies not constrained by such requirements, posting a release to your own site first is fine.

As for dealing with duplicate content when your press release is published on your own site as well as on the wire service, it’s a pretty common situation. In fact, it’s often a goal for companies that distribute their releases through a newswire service to get as many other sites to copy and republish the release as possible. If the release is properly optimized, each time another web site with a unique domain name publishes a copy, it creates a link back to whatever web page on your corporate site you’re trying to draw attention to.  This sends more traffic and can affect the search ranking of the destination page.

A long standing problem with situations where the same content is hosted on different domain names has been debated and worried about by many, many webmasters. Search engines like Google don’t like to show multiple copies of the same content in the same search results. It’s not a good user experience. Therefore, when duplicate copies of the same content are detected, Google likes to pick a canonical version and only show that one.

Duplication with press releases is quite common because of distribution on wire services and to influence search engines to rank a certain version of your press release, there are a few steps you can take. One piece of advice many webmasters try to follow is to publish the release on your own site so Google crawls it there first.  However, if there are more links to another version of the same release hosted elsewhere, the other copy might be perceived as deserving to rank in search results instead.

For more tips on how to deal with duplicate content in a press release situation, watch this video interview with Adam Lasnik of Google that I took at SES London. Adam offers advice on making sure copies of your content attribute the source and all link back to the original to provide Google information about what version is canonical.

Is it useful to submit Press Releases to Social Media sites in addition to submitting to PRWeb.com?

Deciding what to share on social media sites should take into account what types of content members of the social community are best responding to.  Press Releases are often formal marketing communications, not exactly conversational. As you understand the community you’re trying to reach with the press release, you should know whether it’s appropriate to share a press release with them in a social media setting.

The big mistake many marketers and PR professionals make is to register with a variety of social network, news and bookmarking sites and then self submit, vote and rate their own press releases without having ever participated in the community.  With no network paying attention to what you’re sharing, few will ever notice the press release. If you do have a network on social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and others, then you will know first hand whether it would be acceptable to the community to share content in a press release format.

Outside of social media news release, your best bet to take advantage of social media distribution of a press release would be to make it easy for the press release to be saved, shared and submitted by interested readers. You can do this with widgets or plugins offered by ShareThis and similar services. Many wire services already support those features as well.   Additionally, you should monitor pickups of the release on the social web.

If you see someone submit or share a release you’ve sent out on a social media site, reach out and thank them, answer any questions and show interest. That can generate interest from others in the community.  One tip I recommend is to write a blog post version of the press release and share that content with social media communities. Then include a link to the full press release within the blog post for people that want more information.

What you should not do is treat social media sites as a place to dump press release content thinking it will get a lot of exposure because there are many members of the community.  Here are some additional newsroom SEO tactics.

What is a good Social Media approach for a company which generates little in the way of genuinely newsworthy material?

Companies that say they have nothing “newsworthy” to publish are more common than you might think. There may be deeper issues to deal with than a social media strategy if there’s nothing new, innovative or unique to talk about.  A good social media marketing program cannot fix a broken business.

A business exists to make money fulfilling unmet customer needs. A perspective to consider would be to take the focus off the company and put it on the customer. Use social web participation as a way to better listen with and connect with customers to find opportunities to serve them better. Develop relationships with influentials and encourage feedback. Innovation can certainly come from a customer base as can the spread of a great idea. Focus on connecting with customers and helping customers connect with each other in a social context and there may be more newsworthy material than you ever expected.

Here are a few useful resources on Social Media and PR:

• Improve Public Relations with SEO & Social Media
• Why Use Social Media For Public Relations
• 3 Steps for Effectively Using Social Media For PR

There are so many shady SEO people and firms – how do you pick a good one?

There are no more “shady” SEO people than there are “shady” clients. Professionals that provide effective SEO consulting are reputable, experienced and in my experience, probably more talented than most traditional marketers you’ve ever worked with.  People doing shady things in the name of SEO are NOT professionals and the absence of that word, professionals, in the question is the problem.

Picking a good consultant or agency means doing homework. Know your market, set goals, understand your competition in search and start asking for referrals from others who have hired SEO companies. Word of mouth is powerful both for companies that need to hire good SEOs and for good SEOs to attract business. Our agency, TopRankMarketing.com for example, has relied mostly on word of mouth to attract new business since 2001. We also get a lot of new business from search itself (practice what you preach) and from networking on and offline.

Here are a few resources on hiring a SEO and one on “shady” SEO:

• How to Hire a SEO Firm – According to Google
• 5 Tips on Hiring and Getting the Most Value from SEO Consultants
• Dear Fox News: SEO Is Not Search Engine Scamming (Unless You’re Scamming Yourself)

Part of the issue is demand.  Take the next question for example:

“Can you use article spinning software to publish Press Releases? Or is there an Press Release spinning software to create many press releases based on one press release? Other words, is there a difference between article marketing and press releases?”

Article spinning software for press releases? Demand for shortcuts, silver bullets and “we want everything now” helps create the shady side of SEO as opportunists take advantage.  Automatically generating garbage pages in press release format will help NO ONE.

That’s it for this round of questions. I’ll post another round next week. Thank you to PRWeb and Search Engine Watch for having me participate on the webinar. What are your questions about optimizing news content?

If you’d like even more in-depth information about SEO and Public Relations, AND you happen to live in the Louisville, Kentucky area, be sure to check out the event Social Media Club Louisville is having next Tuesday night, Feb 16th.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 7 Answers to News SEO Questions You Should Know | http://www.toprankblog.com

He started by explaining why SEO is/should be important to PR Professionals.

In a 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey by TopRank, we discovered that 91% of journalists use standard search to fulfill a component of their job whether researching a story or locating a subject matter expert.

With journalists writing for more channels and with less resources making your content visible within search is critical.

Here are Odden’s 10 SEO Tips:

1. Number one thing to do?
Magic answer is that it depends on the problem.
However, if you choose one item to tackle make sure your website is crawlable. If the site isn’t crawlable, then really nothing else you do in terms of SEO will matter.

2. Understand and Optimize PR Tactics
The content that is likely already being created as part of the PR campaign is low hanging fruit in terms of SEO.

Optimize the following content with keyword phrases (or those terms that journalists might be searching) to help your content become more visible:

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

In addition, Odden introduces the audience to the idea of Micromedia Optimization. Now that tweets and soon status updates are being integrated into the search engines, it’s important to optimize the content regardless of the channel.

3. PPC vs SEO for PR
SEO is long term, part of a content process and contingent on content and links over time.
PPC is on-demand, pay to play and an alternative to natural listings. If you have something you need to draw attention to right now, PPC is perhaps the more viable option as you can have ads live within minutes.

4. Keyword Research
In order to optimize your existing content, a list of keyword phrases needs to be developed.
Here’s how you build the list:
1. Brainstorm phrases
2. Import to a keyword research tool
–Google Keyword Tool
–Google Insights & Trends
–WordTracker
–Keyword Discovery
–SEM Rush
3. Find popularity and variations of the original keyword list
4. Create a keyword glossary

When creating the glossary, be sure to segment by popularity and category to ensure no important phrases are missed.

5. Basics of OnPage SEO
When optimizing a website, newsroom or landing page, don’t forget to include keywords in the following places:

• Title Tags
• Keyword Placement within content
• On-page titles
• Navigation links
• Body copy
• Keyword text links
• Image alt text

6. Get more from Press Releases
Press releases can be more than a vehicle for distributing messages. If optimized, it can also serve to pull journalists (and even prospects) to the content hosted on a website or within a newsroom.

To optimize your press content for search visibility, remember to:

• Research and identify target keyword phrases
• Optimize the release for 1-2 phrases
• Include a Call to Action (link to landing page, so you can track activity)
• Develop and Optimize Landing Pages
• Post to Newsroom
• Pitch to Media
• Distribute via RSS
• Leverage Wire Service Distribution
• Measure Results

Here are 7 tips specific to Press Release Optimization:
1. Think up and to the left
2. Optimize for people first, search engines next
3. Use keywords in Title, Subhead, body
4. Don’t obsess over keyword density
5. Aim for a 500 word release to use target keyword 2-4 times
6. Use keywords in links to company sites
7. Add media: images, podcasts, video

7. Newsroom Optimization Tactics
Online newsrooms can be an added resource to draw journalists in, if it is optimized and can be found via search.

To optimize your newsroom or to get one started, follow these tips:
1. Consider using blog software to manage your newsroom, very search friendly
2. Share/Save Bookmarks
3. Leverage keyword categories
Chronological archives don’t benefit the search engines or the user. No one wants to search through years of press releases – as opposed to clicking on a category of content like ‘SEO Tips’.
4. Cross link from optimized content to relevant content on the website

8. Link Building
Links ‘electrify’ content in search and can significantly improve search rankings.

Earn links with great content and by deploying the following:

• Promote content socially
• Link up with partners
• Cross link internally
• Embed links in releases
• Social bookmark pickups of release content/coverage

When creating hyperlinks, be sure to use keywords in text:
Yes: Red Widget
No: Click Here

9. SEO & Social: Yin Yang
SEO and Social Media can be very complimentary to one another, so if deploying both (or even parts of both) be sure to integrate for highest impact.

Optimize Social Media for Search
The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search.

Link Building for SEO Through Social Media
Indirectly, social content can boost links to website content, improve search traffic and online sales.

10. Measuring & Selling the Value of News SEO
After deploying some or all of the above, it’s important to tie back to results.

There are are many different ways to attach measurement to the optimization of news content and here are a few to get you started:

• Newswire service metrics
• Web analytics for landing pages and websites
• Google / 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 websites
• Pickups on publications
• Search Rankings

Don’t think those will work? Odden recommends using the power of the competitors. Are your competitors receiving better social or standard search visibility? If so, that’s often a compelling data point for decision makers.

What tips do you have to add for optimizing news content?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PRSA09: Top 10 SEO Tips for Public Relations | http://www.toprankblog.com

Online Marketing Blog readers are well aware: news search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch.

What are the latest ways businesses and media are using content to tap into the power of news search?  Mark Jackson, SEW Expert & President/CEO, VIZION Interactive moderates this group to dig deeper:

• Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce
• Allison Fabella, SEO Manager, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR
• Lisa Buyer, President & CEO, The Buyer Group
• David Radicke, Consultant, SEO, SEM, Web Analytics, Radicke eCommerce
• Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google

Mark led this session with a brief introduction of each speaker and quickly turned it over to let the panel members give their presentations.

Maile Ohye, Senior Developer Programs Engineer, Google

Maile shared in detail specifically how Google News works. Simplified, it is a simple three step process:

Crawl it – Googlebot crawls news sites that follow protocols

Group it – classification of news is important, like stories and categories are grouped

Rank it – a small story has a small effect on publishing activity. A big story has a large effect causing rapid, independent publishing activity worldwide. Google ranks stories by “aggregate editorial interest.”

Maile also took the time to stress that: “we do not have favoritism based on those who advertise with us.”

Optimizing all the elements of a news story:

Image

What factors go into how articles are ranked within a cluster?

• Content that is fresh and new
• Duplication and novelty
• Local/personal relevancy
• Trusted sources
• Many additional

Video

• Create YouTube channel and submit it to Google
• Textual descriptions/transcriptshelp

Images

• Large images
• Descriptive captions with alt text
• Prefer jpeg to png

Copy

• Unique permanent URLS with 3 digits
• Don’t break up the body
• Put dates between title and body
• Titles matter
• Separate original content from press releases
• Publish informative, unique content

Dana Todd, CMO, Newsforce

Dana shared the idea of building a “strategic keyword calendar” for your digital PR.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could be proactive with keywords you were targeted for future PR efforts?  You actually can be proactive by using trend data to your advantage and research your “news search future.”

Start old school:

• Assemble 12-20 of the print pubs that your audiences read most
• Look online for their editorial calendars
• Look for commonalities between topics, find trends throughout the year
• Map out on a spreadsheet

Now combine it with SEO:

When you discover trends, plan your PR programs surrounding them to attract consumer and reporter attention.  But be sure to look for trends that actually have search volume.  Meet two audiences:  consumer and news.  Plan stories that incorporate keywords and launch in conjunction with “hot” times of year.

Allison Fabella, SEO Manager, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Allison shared several useful bits of information, including:

Cool tools for finding the next hot story:

• Google Trends
• Twist (Twitter trends)
• Facebook Lexicon
• MediaCloud

Headline writing do’s/don’ts:

Don’t:

• Use clever, cheeky headlines on stories
• Abbreviate:  “Heat Wave in Atlanta” vs. “Smokin’ in the ATL”
• Bury the lead

Do:

• Pick your search phrase first
• What’s the story about (in 2-3 words)
• When relevant go geo
• Train early and often
• Share successes with your team

XML Sitemaps

Web & News Sitemaps – use sitemap index, divide into sections

News sitemaps, specifically:

• Include pub date, timestamp & article ID
• Include only last 72 hours of stories
• Don’t use a sitemap generator (might not be robust enough) – but contact Google if you are having trouble, they will help you with creating sitemaps

CMS Gotta Haves

• Auto-populated title/description/slug
• Short URL’s
• 301 redirects (not 302s)
• Article ID in URL

David Radicke, Consultant, SEO, SEM, Web Analytics, Radicke eCommerce

Getting into Google news can get consistently drive large amounts of traffic to a news site able to deliver consistently hot content.

What makes it difficult to get there?

Tons of competition:

• News Wires that work directly with Google and have a relationship to work together and make a canonical version of the news
• Number of stories on homepage of Google News change constantly
• Many people are scraping stories too
• Large publications tend to appear first

Algorithm changes in Google News can ruin all traffic if you site is dropped from the Google News index:

The above shows the traffic levels brought by approximately 120 Google News referrals and what happened when the site eventually was dropped from the news results.

How to work with Google News?

• Follow the rules which are public
• No “black hat” has ever been successful – Google News is closely watching their system
• Meet tech requirements (proper News XML sitemaps)
• Publish 365/7 (everyday)
• Original content
• Don’t rely on just Google News – they can always remove you

Lisa Buyer, President & CEO, The Buyer Group

Lisa shared the power of Twitter for media relations.

Good media relations on Twitter:

• National media connect with sources via Twitter
• Traditional media are embracing social media

What are traditional media doing on Twitter?

• Following CEOs
• Promoting their publication’s top stories
• Interaction with their readers/fans
• Not necessarily there to be pitched – the key is to build relationships

Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder, SEO-PR

News search and social media marketing are closely linked – news content feeds social and social content is feeding the news.

More traffic comes from blogs than press releases – so the content must be social.  With that said, press releases can be starting points for that content that appears on blogs, so they still have a place.

How to use press releases to inspire social content that also feeds the engines?  Create an amazing story/promotion/contest aimed at engaging the social web.  Act as the leader to help tell that story and encourage it to spread.

• Find trends with lots of search volume (use keyword research to plan your social campaigns based around news search volume).
• Use multiple press releases throughout the process to help tell your story:  one announcing the story/contest/promotion, then one about the engagement in the social web (use this to put those social media users or bloggers who are participating in the spotlight).  Then one about the final outcome.
• Use email and one-to-one connections to help spark the news.
• Above all else, bring people and media influencers into the process – make those people the story itself.

Learn more search marketing strategies from 2009 SES SJ coverage by TopRank Online Marketing

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SES SJ: News Search SEO | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | http://www.toprankblog.com

Of course, feedback and questions are always welcome. The webinar had about 350 participants online and there were well over 70 questions posed.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Leveraging SEO and PR with Digital Public Relations | http://www.toprankblog.com

Working for TopRank Online Marketing, which offers both SEO and public relations services, I always enjoy attending sessions that focus on both.

In part, it’s an excellent feeling to know that the SEO services we integrate into our online PR programs are ahead of the game in many ways, and in part because there is always something new and of value I can continue to offer to our clients.

That was my exact feeling when attending the PRSA session “What’s The ROI On Your Press Release.”  This excellent session was presented by:

• Greg Jarboe, President, SEO-PR
• Laura Sturaitis, Senior Vice President Media Services & Product Strategy, Business Wire

Much of what was presented by Sturaitis will be familiar to regular readers of this blog, but new and vital to those either new to PR or veterans of traditional PR only.

As was the theme for much of this conference, and within the title of this session, the first step when drafting your next release will be to outline your measurement of success in advance, whether that be coverage, online visibility, straight up sales, disclosure, or some mixture of all or some of the above.

Once established, Sturaitis offered excellent tips to help increase ROI in each of these areas, again, these may seem well established in the world of SEO, but it’s equally important that PR professionals also learn to take hold:

• Identify keywords for which you seek for your release to be found.  Leverage keyword research to find popular keywords relating to your story or industry.
• Link these keywords back to your website.  This will not only help increase keyword rankings for your site, but will provide another portal for users.
• Format your press release for robots and readers – place keywords up & to the left, where both of these lifeforms look.
• Measure your results.

The reason for the vitality of Sturaitis’ tips came alive in Jarboe’s set where results driven case studies were shared.

These case studies, with their real world examples, should help to put any client who may be apprehensive or unsure of new optimized news blended tactics at complete ease:

• Symettricom, a developer of extremely niche technology chips, optimized a release around an admittedly unpopular, but extremely relevant keyword with a corresponding link to a form page.  Predictably, only 8 inquiries were seen.  Unpredictably, one of these leads accounted for $200 million.
• Southwest Airlines had previously only optimized releases around corporate nickname “Southwest”.  Upon optimizing for “Southwest Airlines”, and implementing tracking pages, they were able to account for approximately 2.5 million in ticket sales.  A big reason why we’re advocates of landing pages and full brand names at TopRank. TopRank Online Marketing, that is
• Christian Science Monitor, in support of their 11 part article on former hostage Jill Caroll, sought additional exposure through an optimized release.  Jarboe, breaking AP style and (apparently, per his recollection the heart of the Monitor’s editor) identified Caroll as the keyword “Jill Caroll” several times throughout the release.  The results were, again, a marked increase in traffic, simply by modifying AP style to “Google Style”.

The biggest takeaway for PR professionals is the realization that little will change about what we do.  Whether we are communicating via AP Style or “Google Style” we’re still communicating – and we’re still seeking to communicate with people.  In other words, we don’t have to write like robots to be found by robots.

If anything, the ROI seen with press releases thanks to our world’s advancements ensure we simply see more results for less as our messages retain far more permanence online.  At the end of the day, more results for less work is something we could all become accustomed to, regardless of industry.

Speaking of online PR and press release optimization, be sure to sign up now for the free Webinar on Wednesday Oct 29, 2pm EST.

“SEO & PR: Using Online PR to Drive Better Search Results – Today PR generates more than just media visibility, it is a key tool to increase search engine rankings and drive website traffic.

Join Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing and Jay Byrne, President of v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations to learn powerful, cost-effective ways to use PR to drive better search results.”

The webinar is free and you won’t be disappointed. Get more information here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | PRSA 2008: What’s The ROI On Your Press Release? | http://www.toprankblog.com

News search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch. In this session, industry experts Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of The Buyer Group and Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search.

Lisa kicked off our session explaining that optimized press releases are a vital part of any news SEO strategy.

The first step to defining the online PR opportunity is to define the media segment. With your online PR campaign are you targeting editors, journalists, analysts or the media?

Media relations does not just mean getting your story found in the search results, but rather helping journalists find their story online.

So, how are journalists searching for news?
- Reaching out to social networks including Linked in and Facebook
- Searching in Google and Yahoo news for sourcing
- Requesting an email including link to Press release on PRWeb

64% of journalists report they use Google or Yahoo news services to follow the news. While 70% report they check a blog list for news on a regular basis.

Strategies for news search:
- Distribute over regular distribution networks (PRWeb & Businesswire)
- Leverage newsforce.com for to get headlines in top tier publications
- Have a newsroom blog or web site newsroom
- Being first to market, best opportunity for news search results

Consider developing a 12 month press release editorial calendar, including keywords relevant to a national event to increase visibility.

A marriage made in heaven – PR & SEO influences:
- News search results for optimal SEO
- Optimized web content
- Social media

Some things to know about Public Relations & Search:
- Currently under the radar when it comes to influencing SEO
- SEO agency should be working in synergy with your PR agency
- PR brings boardroom content to SEO
- PR professionals and agencies need to have expert working knowledge about SEO
- Online public relations strategies give business a strategic advantage over competition
- Integrate with PPC/SEM campaigns for best results

What’s cool about optimized press releases?
- SEO
- Credibility
- Perception
- Vanity
- Journalists find you and write about you
- People find you
- Online branding
- Lead generation?

Lee provided some best practices for optimizing news content to increase online visibility.

Most journalists have a beat and know the story, but they are searching online for sources and ways to populate that story. Increasingly, they are turning to social networks including Twitter and Facebook to find sources.

Most SEO efforts optimize for lead/sales generation, however news content is optimized for a different audience and outcome. Most journalists are looking for facts and trends, yet the outcome of both SEO and Online PR can be mutually beneficial.

News SEO Fundamentals:
- Focus on facts, research, and case studies
- Include keywords in news titles, navigation, content and hyperlinks
- Archive newsroom content and press releases by category (not just by date)
- Offer photos, video and demos
- Promote content and attract links
- Monitor social and web analytics

What news content should you be optimizing?
- Press releases
- Online newsrooms
- Corporate blogs
- Reports / white papers
- Email newsletters
- Webinars
- Podcasts, internet radio shows
- Interviews (coach interviewee on keywords)

Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) is a holistic approach to optimization, taking SEO to the next level. DAO is the practice of taking inventory of all available news content, optimizing it based on relevant keywords, and then promoting it to distinct online marketing channels.

Yes, optimization is important, however, Lee stressed the need to never stop acquiring inbound links.

Inbound links can come from:
- Pickups on blogs
- Syndication (RSS)
- Online newsroom
- Blog post
- Social bookmarks

Bottom line: Package news that will travel

Newsroom optimization best practices:
- Create an optimized template
- Include title tags
- Keyword rich categories
- Keyword rich anchor tags

Press release optimization best practices:
- Think upward and to the left
- Optimize for people first, search engines next
- Use keywords in title, subheading, and body of the release
- Don’t obsess over keyword density
- A 500 word release should include the keyword 2 to 4 times
- Use keywords when linking back to the company web site
- Add media: images, podcast, video, pdf/word doc

Press release SEO analytics to measure success:
- picks ups (traditional & bloggers)
- inbound links
- Google & Yahoo news inclusion
- Social bookmarks
- Keyword ranking for press release
- Keyword ranking for target web page
- Traffic to web site
- Conversions: media inquiries

Lee provided a few parting thoughts to optimize online campaigns, including:
- Journalists increasingly rely on search for news sources
- If it can be searched, it can be optimized
- Focus news SEO for the media more than sales

Greg shared a case study on press release optimization, in which the campaign was designed to address the challenge: How do you optimize for ‘not’ news when the initial campaign launch failed?

If your campaign is newsworthy, but was ignored by both the press and the bloggers, what’s next?

The answer: combine a push / pull strategy to get your message out there:
- Push: through blogger outreach
- Pull: with optimized press releases

A multi-phased launch approach can help you determine what works in the first phase and then amplify that approach in the second phase.

In a multi-phase campaign launch:
- Outline the content for each phase
- Leverage keywords appropriately for that content
- Include images to increase results

In conducting blog outreach, Greg stressed the importance of being transparent of who you are as well as the need to provide useful, ‘insider’ information for blog readers.

Extending the campaign to include blog outreach can increase online coverage and the number of credible inbound links to a web site.

Lessons Learned:
- Focus on creating useful information, and rich content using keywords
- The more useful content you have, the greater the chance it will get picked up
- Creating good content pays off and can increase editorial (authoritative) inbound links

How are you incorporating SEO into your newsroom, and online PR campaigns?

For more photos from SES San Jose, be sure to visit TopRank on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SES San Jose: News Search SEO | http://www.toprankblog.com

The buzz about SEO in the public relations industry has grown tremendously over the past 2-3 years. Press releases in particular, have been the easy target for promotion as candidates for optimization. With the growing use of Google and Yahoo News, optimizing press releases have been an easy way to gain prominent visibility in the short term and in some cases, long term visibility in standard search engines.

As both a SEO and a PR practitioner for companies ranging from startups for Fortune 20 corporations, our Online Marketing Agency is tasked with educating audiences in both industries. For example, at public relations conferences, I’m the SEO guy talking about optimized PR. At search marketing conferences, I’m the PR guy talking about using PR for SEO. Our Account Managers like Jolina Pettice and Mike Yanke do the same thing with clients.

The continuing convergence of public relations and SEO is inevitable. Neither is based on pay to play, ie advertising. Editorial visibility in offline and online publications is “earned” as is the top ranking of a web page on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live.

Public relations practitioners have significantly warmed up to well documented possibilities and opportunities to extend their effectiveness for clients through implementing search engine optimization into their programs. However, the reality is that PR doesn’t have control over all of a company’s digital assets and web properties.

While corporate public relations may not be able to influence their newfound SEO knowledge and enthusiasm across a company’s web content, there are several areas readily available in most cases.

The most common web site content areas under the influence of PR, at least from a content management perspective, include: press releases, online newsrooms, re-published media coverage, videos, podcasts, images, webinars, white papers, newsletters, in some cases a blog and routine announcements and media communications.

The first step is to take inventory of the digital assets you have to work with. For PR organizations, that means developing keyword glossaries relevant to categories of information and then train those individuals in the organization responsible for publishing news content, to reference the keyword glossaries when making decisions about titling documents, keywords within the copy and linking between pages.

The types of news content to optimize varies by site but often includes:

• Press releases
• Online newsrooms
• Corporate blogs
• Special reports / white papers
• Archived email newsletters
• Archived webinars
• Archived podcasts / Internet radio shows
• Interviews where keywords are included in media relations training

There are entire programs organizations can implement that leverage news content optimization independently, or ideally, in concert with the optimization of an overall company web site.

To learn more about optimizing news content, be sure to check out the PRSA Digital Impact Conference, June 9 & 10 in New York. Keynote speakers include Josh Bernoff of Forrester and David Carr from the New York Times. I will be presenting on a session “SEO for News Content” that goes into the details of how public relations content producers can optimize content specific to news audiences: journalists, bloggers and direct to consumers.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Optimizing News Content for Search Engines | http://www.toprankblog.com

How can SEO can help an organization raise awareness?

People are looking for information, they use a variety of types of search such as Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask as the predominant channels. There’s also news search , blog search and search within social media sites. Any time something can be searched on, that’s an optimization opportunity. Increasing awareness comes from making it easier for people to find you when they’re looking for information.

What is the role of search engine optimization in media relations?

It’s a strategic decision. The keyword insight that comes from keyword analysis that you might do with a SEO campaign, where you can tap in to tools that monitor what people are searching on can be very useful in optimizing news related content.

The result of the keyword research is to create a glossary of phrases with metrics like popularity, relevance and competitiveness. You can then leverage the glossary across corporate communications. Try to get any digital asset that’s created whether its press releases, web pages, product pages or announcements to use phrases from the glossary. Get people responsible for creating the content to use the glossaries and find out what variations of phrases are in demand so that they’re using language that’s both relevant and popular.

Often times, people like to be creative in PR and direct marketing and that does not always bode well for search. Copywriters or content producers try to be clever or ironic or funny and those ways of communicating are not as meaningful to a machine or an algorithm as being literal in your word usage. That is a practical application of search for media relations. You optimize content according to what people are looking for.

Let’s say you’re conducting media relations for a client for an interview and the company web site and press releases are already optimized for certain keywords. You can coach the client to use those keywords in the interview. What happens a lot of times is that when that interview goes to print or even online, people remember the topics of the article but not necessarily the names of the companies involved. They’ll go to Google and search for those topics and when the company web site is properly optimized, it ranks highly for search phrases gleaned from the article.

What about SEO just for press releases? One of the things you look for with press release optimization is keyword density, right?

When you stick to specific keyword density numbers, you put yourself at risk somewhat, of hanging your hat on a shingle that will fall down later. Search engines are constantly evolving and changing how they rank web pages.

What you want to do is use your keywords high and to the left of the document. Two or three times, four times maybe. Use general guidelines and focus on the user. It’s a matter of not being too clever and ironic and being literal with the keywords you’re using. Use them high in a document and in links as opposed to saying, “Let’s shoot for a 6% keyword density every time.”

How many times should you use keywords in a press release?

As a guideline, in a press release that’s 500 words, we’ll use the phrase 2-4 times. We’ll also use variations of that keyword phrase. Search engines are smart enough that when documents are identified as being authoritative for a particular concept, the presence of an exact match keyword phrase will often be accompanied by related phrases. Keyword research will give insight not only on the phrases people are actually searching on but also related phrases.

Is it a good idea to list competitors in a press release for SEO purposes?

Press releases have short lived usefulness in terms of news search because after a few weeks or a month, they get displaced by new news. It depends on how they are distributed and published. If there’s a goal to rank well on competitor names, there are other things you can do that will be more effective. I don’t think ranking for competitor names is a productive strategy as ranking well for things that are meaningful for your audience.

There’s a lot of information about meta keywords and descriptions – do they matter or not?

It’s a best practice. One of the most common problems is with Title tags when companies create web sites and put the exact same information or nothing at all. Title tags are the first and most important indication of what the web page is about. Title tags should be a short summary of the page with important keywords to the left.

The meta description tags are used in the search results. It is important to use them if you want some degree of influence over what search engines display in the search results of when your web page ranks for a particular keyword query.

Sometimes best practices for search engine optimization conflict with best practices in journalism. For example, Google news will only take up to 80 characters and that’s often not enough to get your message across. Do you then have two press releases? One for the media and another for new search engines?

First, Google News is not the major player for news releases, it’s Yahoo News that has the greater market share of news search. In some cases it does make sense to have two variations of a news release. One version is distributed via a news wire service and another version is posted to the client’s online newsroom. Content related to the release can be created for pitching, or a social media news release might be appropriate as well as alternative information formats for social news.

There are a lot of applications for variations of the same message as far as a news release. As far as there being a conflict between what’s appropriate for journalists and what’s meaningful for news search engines, you have to focus on the audience not on the mechanism for distribution. Don’t compromise your message just for search engines.

What do you do in a situation where there’s an old, story the client feels is unfair and maybe even untrue, but it ranks for the client’s name and then you hit a home run for the client and they get coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Time Magazine and this pesky story still ranks for their name. What do you do?

The reason that old story ranks so well for the client name is because of links. One of the first things you do is to engage in a link building campaign that attracts links to other positive representations of that brand name. If an organization is holistically optimizing their content and leveraging their digital assets as well as keyword messaging across all digital communications, and then promoting and getting links to that content, cumulatively it will have the desired effect.

If the other pickups are permanent, i.e. not temporary and not behind a login, then the company can work to get links to the other positive representations of their brand to increase the rankings of those stories and push down any negative results.

Let’s talk ethics for a moment. Are inbound links the best way to determine search engine accuracy?

Well it’s Google’s way and they have 60% of the market share.

We know that practically but what about ethically? And how does Google decide which inbound links are more important than others?

The first question is, is it ethical and that same question could be posed to professional journals in their system of citing authors and experts. The notion of citation and reference is what Google’s Page Rank is based on.

But in journals there is editorial oversight and a process of underlying journalism. And in some cases fact checkers.

The problem with that is that it’s not scalable. What you’re talking about is something like Mahalo and there’s certainly a market for that. In terms of something like Google and being able to find and categorize and present to the world in the form of search results, billions and billions of documents, you can’t do that with human editorial oversight. There’s a scalability issue and I don’t think it’s at odds with ethics. Google puts a lot of effort into making sure there’s a positive user experience represented by people finding information that’s meaningful to them and true.

There are some people subverting the system unfortunately. They make it challenging for organizations that feel in the real world, they’re the best answer for a query. But they’re probably doing a crappy job with their web site and Public Relations SEO and need to synch up their real world dominance in the category with how they represent themselves online from a technical, content and linking perspective. That is, if they want to play in Google’s playground.

Hungry for more? If you’re at SES London next week be sure to check out the session on news search optimization with Greg Jarboe, myself and Tim Gibbon.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SEO Tips for Public Relations | http://www.toprankblog.com

The last session of the day for me was “Press and Public Relations Campaigns” with Robin Liss of Reviewed.com and Joe Beaulaurier from PRWeb. Moderation duties were scheduled to be handled by Brett Tabke but were switched at the last minute to Melanie Mitchell, VP of SEO/SEM at AOL. Sorry Brett, but I don’t think anyone had a problem with the switch.

Robin presented a case study for a promotion on the iPhone her site wirelessinfo.com did using multiple channels including Digg and a YouTube video that went viral. Joe presented the multiple media format press release options offered by PRWeb.

I talked about what kinds of public relations content can and should be optimized as well as 3 SEO PR tactics: press release optimization, blog powered media room and social media relations. I also presented 3 different sets of optimized PR metrics including social media analytics, pickups and links, traffic and conversions.

I don’t think there were any live bloggers in the session, so in case you missed out, click on the image above to view my presentation hosted at slideshare.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Pubcon Session: Press and Public Relations Campaigns | http://www.toprankblog.com

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Walt Disney

Jennifer Laycock Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide helped the audience understand the value of images and 3 benefits to submitting photos to image sharing sites, like Flickr.

She made an excellent point by demonstrating what impacts people the most:
Copy OR Images

Let’s try it. What impacts you more, the description of how I dressed my dog up for Halloween OR the picture of it?

Description: For Halloween, I dressed my pup up as an angel.

Image:

Without the image – or having to include a lot more copy – questions are left unanswered. In this example, questions that are answered through the image, but not the copy include:
-what Wrigley looks like
-what color(s) he is
-what kind of dog

I agree with Jennifer, people are drawn to images. Not only are images entertaining, but they immediately tell us a story.

So, if you’ve got images and you’re not posting them to photo sharing sites, here are 3 reasons why you should start:
Create Conversations
Images will draw people in, but don’t stop there. Images are great conversation starters so take advantage of this. Conversations are also the beginnings of information sharing, so join in and encourage brand evangelists to start talking.

As well, pay attention to the conversations as this is a great way to understand both the good and the bad things being said about your brand.

Links
Posting images to Flickr, or other photo sharing sites, can create links back to your site.

Traffic
The images, if you tag and upload a description with a hyperlink, can drive traffic back to your blog/website.

If you’re deploying additional tactics that leverage the powerfulness of images, please share.

As well, consider using images in other tactics you’re already deploying – like press releases. Again it’s about telling a story, and an image does a better job and draws people in who might have otherwise ignored your message.

Check out other images from SES Chicago.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | SES Chicago Session: Are You Ignoring the Power of Images? | http://www.toprankblog.com

Yahoo News is still more popular that MSNBC, AOL News or CNN. Being able to rank well on the most popular online news web site as well as Google News simply by optimizing and distributing a press release offers attractive benefits at a nominal cost.

In the course of prepping for an upcoming public relations workshop where I’m speaking on a panel about press release optimization, I thought I’d do a review of the top wire services. Part of that presentation also includes press release optimization tips from industry friends that work at the newswires, where thousands of press releases are distributed daily.

I thought I’d share these tips with Online Marketing Blog readers that will not be in San Francisco this Friday.

Sarah Skerik – Vice President, Distribution Services – PR Newswire

Write a pithy (80 character or less,) descriptive headline that includes important keywords. Don’t be coy with this important real estate. Utilizing important keywords in the headline, and then again in the lead (and throughout your message) reinforces the relevance of your message for those important terms.

Remember that SEO is really the art and science of being found by your audience. For that reason, you have to use the language they use when searching for or discussing topics related to your product or industry. Put more simply – don’t use jargon!

Joe Beaulaurier – Interactive Marketing Manager – PRWeb

Link your strategically important search keywords to deep relevant pages in your site, not the front page. Use your keyword links to connect the strategically important keyword terms in your press releases to the most relevant deep pages within your site. If they don’t exist, create appropriate deep pages (aka landing pages) and place content on them that is specifically relevant to the keywords. For instance, if you are selling bicycles and are linking the words “mountain bikes” from within your press release, be sure to link to the page that details your company’s mountain bike offerings.

Laura Sturaitis – Senior Vice President, Media Services & Product Strategy – Business Wire

I think my best tip for clients on the topic of optimizing their press release for search and social media, is to begin to think of the press release not just as a media relations tool, as it has been historically, but instead to view creating a press release as compiling a mini web page on the news or topic being written about.

If you think of a press release like this from the very moment that you open your Word document to start writing, you immediately begin to write it differently, for example:

• You use formatting like bold, italics, bullet points, short headlines and subheads that not only makes the page easier to read online, but also enhances SEO.

• You insert a company logo for branding and embed photos, graphics and video links in your press release to show what you are writing about in pictures, graphs, sound & motion, rather than simply trying to describe it in words…very web friendly.

• You incorporate links from your targeted keywords in the press release, not only to have your release rank for those keywords in the search engines, but also so your press release can operate as a portal to additional information on those topics, driving traffic to your website and hopefully to landing pages utilizing the same keywords.

The beauty of thinking of the press release in this way is that when these things are considered at the outset in writing the release, you can then measure how successful your release has been not only by how many news stories or blog posts were written about it, but also how well the release ranked in the search engines and how well it drives traffic, sales, or other actions from online visitors to your website.

I often say in the world of user generated content, the people in the best position to deliver meaningful, relevant content are professional communicators and the press release can be a powerful tool to do this because of its extensive reach online not only as a media relations tool but now as a direct-to-consumer communication via search engines and other online reach.

Kevin Dill – Product Manager, Social and Multimedia Products – Marketwire

Many people believe that SEO involves just researching and improving upon press release keywords, phrases, META tags, etc. There are other ways to search engine optimize the press release for additional search engine pickup or search engine visibility (SEV).

Add an audio link such as a podcast or product announcement into your press release. If you have an RSS feed associated with your releases, you can direct Apple iTunes to pick up the audio automatically and include it in a freely available channel on iTunes.com. With 70 million iTunes subscribers, why not? There are also several audio aggregators on the web which spider audio links and make them keyword searchable.

Consider choosing a newswire which will allow “external” multimedia content hosting. For example, YouTube for video or Flickr for photos. These sites are spidered by the major search engines as well as being searchable “social” directories within the site. YouTube is the third largest search engine.

Now you have created a press release which is truly “optimized”. You have taken your multimedia elements and integrated them into large compartmentalized sites for expanded availability. You will get additional search engine pickup of your content external to normal press release distribution channels as well as additional presence in popular searchable portals.

For posts on the topic of press release optimization and online PR tactics, be sure to visit:

• Press Releases as Marketing Tools – Bullet list of practical tips.
• Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae? – Hot off the press at Search Engine Watch from Greg Jarboe
• Ladies and Gentelmen of the Jury, The Social Media Release is not a Meatball Sundae – Brian Solis’ response to Greg’s post
• Push Pull PR and Social Media – Where does social media fit into online PR? Find out here.
• The Power of Social Media Blogs and PR – Four podcast interview segments with RSS Ray.
• Lowdown on Press Release Optimization – Oldie but a goodie from 2005.
• Press Release SEO Tips – 10 Things you can do right now to improve news release visibility in search.

Do you have press release optimization and distribution tips that you’d like to share? We’d love to see them in the comments.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | Tips on Press Release SEO | http://www.toprankblog.com