Online Marketing Blog » SEO Tips

7 Answers to News SEO Questions You Should Know

Lee Odden — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:05:21 +0000

Recently I was invited to give a basics webinar on optimizing news content for search. The intersection of search and PR/communications are obviously something quite familiar and while I’ve done several such presentations with our client PRWeb, I had not done one with Search Engine Watch before.

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:

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:

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:

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.

Subscribe to this Feed

5 Ways to Show Digital Assets a Little Respect

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Don't ignore digital assets in your optimization efforts

Don’t fight it: Blended search results, and hence digital asset optimization, are here (at least for now).

Text content may be your SEO poster child, but with images, video and audio content often appearing in standard search results, digital assets can no longer be treated as the ugly stepsister in the online marketing family. Many companies produce a variety of content and media that never make it to the public web.

To this point, the majority of marketers have either overlooked or ignored optimization of non-text digital assets. In fact, a recent Forrester study found:

Less than 20% of marketers insert keywords into the filenames of videos on their sites
Even fewer marketers write keyword-rich captions or create online video libraries
Yet video stands about a 50% greater chance of ranking on page one of Google

If digital asset optimization isn’t on your radar at all or simply stuck on your back burner, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

Show your digital assets a little respect with these 5 optimization tips.

1. Do your homework on the SERPs

Be sure to become familiar with the types of files and media types that Google and other search engines are prone to display for the keyword phrases you’re targeting. Certain types of queries are more prone to show local, shopping or news results and if you can identify frequently used data sources, your time figuring out what digital assets to optimize can be a lot more efficient.

In the example below, a search for “Apple iPad” shows search results from News, Twitter, Images and Video. Here, news sources range from mainstream media like CNN to ezinearticles. A savvy SEO would consider how they might leverage exposure in the news area, via social media such as blogs or Twitter as well as videos and images. Producing, optimizing and promoting relevant video and images provides an additional opportunity for visibility in addition to web pages.

The display of blended results, especially where current news is involved, is dynamic. Be sure to revisit the search results page from time to time to uncover any new data sources for assets/media you may be able to focus on.

2. Repurpose content to get the most bang for your buck
Think of innovative ways to reuse your digital assets to gain maximum search benefits. For example, if your CEO gives a presentation at an industry event:

The presentation can often be recorded on video and audio
The video can be optimized and promoted on both your website and numerous video hosting sites such as You Tube
Multiple short video snippets can be created from one master video, all of which can be optimized
A search-optimized podcast can be created from the audio, which can be placed on your website and promoted on podcast web aggregation sites
Screenshots can be taken from the video, optimized, placed on your website and promoted on sites like Flickr (check out these tools for optimizing images from Six Revisions blog)
The optimized images, podcast and video can all be used with social media press releases for even more exposure
The PowerPoint from the presentation could be uploaded to Slideshare and turned into a video with voiceover for sharing on video hosting sites

For even more ideas on re-purposing content, read “Green Online Marketing: 5 Ways to Repurpose Content“.

3. Use keyword-rich file names and tags – but keep them clear and to the point
An important element of digital asset optimization is using keyword-rich files names and tags for all images, video and audio, and ALT text for images.

That said, an even more important element is ensuring files names and tags accurately and concisely describe the digital content being presented. As much as you’d like to fit the keyword phrase “circuit breaker” into the file name for an image of a pink elephant, it just might not work.

Think of ALT text, file names and tags like this: If someone couldn’t see your image, watch your video or listen to your audio, would they know what it is from your description? Be sure to link to your digital assets using keyword anchor text.

If you have a large number of videos, PDFs or Audio files, consider creating a sitemap file that links to each of them. Include descriptive text next to each link as well. You might even benefit from creating a video sitemaps file for Google.

4. Leverage optimized landing pages for digital assets

Some poster children and ugly stepsisters might never find a way to live in harmony, but optimized text and digital assets don’t have to suffer the same fate. Include optimized on-page text a part of your optimization strategy for video and podcasts to get the best of both worlds and maximize search benefits.

For example, place videos and podcasts on their own optimized landing pages on your website. Include either keyword-rich transcripts or summaries on the landing page, depending on the length of the video or podcast.

Optimized landing pages help the search engines understand what the video or audio is all about. Plus, you’ll enhance the viewing or listening experience for visitors by giving them a high-level overview of the video or podcast.

5. Don’t forget other file types such as PDFs and MS Office Docs
If you’ve got PDFs on your site, don’t overlook them in your search engine optimization strategy. True, you could convert PDFs to HTML pages. But particularly in the B2B world, customers are looking for case studies, whitepapers and technical articles — and PDFs can still be useful for content-heavy pieces.

Keep in mind a few points for optimizing PDFs:

Ensure PDFs are text-based (vs all image)
Create a SEO friendly PDF template for use corporate-wide
Include anchor text links where relevant
Optimize the copy as you would a web page
Complete all document properties, including author, subject, description and keyword

This Search Engine Land post offers additional tips for optimizing PDFs for search.

Any other document types that Google can crawl, index and rank are also opportunities for optimization.

Are You Ready to Treat Digital Assets as One of the Family?
Incorporating digital asset optimization into your overall content optimization plan doesn’t have to be difficult, but it can create an important advantage. If you’ve got the digital assets, why not optimize them? You’ll make it that much easier for the search engines to find and index your content – all of it.

What results have you experienced from optimizing images, video, audio and the various document types now found in Google search results?

Learn more about digital asset optimization at SES New York, where TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden will be presenting his insights into digital asset marketing strategy, process/workflow and measuring success.

Subscribe to this Feed

5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 12:00:30 +0000

We may already be a week into 2010, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to starting making resolutions.

Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes.

To help you get started, TopRank Online Marketing has come up with New Year’s resolutions for 5 different online marketing channels: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click and Mobile Marketing.

1. SEO:

I resolve to focus more on maximizing visits and conversions from organic searches.
With SEO efforts, it’s easy to get caught up in one goal: getting found via the search engines. But ranking in the search results is only half the story. If potential customers aren’t clicking through to your web page – or other piece of digital content – the ranking doesn’t mean much. Plus, due to variances in what each of us sees in the search results for the same query, rankings as metric are no longer as useful. Personalized search results according to location and web history means your site might rank high for one person, but not another.

Maximize the success of your online marketing efforts by analyzing your metrics report to determine which pieces of digital content are highly visible but producing less than ideal traffic results. Then take some time to ask yourself these questions:

What competitive search results are your potential customers seeing? Assess the title tags and meta descriptions of competitive search results. Are competitors offering customers a free case study or a complimentary product sample? Then consider ways to make your own title tags and meta descriptions out-entice the competition.
Does your content live up to the promise put forth in your title tags and meta descriptions? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: When you first visit your web page or other digital content from an organic search, is the content you find relevant? Potential customers don’t want surprises; they want a solution to the problem that caused them to search in the first place. And they want it as promised.

Not only will searchers respond more favorably to customer optimized titles and meta descriptions, but the increase in clickthroughs will, no doubt, be noticed by search engines and may influence subsequent rankings.

2. Social Media:

I resolve to set goals and track the results of my social media efforts.
There’s no denying that social media is more difficult to justify in terms of ROI compared to other online marketing strategies. But that’s not to say it’s impossible – or that tracking results should be placed on the back burner. And without goals, it’s pretty difficult to measure success. In 2010, put forth even more effort to set goals for social media participation and tie results back to specific tactics.

There are a host of free or near-free tools available to gauge brand mentions and traffic from social media channels. In December, we highlighted 5 of these social media monitoring tools.

Tracking results via social media monitoring tools is just a start. Those results must be tied back to business goals. Potential goals might be:

Develop better customer relationships
Reputation management
Identify and energize brand evangelists
Increase brand awareness
Increase relevant visitor traffic
Improve standard and social search engine visibility
Build up a list for email marketing
Increase leads or sales

Without setting specific goals upfront, social media efforts can’t be definitively quantified so be sure to implement a Social Media Roadmap and all or social bases will be covered.

3. Email Marketing:

I resolve to integrate my email marketing with other online marketing channels.
Regardless of what the naysayers may say, email marketing isn’t going to disappear as a result of social media in 2010. In fact, email will continue to play a significant role in most online marketing mixes this year. A study from Silverpop found nearly half of marketers surveyed plan to increase email marketing budgets in 2010.

That’s not to say email marketing efforts shouldn’t evolve with the times. Integrating email with social media is on par to be a popular resolution for 2010: A recent eMarketer report found 40% of executives surveyed will make integrating the two tactics their top marketing initiative this year. Another 25% of respondents have already implemented an integrated strategy.

Pledge to take email marketing to the next level by encouraging email subscribers to not only forward content via email, but also to get social with email and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other sites. Conversely, conduct a poll on Twitter or your blog, and encourage followers and readers to subscribe to your e-newsletter for the results.

4. PPC:

I resolve to maximize conversion rates by testing different versions of my ads and landing pages.
Most companies using self-serve pay per click programs fall victim to “set it and forget it” habits. They’re busy with numerous other marketing activities or don’t have the time to really get to know the native bid management platforms and test/refine campaigns. Even if PPC efforts are reaching set goals in terms of conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. You’ll never know until you try.

Consider these three ideas for testing different elements of your PPC campaigns:

Test multiple ad versions that highlight different benefits of your product, service or company. For example, one could tout cost-savings benefits, while another emphasizes a convenience aspect.
Use A/B testing to try out two different headlines on your landing page. Again, each could speak to a different benefit (i.e., cost savings vs. convenience). Google Optimizer is a great tool for this.
If you’re targeting a competitive search term with many competing ads, consider launching two different campaigns simultaneously. Each could offer a distinct piece of fulfillment – a free case study and a product coupon, for example.

A few tools for testing include:

A/B Testing resources: (Google Website Optimizer, 7 Free Resources)
Multivariate Testing service: (Omniture)
Heatmap & User Testing tools: (CrazyEgg, Clickdensity, Clicktale, userfly andEyetools)

5. Mobile:

I resolve to rethink my website design for mobile users.
If your site isn’t already optimized for handheld devices such as cell phones, now is the perfect time to re-assess your site design and how users find your site through mobile search – particularly for B2C companies.

In October, ABI Research forecast that mobile sales of physical goods in North America would reach $750 million by the end of 2009, a 117% annual growth rate. Consumers are doing a lot more than purchasing downloadable cell phone ringtones and games from their mobile devices. These days, clothing, electronics, books and a host of other items are being purchased through mobile commerce. Additionally, social network participation through services like foursquare, Facebook and Twitter are growing dramatically, creating additional opportunities for promotion and traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.

When optimizing web pages for the mobile web, consider a few tips:

Keep fonts in their most basic format
Eliminate advertising to conserve screen space
Take out images unless they are absolutely necessary
Remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary

Online Marketing Efforts in 2010
As you make your own personal New Year’s resolutions to drop a few pounds, start a savings account or join a gym, don’t forget your online marketing efforts. Each year provides a fresh start and endless possibilities, so take advantage.

What resolutions do you plan to make in 2010 to improve your online marketing efforts?

Subscribe to this Feed

Top 5 Reasons for Ongoing SEO Services

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:22:35 +0000

For many companies, an ideal world involving Search Engine Optimization would be simple, quick and a one-time task to check off a list. An organization would create a website, optimize its content for target keywords and promote the site. Soon, the website would acquire a strong number of inbound links and start ranking for those target keywords. End of story.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. In reality, SEO isn’t just about adding keywords and linking. SEO is increasingly social and sits at the intersection of multiple business functions outside of marketing including public relations, customer service, recuitment and branding.

Ongoing SEO consulting is an important part of any internet marketing mix. Truly good consultants save companies significant expenses and contribute to increased leads and sales by providing unique expertise and insight into the technical, creative and increasingly social sides of internet marketing.

Back in 2007, Lee pinpointed 5 Advantages of Ongoing SEO Consulting. As we near the start of 2010, I think it’s the perfect time to revisit those points to see if they hold just as much weight today as they did 3 years ago:

1. Ongoing search marketing consulting is important because a large percentage of organizations fail to implement the recommendations provided to them by their SEO consultants.

There are many reasons companies do not implement the advice they’re paying for. In difficult economic times, some companies aren’t able to justify the expense of making major changes to their content management systems or devote significant resources to content creation. Many web development or copy writing staff are overbooked and SEO implementation requests never make it to the “done” checklist. The best optimization recommendations in the world can be given, but if they aren’t implemented properly or at all, then they’re useless.

An experienced search marketing consultant can lend a hand in implementing recommendations at once, in phases over time or provide quality control oversight of client side implementation on an ongoing basis. Ongoing SEO helps companies avoid costly mistakes in situation such as when SEO work is overwritten or implemented in a way that actually hurts search engine spider interaction rather than facilitate it.

For one B2B e-commerce site that TopRank has worked with for several years, SEO oversight over time has been instrumental at achieving compounded search traffic. Because the company’s web site encompasses a vast number of product pages – and because product focuses change over time – ongoing attention to keyword glossaries, on page optimization, anchor text and link sources has been vital.

In order to maintain search momentum and integrity to target keywords and audiences, the SEO team revisits optimized content to ensure keywords are still relevant and that pages retain their ability to pull search traffic. Since 2007, top 10 search engine rankings for this site have increased by more than 150%. While the value of “rankings” can be argued with Google’s new personalized search for everyone, ongoing measurements using consistent means can provide a relative measure over time. The end result has been a significant increase in relevant search traffic over time, despite changes in keywords and target audiences.

2. Search marketing consultants can help organizations proactively build links over time.

Link building continues to be one of the most common victims of a neglected search marketing program. Yet ongoing link building is still one of the most critical factors in determining page relevancy, crawling and rankings.

From content marketing on social networks to optimized press releases to link bait, search marketing consultants can help organizations acquire links that drive traffic directly and influence better search visibility, which also drives traffic. SEO Consultants can even assist in more passive link building efforts such as directory submissions, bookmarking, widgets and operationalizing the link opportunities that exist with other types of online content such as job listings, events and public relations efforts.

For one retail SEO client, TopRank has provided ongoing search marketing consulting – ongoing link building, in particular – that has resulted in over 80% of all web site traffic coming from natural search. On any given month, the site receives anywhere from a handful to several hundreds of new inbound links from relevant sources. Since an ongoing effort to acquire links was started, the website and blog have increased unique visitors by 214%.

3. Ongoing search marketing consulting is necessary because the search engine industry changes often.

This point may be more relevant today than ever before. The major search engines are constantly fine-tuning and the search engine landscape continues to change. Bing didn’t exist 3 years ago and who could have imagined that Yahoo and Microsoft would actually be working together let alone Google achieving 70% market share?

As an example, in just a little more than a year, Google has completely revamped the way it crawls and indexes Adobe Flash files. Before summer 2008, it was virtually impossible for a Flash-based website to gain search engine rankings. Today, many of the rules for optimizing on-page text can apply to text in Flash files.

More importantly are the impact of personalized search for everyone, the influence of social media and real-time search. The implications for SEO with these recent developments are profound and consultants that are on top of such changes provide invaluable advice to their clients, saving time, money and increasing competitive advantage.

Keeping up with the changes can put a strain on companies’ IT and marketing departments. In a win-win scenario for the client, search marketing consultants stay on top of these constant changes and consult on the implications for individual client online marketing efforts. Not only will the client’s site continue to reap the benefits of SEO, but as Lee noted in his post, he or she can “look like a rock star to their management team.”

4. Companies have thinly spread employees; ongoing search marketing consulting acts as “more hands on deck”.

Now, more than ever before, employees are wearing multiple hats within their organizations. A company’s web development staff, copywriters or other marketing personnel might be tasked with SEO in addition to all of their other responsibilities. Compounding the issue, the person responsible for ongoing SEO might not even have previous experience in search marketing.

Having a search marketing consultant on board gives the people tasked with SEO with useful resource so they can focus more attention on core responsibilities.

For example, TopRank acts as a partner with a B2B distributor of industrial products for all of their online marketing activities, including content optimization, blogging and PPC management. With a capable internet marketing team as a resource, the client is able to focus its in-house employees on making sales. As a result of their top 10 rankings on important keyword phrases increasing by 125% since the beginning of the year, search traffic has also improved significantly. More qualified traffic = more qualified prospects for this B2B company.

5. Many companies don’t actively or effectively use analytics on their own.

From measuring SEO performance to mining new keyword opportunities, Analytics are as important as ever. This is especially true as organizations are increasingly demanding proof that their marketing budgets are being put to good use. Marketers must definitively prove marketing ROI and tie efforts back to corporate goals. Concerns about effectively measuring web site ROI have given way to questions about measuring social media ROI.

Qualified SEO consultants have the necessary experience in monitoring keyword traffic, referral trends, time spent on sites, visitor interaction, social media conversations and other vital metrics to enable companies to make smarter decisions about what’s working and what’s not. The increasingly social and real-time nature of search brings new opportunities for on-demand SEO tactics that would be lost without proper analytics oversight.

Web analytics are certainly more present in most company online marketing programs with the introduction and acceptance of Google Analytics, but even there, constant innovation on the part of Google creates competitive advantages for those companies that stay current. SEO consultants providing ongoing web and social media analytics insight can reveal long term trends, cyclicality and the effect of the many changes mentioned above to an organization’s ability to attract new business and manage it’s reputation online.

Conclusion:

Organizations that invest in ongoing search marketing consulting are putting themselves a giant step ahead of the competition by allowing the company to focus on its core skills and relying on the SEO agency either completely, strategically or to fill in where needed. Do what you do best and outsource the rest.

Companies that hire and manage in-house SEO teams continue to leverage the expertise and strategic advice of competent SEO agencies to provide insight that proves highly valuable in staying competitive, reducing online marketing costs and increasing bottom line sales.

What are your thoughts on the value provided from ongoing SEO consulting? Do you think SEO can be handled in-house all the time, some of the time or never? If you’re a company considering SEO, what are some of your major concerns with outsourcing on an ongoing basis?

Subscribe to this Feed

5 Must-Read Tips for B2B Search Marketing

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:39:07 +0000

[Note from Lee: A few weeks ago, Michelle wrote a great post on Retail SEO tips and this week, I've asked her to tackle B2B SEO and general search marketing tips, since one-size SEO does not fit all programs. Enjoy!]

Search marketing should be a top priority for organizations in any industry. But B2B search marketing efforts take a slightly different form than the tactics used in consumer focused SEO and PPC programs . Typically, B2B markets are smaller, products and services are more complex, and sales cycles are longer. Therefore, B2B marketers must think a bit differently in terms of target keywords, online content and link building.

TopRank has worked with many companies using search marketing to reach Business to Business audiences over the past 8 years and we’d like to share these 5 B2B search marketing tips that can help companies maximize their results:

1. For B2B companies, getting found is just the beginning. While B2C companies can reasonably expect to generate a purchase from a single site visit, the sales cycle for B2B companies is much longer. Once a prospect finds the B2B website via search, the real work begins to convert the prospect to a sale. Understanding the B2B searcher and their position within the sales cycle (Evaluation, Consideration, Purchase) is essential for creating appropriate optimized content to meet their needs.

Additionally, web sites focusing on reaching B2B audiences, must focus an equal amount of effort on gaining relevant search engine rankings and the stickiness of their site. Visitors looking for B2B solutions can be convinced to stay on a site longer by:

Providing the information prospects need to assess the company and its offerings
Relying on analytics and user experience metrics to measure stickiness factors, such as time spent on specific pages, clickthrough rates on calls to action and length of visits
Ongoing heatmap analysis to ensuring that the appropriate links are included on the home page to lead prospects to the most important content

2. Content is key for B2B websites. For B2C websites, the majority of content focuses purely on product information. Because sales conversions for B2B organizations are based more on building relationships, content must position that organization as an industry thought leader and a trusted resource. Including video demos, case studies and newsletters on a site can help B2B organizations build relationships with their audience.

For one client in the B2B marketing industry, TopRank devised a blog strategy incorporating industry thought leader interviews. Insight was gathered from notable figures and shaped into keyword-optimized blog posts for a special interview series. This tactic contributed to a nearly 50% increase in organic traffic to the blog. More importantly, referrals from the blog to the corporate site increased by more than 140%.

3. B2B target keyword glossaries must be more robust. Clearly, targeting the proper keywords is essential to any search marketing campaign. But for B2B organizations, keywords need to cover a longer buying cycle, and therefore must often be more diverse than B2C target keywords. Prospects at the beginning of a sales cycle might use certain terms to search for information that differs from terms used by those ready to purchase. That variety of keywords must be supported by relevant content and link building as well.

For one B2B client, TopRank® Online Marketing devised a robust keyword strategy that considered audiences at multiple touch points to achieve significant results. The realization was made that prospects who are ready to buy typically use solution-based terms – either general or exact product names – in their searches. On the other hand, prospects at the beginning of the sales cycle use issue- or problem-based terms in their searches. The target keyword glossary, therefore, included both specific product terms and issue-based terms. This helped increase keyword referrals by more than 60%.

4. B2B organizations must think outside the box when it comes to link-building. Because B2B markets are typically smaller than B2C markets, there may be fewer websites capable of linking to B2B sites. Consider the amount of fashion-related blogs compared to food processing technology blogs. To increase the number of inbound links to their sites, B2B organizations must get a little creative:

B2B organizations can approach their supplier networks for inbound links to their site
B2B organizations with a small target audience can create link bait focused on a different but related market
For very specific niches, a B2B blog audience can be widened by blogging about more general company-related issues

5. B2B search marketing efforts have to speak to multiple entities within a business. Unlike B2C purchases, B2B purchases involve different stakeholders within a company. Each stakeholder comes to the site with a different set of expectations.

For example, a B2B site that sells recruitment software might be visited by a company’s HR manager to gauge the effectiveness of the software. A member of the company’s finance department might visit the site to assess the value of the product. In still another scenario, a member of the company’s IT department might visit the site to learn how the software can be integrated into the overall system.

B2B search marketing efforts must identify:

Who in the business is buying products/services on the website
The level of understanding stakeholders have about products/services
The jargon different stakeholders use to find products/services
The benefits that their business needs to receive from products/services

As you can see, there are some important considerations for B2B search marketing vs consumer focused audiences. The key is to understand the unique needs of the target audience, how they search, evaluate solutions, consume information and ultimately, how search affects decision making, both directly and indirectly.

What tips do you have for B2B organizations to add to this list?

Subscribe to this Feed

SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices

Michelle Bowles — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:32:23 +0000

SEO for Flash – is it a reality yet?

One of the most common issues for web sites with poor search visibility involves Google not being able to crawl and index a site’s content. Web sites made entirely with Flash are problematic because there are often no links for search engine crawlers to follow or HTML text to copy.

According to the Opera (browser) developer center, somewhere between 30% and 40% of all pages tested contained Flash files representing a lot of content that may not be included in search results or only partially indexed. Despite a large number of sites publishing content using this type of file format, Flash and search engines have been like oil and water. They just didn’t mix.

In the summer of 2008, Google announced it had improved the indexing of Adobe Flash files. Many Flash developers and SEOs across the globe could breathe an optimistic sigh of relief: Text in Flash files was now crawlable.

But what’s the whole story? Can a site be built entirely with Flash and expect to gain the same search benefits as an HTML site?

Consider these 5 points that Google makes in regards to SEO for Flash:

1. Google can crawl and index all of the text content users see as they interact with the Flash file. That’s a big step in the right direction, since ensuring a site is crawlable is the No. 1 SEO basic. A few points to keep in mind concerning SEO for Flash:

Google maintains that the text in Flash files is treated like text in HTML or PDF files.
If identical content is used in both Flash and HTML, Google will likely see it as duplicate content.
If a Flash file is embedded in HTML, you’ll be able to add meta information, but the content will be indexed as a single item.

The below image illustrates how a Flash site was previously seen in search results (without meta description text) and how it is currently seen (with descriptive text):

2. Google can discover links within Flash files. In other words, if a Flash file includes links to your website pages, you can increase your odds of Google finding and crawling more of the site – just as is the case with links that appear in HTML and other files.

3. Google can index external content that a Flash file loads and associate it with that Flash file. This capability is an update from the summer 2008 revision. Previously, if a Flash file were to load an HTML or XML file, Google would not associate that external content with the Flash file. This new capability, introduced just this summer, allows external content to appear in search results.

The image below shows the results to the query “2002 VW Tansporter 888.” Before the introduction of the new Flash search capability, this result did not appear because the content is contained in an XML file loaded by a Flash file:

4. Google supports common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash. Another update from the 2008 revision, this capability also applies to SWFObject and SWFObject 2. Previously, if a page loaded a Flash file using JavaScript, Google wouldn’t recognize or index it.

5. Google can index sites scripted with ActionScript. That includes AS1, AS2 and AS3 versions. Google also maintains that is does not decompile Flash files or expose ActionScript code if it’s not visible to users.

All that said, Google’s ability to crawl Flash files is still evolving, so building a site entirely in Flash isn’t best practice. To create the right balance when it comes to using Flash and implementing SEO for Flash, consider these tips:

Don’t use Flash as the navigation.
Embed Flash files into HTML pages.
Use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions.
Don’t include an entire site in one Flash file. Instead, break the content into multiple Flash files with different HTML pages.
Use Flash for design elements and less-important content, and use HTML for the most important page elements.
Enhance web fonts in Flash files by using slfr, per a suggestion by SEO Zombie Blogger Justin Briggs. Because the Flash styles enhance the HTML content rather than replace it, the engines can still read titles.

For Flash optimization from the source, be sure to check out the Adobe SEO Technology Center web site, which was set up specifically to provide webmasters with what the challenges are and provides practical steps, examples, and best practices that you can follow to overcome them.

While Flash, Ajax and JavaScript offer enticing user experience, they continue to offer a less than ideal experience for search engine crawlers. What tactics or best practices have you found in balancing rich media and SEO? Do you think it’s reasonable to for a web site to have an amazing Flash component and still be able to compete in aggressive search categories?

Subscribe to this Feed

5 SEO Tips for Online Retailers

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:00:56 +0000

Online retail websites face a unique set of obstacles when it comes to improving sales through better search engine visibility. Repetitive product descriptions, a lack of content and frequent churn of products can all be hurdles to overcome. But with these specific tips for retail search engine optimization, online retailers can turn those challenges into opportunities and maximize their organic search traffic.

1. Add fresh content to the website. Many online retail websites focus on selling products rather than informing and providing value to customers, and hence severely lack content. It’s a good idea to include pages on a retail site that are purely content-based. Not only will informative, optimized content improve search rankings, it can help retailers sell more products by engaging customers.

Try these ideas for adding fresh content to an online retail site:

Add customer success stories and case studies to the website.
Create a blog to provide relevant industry news, tips and product offerings.
Incorporate a resource section on the site with relevant white papers and other content.

2. Eliminate repetitive copy. Another issue online retailers face is that many of their products are significantly similar, with only slight variations. As such, product descriptions tend to use very similar copy. And if other retailers sell the same products, their descriptions are likely similar as well.

Avoid being penalized by the search engines for duplicate content by writing product descriptions that are as unique as possible. Highlight the most distinguishing characteristics of products to avoid duplicate copy. Lastly, ensure keyword phrases aren’t repeated too many times throughout descriptions. It’s an easy mistake considering target keywords are likely found in the name or description of most, if not every, product.

Not only will this technique contribute to improved search rankings, but user experience will be enhanced as well.

3. Draw traffic to static pages. For many online retailers, products are frequently added and removed from their website, some as often as every month or every week. Adding fresh content to a site provides SEO benefits, but removing it can quickly negate any advantages, as it takes time for search engines to index content.

To maneuver around this roadblock, draw traffic to more static pages, rather than revolving pages. For example, instead of focusing SEO on individual product pages, focus on product category pages.

4. Don’t forget to optimize PDF product catalogs. For many retailers, it’s a common practice to offer a product catalog in PDF format on their website. When devoting time to optimizing HTML pages on a website, it’s essential not to forget about the catalog or any other PDF files. Remember these key points when optimizing PDF files:

Create text-based PDFs, rather than designing them in an image-based program, so that the search engines have text to read.
Optimize as you would an HTML page, incorporating keywords in headlines, copy and meta descriptions, and including anchor text hyperlinks.
Post a smaller sized PDF to avoid search engines – and customers – deserting the PDF before accessing its content.
Remember to complete the document properties, particularly the title.

5. Optimize images for search engines. SEO doesn’t end with HTML pages and PDF files. Online retailers’ sites are full of images. Why not leverage those images to gain better search rankings? Including alt text and optimized captions can all contribute to improved rankings in the search engines. Plus, images found via the search engines have the potential to be shared and linked to across the web, also contributing to improved rankings.

Have you implemented creative SEO tips for ecommerce and online retail web sites? What tips would you add to this list?

Subscribe to this Feed

PRSA09: Top 10 SEO Tips for Public Relations

Jolina Pettice — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:08:35 +0000

Today at the PRSA 09 conference, it was a packed room for TopRank CEO (and author of Online Marketing Blog) Lee Odden who gave a presentation on SEO for Public Relations.

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?

TopRank is offering a Free Guide to SEO for PR here.

Subscribe to this Feed

5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization

Michelle Bowles — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:20:56 +0000

If you’re attempting to improve search rankings for your web pages, these days it’s no longer an option not to optimize digital assets. With search engines incorporating video, images and news into standard search results, marketers have the opportunity to achieve increased visibility by implementing video SEO principles.

These 5 basic tips for video SEO are a good starting point for marketers looking to improve the “searchability” of their videos.

1. Optimize with keywords.
Just like any type of text-based content, video SEO involves optimizing with target relevant keywords — both for search engines and for user experience. Use keywords in:

File name
Title
Tags
URL
Link text

Beyond that, include a paragraph of optimized text that provides a brief description of the video. Again, the benefits are twofold: You’ll improve the user experience and your search rankings.

2. Distribute videos on video-sharing sites.
In addition to posting videos on your own site, video-sharing sites are effective tools for gaining visibility and additional links. Remember these few points to maximize results:

Don’t forget that videos hosted on YouTube and other video-sharing sites should be optimized for keywords
YouTube channel pages — and those of other video-sharing sites — should be optimized, as well
Use a video distribution service like TubeMogul to deploy your videos to the top sharing sites

3. Implement a linking strategy.
Video is judged by the same linking standards as all other forms of digital content. So building both internal and external links is crucial for video SEO. Ideas for a linking strategy include:

Cross-linking to other videos
Linking to videos from relevant web pages
Linking to videos in blog posts
Tweeting the video
Linking to videos from social media pages
Bookmarking the video

4. Encourage viewers to share your videos.
First thing is first — if you want users to share your videos, you must create content worth sharing. If your video isn’t interesting, relevant, entertaining or informative, users aren’t likely to share it, let alone view it. From there:

Allow and encourage users to comment on the video
Make it easy for users to share your video on You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
Offer video content in multiple formats so users can choose the one that best suited to their platform and connectivity speed

5. Re-purpose your videos.
As with text content, the more optimized video, the better. Get creative in order to re-purpose videos across the web:

Embed videos in blog posts
Break up long videos and create multiple shorter ones
Use transcriptions of videos to create blog posts or content for web pages
Take screen shots from videos and post them to Flickr and other image-sharing sites
Turn offline content, such as training videos or videos of a conference keynote speech, into optimized digital assets for your website

What basic video SEO tips do you find useful?

Here are several other Video SEO posts you might find useful:

Search Engine Watch: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
ASK Enquiro: How Can I Optimize My Videos?
Matt Cutts: optimize for search engines or users Google video
More Matt Cutts: SEO Answers on Google Video
Lancer Media: Optimize Videos For Search Engines
Antezeta: 8 Ways to Optimize Video and Multimedia
Search Marketing Standard: Optimizing Your Video Pages in 10 Easy Steps
TopRank Blog: Optimizing for Video Search Engines
Persona Non Gravy: Optimizing Video for Natural Search
Reel SEO: Basic Tips for Optimizing Video content for Search Engines
Aus SEO: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
Rise Rep: Optimizing Video Content for Search Engines

Subscribe to this Feed

Top 10 Pitfalls of International SEO

Lee Odden — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:00:40 +0000

TopRank is fortunate to have an excellent team of consultants, many of whom contribute here at Online Marketing Blog. It is therefore, a rare occasion that we invite guest posts. The globalization of search and to follow, search marketing, brings a tremendous need for quality information and best practices. Search Engine Optimization for North American English can be a challenge on it’s own, but what about SEO for 5 languages and 12 countries? Or 30?

That’s why I’ve invited Andy Atkins-Krüger, CEO of UK based WebCertain, a specialist agency in multilingual search marketing to provide a list of the most common challenges companies face when embarking on international SEO efforts. Avoiding the big mistakes can save companies time, money and embarrassment.

After more than a decade of working in international SEO, it would be true to say that many of the same issues present themselves time and again. Lee kindly invited me to describe the commonest of these to help marketers take positive avoidance steps, so here they are.

1. Translating keywords is by far the most dangerous trap of all in international SEO rather than the technical hosting issues or the cultural risks – not appreciating that ‘keywords’ cannot be translated is rule number one. If you’re not a linguist, this can be a difficult concept to appreciate but the fact is that ‘keywords’ are convenience words – not really normal words – created by people to help them search and then responded to by search marketers.

So for instance, let’s take ‘car insurance’ by way of example. The correct translation of this into French would be ‘assurance voiture’ where ‘car’ equals ‘voiture’ and ‘assurance’ equals ‘insurance’ which does see a small number of searches. However, most search volume is at ‘assurance auto’ where ‘auto’ is an abbreviated form of ‘automobile’. French searchers and speakers have simply adopted this phrase out of convenience. The translation simply goes to the wrong place. This happens in all languages including English.

The solution to this is in fact, very simple. You simply recreate the keywords in the target language exactly the same way you would do in English. What that means is using a native-speaker of the target language – who is also trained in search marketing – researches them from scratch. That’s why we employ some 45 nationalities within WebCertain!

2. Not giving consideration as to how you’ll manage content when multiple languages are involved is a particular blind spot to many causing some nasty budget surprises. Worse, many organizations (the larger are more guilty) will invest considerable sums of money in producing truly FABULOUS English content – and then hand it over to the localization team with little budget and no thought for its SEO value.

A better strategy is to build your English content with localization or translation in mind. In other words, the copywriter’s brief should be to create the content without in-jokes or cultural references that a translator will simply not be able to translate. And bear in mind that fresh copywriting in each new language will be significantly more expensive than using translation – although a good option is also to mix fresh copywriting on particular local subjects which warrant it and using localization for the rest. The ideal would be to work with an international search marketing company which can localize and optimize at one and the same time.

3. Believing that an associate or, worse the CEO’s nephew, has studied French and therefore would be able to make a good stab at the language is not going to fly. You need someone who learned the language at their mother’s knee ideally growing up in the country in order to have the degree of intuitive understanding that will be required.

4. Taking an agency’s international claims at face value is an understandable mistake. One agency who claims a vast team of people who can work in 40 languages intrigued me so I undertook a detailed credit check. They happened to be based in a country where it’s a requirement to declare the number of employees within accounts and they employed just 3 people – which makes roughly 13 languages each. And if you see organizations which offer more than 40 languages then they’re almost certainly sub-contracting to translators (which you definitely don’t want) because there are only 42 languages including several versions of English which are regularly targeted within international search.

5. Choosing new target countries based on existing analytics is a good idea to support your export initiative, but is not the best way to decide in which languages to roll out your new web site additions. For instance, if you sell Supergizmos to the Dutch on your existing web site then what a good idea to try and expand those sales by checking on what the Dutch are looking for. You may find that they actually search for ‘supergizmos’ in English because that’s how they most easily expect to find them. Perhaps some additional support via paid search targeting the Netherlands would be a good idea. But localizing your web site into Dutch would target the same people who are already buying and may not increase their propensity to buy.

Meanwhile, some keyword research might reveal that the Italians (who fanatically buy supergizmos) are not using your web site at all – so an Italian language web site would incrementally add to your sales in the way that adding Dutch would not. Your analytics are never going to tell you this.

6. Finding excuses to run with a dot com – and not using local domains is very common. It would be true to say that I have made it something of a personal mission to promote the local domains – especially in the US – with some success. A number of proponents of the dot com have changed their minds after looking more seriously at the problem. Local domains are better for SEO because they give the best geographic information to the search engines AND users prefer them AND people you want to link to your site also want to link to local sites.

If the dot com decision is a policy decision and outside your control – fine we can find some workarounds. But take note of that word ‘workaround’ – that’s not what we ideally want right?

7. Not getting local links or hosting is a major handicap for many international sites – these do make a difference – though aren’t quite so critical if you have local domains.

8. Launching new countries e.g. Ireland, without thinking of the impact on the old site has seriously hampered some organizations success. Duplication on international sites remains a major issue – particularly for the world languages such as English, Spanish or French. It is very common to find that a site which has recently fallen in terms of performance in the UK, had just had a duplicate copy of the site provided to Ireland or Australia and because it wasn’t on anyone’s radar – no one realized what the consequences would be. There are many different ways to solve this issue – including sacrificing smaller sites to protect the larger ones (do you really need to rank well or Angola or is Portugal more the target?).

9. Responding to cultural differences is key – but this is only really good marketing. I get a little tired of all the stories about the ‘Pinto’ in Brazil being mixed up with part of the male body. In fact there are a great many famous Brazilians with that name as a surname, so I asked one of my Brazilian colleagues how come and he said “They have a very hard time at school! These make great stories – but the truth about culture is that countries reveal it in what they search for. Good keyword research can be used not just to improve the performance of your site generally but to understand how your potential customers are thinking and which products might be the best ones to target selling to them via that web site.

10. Lack of research is the nub of the problem. Few people have time to undertake really thorough research to most effectively power up their global export or marketing programs. The best trick is to find an effective international search marketing agency as they will have all the tools you need.

Sage advice I’d say. Thank you Andy. You can find more about WebCertain on their web site and more about international SEO at the Multilingual Search Blog.

Subscribe to this Feed

Basics of User Generated Content for Search Engine Optimization

Michelle Bowles — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:05:53 +0000

[Note from Lee: User Generated Content for SEO is something we haven't written about in a while, but now more than ever, marketers need to find efficient ways to generate content assets for search engines as well as the ability to meet customer needs to interact and share. Michelle takes an updated look that I think companies would do well to consider.]

You’ve heard it before: Content is king. But there won’t be much of a kingdom unless that content is optimized. But who is going to create it? Useful, relevant content doesn’t come cheap, especially when your goals are to publish on a consistent basis. As an internet marketer, if you haven’t tapped into the power of user generated content, you may be giving up a goldmine of SEO assets to your competition.

A study conducted by eMarketer in early 2009 found that the number of Internet users who consume user generated content and who create it will shoot up significantly in the next four years:

By 2013, nearly 155 million US Internet users will consume some type of content created by users, up almost 34% from 2008
The number of content creators will grow to 114.5 million by 2013, an almost 39% increase from 2008
By 2013, 51.8% of all US Internet users will be content creators, up from 42.8% in 2008

Most companies are not in the business of publishing content. But in order to compete on an internet that is increasingly participatory and social, both now and in the future, companies will need to work hard and smart when it comes to publishing useful content that both search engines and customers will love.

But just what works best–forums, reviews, blogs or social media? The answer is, there is no silver bullet. Like with all tactics that compliment search marketing objectives, what is successful for one organization may not be as effective for another. The way in which consumer generated content works within a particular company’s search marketing mix depends on a variety of factors including: content contribution and sharing needs of the audience, ability to create or update content management systems that support user content creation and moderation, a sound strategic plan for developing the software, building community and inspiring community promotion of keyword inspired content.

Keep in mind these 5 points as you explore how to integrate content created by users into your search engine marketing mix:

1. Give it time. Not all consumers will participate immediately—and some may never participate. Consumer generated content efforts, if easy to use and rewarding to users, can have a snowball effect. The more content that is created by users, the more opportunities for non-participants to be motivated to join in.

2. If you think user generated content is just for the Millennial generation, think again. It’s true that Millennials are most likely to participate—56%, according to an eMarketer study. But 46% of Generation X and 31% of Baby Boomers are dipping their toes into creating their own content. The key is to structure the ability to create content according to the needs of your audience. Research other web sites that offer customers the ability to create, mashup or share content and identify what appears to work and what doesn’t with audiences that are congruent to your own.

3. Broaden your definition of user generated content. Don’t simply think of content as text – blog posts, articles, reviews or comments. Instead, provide multiple media format options (that make sense) for your community including audio, images and video. Digital Asset Optimization of multiple media formats increases channels of distribution via specialty search engines as well as the density of a brand’s visibility in search results on a single query.

4. Go with what you’re comfortable with. There are many forms of content that you can take advantage of, from consumer generated article submissions to customer product reviews. So begin with what you think is right for your site and your organization. Start small by incorporating a voting feature on your website, or go big by launching a contest to promote user generated videos or photos. Think of both your own goals for content to rank well in search engines, but especially think of your customers’ unmet needs for interaction and content sharing. Then provide options for them to meet those needs in a way that allows your target keyword phrases to be used in the content that is created and shared.

5. User generated content can have the same effect as search engine optimized content on your site. First, content can be focused toward targeted keywords by providing pre-populated categories, tags and content options that have keywords already embedded. Second, it’s the nature of a vibrant community to add new content frequently, which will attract search engine spiders on a regular basis. And third, intriguing and useful content can attract incoming links.

Adding user generated content options to a web site can help meet several business and marketing objectives ranging from allowing active and passionate customers the ability to “have a say” about their favorite topics and brands as well as employing the efforts of many, many others to create content that can do well in search results to drive traffic to your web site.

The next step is to decide what your customers will respond to, what are their content creation and sharing needs and what will it take to create a plan and to test social/content sharing features.

If you’ve added social content sharing to your web site, what was your experience? What advice can you share with other web site owners for a successful consumer generated content program?

Subscribe to this Feed

SEO Copywriting On The Road: Strange Scenes Inside The Wizard Academy

Mike Yanke — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:43:32 +0000

“Easy reading is damn hard writing,” opened chancellor Roy Williams at last week’s Wizard of Ads training seminar, ’12 Languages of The Mind.’

Never is this quote from Nigel Hawthorne (not Nathaniel Hawthorne, as it’s commonly credited to, per Williams) more apt than when you are a writer of any trade struggling to find that opening hook.

(To serve a personal example, the percentage of time I spent drafting this opening paragraph will exceed the percentage of time spent on any one remaining section of this entire post.)

SEO copywriting serves perhaps the greatest challenge when finding that hook, as we copywriters are encouraged to begin our posts with keywords as far up and to the left as possible in our titles. (This post may be a bad example, as a blog that begins with ‘SEO Copywriting’ carries the promise of inherent fascination within.)

Williams’ seminar, as many who have attended Wizard Academy in the past can attest, proves extremely difficult to distill into a bite-sized blog post, making a starting point even more difficult to craft (…and so I chose a mildly profane quote, which seemed as a good a hat-rack as any.)

This was no simple ad or copywriting seminar. We learned more than just how it is that we as writers write. Rather, our discussions (sometimes linear, more frequently not) focused on how the entirety of the human race thinks, reasons, believes and dreams. In almost no instance, will our thought process be as flat as the paper or monitor where are words are broadcast.

So how can we overcome the inherent flatness of our mediums to give our words deeper meaning? One way is to understand how to effectively use ‘portals.’ For the philosophical thinker, dreamer or writer – think of a portal as a doorway to another world, where the deeper meaning and additional knowledge you are about to receive is only partially visible until you cross its threshold. For the SEO copywriter, think hyperlinks.

(If you’ve just returned from the portal I’ve provided, you return with knowledge and insight you would have never otherwise had, including:

Walt Disney, like Roy Williams, truly understood the additional languages needed by man, as evidenced by his quote, “Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”
Images can help you both better tell a story, and via hyperlinks, drive traffic back to your website.
TopRank Senior Account Manager Jolina Pettice dresses up her dog each Halloween. )

Ideas that circulated through the room during those two days touched on art, music, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, thought particles, mirror neurons, Elton John, the Wizard of Oz and The Matrix – in seemingly equal parts.

As a writer whose primary objective with this post is to provide actionable tips, distilled from two days of deeply profound thought, my dual fears are providing too much and too little.

As such, below find the top three tips that will stay with me as an SEO copywriter. To further encourage you to attend a training at Wizard Academy, I must reiterate that the three actionable tips that will help me professionally pale in comparison to the new ways of thinking that will undoubtedly help me personally (after my travel grogginess wears off, that is.)

Know Where To Begin – Have the confidence to create a killer opening, whether it’s the headline of a website, title of a blog post or subject line to an email campaign. An exercise conducted during the session focused on ‘chaotic ad writing’ where chancellor Williams took creative opening ad lines from 5 attendees (chosen at random) and matched them to the businesses of 5 other attendees (also chosen at random.) My opening line, ‘You’ll Never Believe What The Tornado Blew Into My Bed’ (inspired no doubt by the raging tornado that was devastating my neighborhood as I sat one-thousand miles away) was synched with a business consulting firm. Perfectly.Try this in your own writing. Open yourself up to the promise of complete creativity and do not be afraid to insert details personal to you. Do this right and you will open up your own doors of perception while simultaneously opening portals into the minds of your clients and prospects. It is these same portals that have likely been closed for some time, lest they risk ingesting awful ads or web copy, that are just dying to be reopened for something compelling.(Specific rules for the SEO Copywriter: You will need a keyword for this exercise. And if you are writing a website, your opening lines should not be so out there that you cannot sustain a theme. And you should not – I repeat – should not – conclude this exercise with copy for your client that matches how you speak, versus how they speak.)

Know What To Leave Out – Humans are a great deal smarter than they are given credit for, unless they work at the airport. Humans are also a great deal less patient than they are given credit for, like me at the airport.What this means to an SEO copywriter, or truly any writer, is that we can leave out details – provided we offer a reason for the reader to make their own connections.If you write compelling website copy for an ice cream manufacturer with a one of a kind turbo-powered churner, you don’t have to talk about how the churner works. Your audience probably knows how a churner works, and if they don’t, they probably don’t care. They want to know why it makes your client’s ice cream taste better than any other kind. This is what will sell.The same rule applies to any type of creative writing. It doesn’t matter who the lizard king is, what matters is that you are sucked into his story so you take the time to envision who he is. ‘Ice cream’ and ‘lizard king’ are just flat words until you let the reader give them meaning by filling in the details.

Know When To End – Tie everything back together and close the loop you’ve created in your reader or customer’s mind.Clever nerds, or readers clever enough to follow my portal, will have picked up on the loop I began in the title of this post and connected to several times throughout.Esoteric? Maybe. But I’m targeting those who are interested in marketing and copywriting who were, like me, nerdy in high school. If you can close the loops you create by connecting the last mental image you present to first mental image you create, you will break through and secure permanent mindshare in your reader or customer’s brain, and be a far better writer than nearly anyone who stands before you.

Subscribe to this Feed

18 Questions to Assess Readiness of Content SEO

Lee Odden — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 14:30:11 +0000

A big part of helping companies with Search Engine Optimization and content based marketing efforts is to assess the assets available. Digital Asset Optimization (DAO) involving multiple media, file types and distribution/search channels isn’t going to be efficient or effective unless there’s a firm grasp of a company’s available media and content production processes.

When TopRank works with prospective companies that want to take advantage of search and content based marketing, we go through a discovery process with them.

Here are a few of the questions companies should ask themselves to determine readiness for optimizing digital assets:

Resources:

Is there a person or committee that “owns” the search marketing or social media marketing initiative?
What departments, business units, cost centers and approval entities will be involved with the SEO program? Social Media?
What internal resources are available within your company for support and implementation of search/social media marketing initiatives? Web strategist, web developer(s), programmer(s), copywriter(s), in-house SEO(s), web analyst(s), etc.

Content:

Besides product/service content, what are the primary categories/types of online content produced?
How many press releases are distributed each month and through what distribution channels?
Is there a blog? If so, what is the URL and what is it’s purpose?
Is a podcast or any other type of audio recording published?
Is there a print or email newsletter? If so, how often is it published and in what format? Is it archived to the web? Private or public? URL?
Does anyone in the company author articles pertaining to your company and/or industry and if so, how often? In what publications?
Is there an online newsroom? Is past media coverage archived?
Are webinars, PowerPoint, PDF or any MS Word docs published to the web?
Are there aggregated resources such as FAQs, Knowledgebase or archived customer support resources posted online?
Are there job listings, events, articles, technical specifications, partner or syndicated content published on the company web site?
Is there a user generated content component of your web site? Profiles, comments, reviews, content sharing: text, image, video or audio?
Are images related to the business, products or services published on a regular basis? Ex: candids, product shots, staff, collateral, direct mail
Does the company produce or outsource the creation of video content for online or offline use?
Are there marketing partners or coop marketing resources that include media such as images or video that can be re-purposed?
Is there an affiliate program?

Understanding what content is currently available for use and repurposing as well as planned content will assist the tactical plan for a proper Search Engine Optimization strategy. Many companies have substantial digital assets to work with and are simply unaware of how to optimize and promote them for search marketing benefit. Many other companies are not in the “content publishing” business per se, and have little more than their product catalog or service descriptions available online and no plans to produce additional content.

To be successful with marketing online and especially on the social web, companies need to adopt a “publisher” perspective and commit to creating content that will help better connect with and inform both prospects and customers. Applying keyword optimization to purposeful content will best serve consumers as well as search engines.

The (loaded) question is, “Do companies figure out how to move from limited content production to publisher on their own or should they enlist the help of a consultant that’s “been there, done that” and developed processes?”

What Content Marketing resource questions would you add to this list?

Subscribe to this Feed

Use A Creative Commons License As An Online Marketing Tool

Adam Singer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:00:58 +0000

image credit: Sergio Tudela via Flickr (cc 3.0)

A Creative Commons license is an simple way to encourage others to share, remix, and reuse your digital content. If you’re publishing material of any variety to the web and looking to have it spread, licensing your work under Creative Commons is smart as it actively encourages sharing with permission and attribution.

“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” –Tim Oriely

With the release of Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price there is a heated debate going around the web about the idea of free. I’m not going to get into the economics of free, but purely from a marketing perspective, free is the great equalizer. Especially when talking about digital content, talented producers can leapfrog gatekeepers and get noticed fast. Creative Commons was designed to work with what the web naturally does, and that’s share the best content freely without resistance.

A CC license bridges the gap between full copyright and the public domain. Essentially moving content from all rights reserved to “some rights reserved.” CC is not a replacement for copyright, rather, it allows you to modify your copyright terms so your work can succeed in a digital world, legally.

In plain English, what a Creative Commons license says is “it’s okay to use my content (in x way), but you must attribute in the following manner.” Making people feel good about reusing your content only encourages more of it.

Visual artists, bloggers, musicians, photographers, podcasters, businesses and everyone in between can benefit from CC, especially when you consider that adding a CC license to your work is in essence a marketing tool. On the web, social sharing of content is the most organic form of PR there is, word of mouth, so it makes sense that content producers should take control of how their material is shared.

Realize others are going to reuse your content no matter what, especially if it is of high quality. By trying to go against that, you are fighting a losing battle and will only engage in a game of digital whack-a-mole, as we’re witnessing the music industry going through right now. Instead of going against the fact that the web lives and breathes the open sharing of everything, embrace it as a promotions tool.

Tangible marketing benefits from a CC license include:

SEO benefit

Releasing content under a Creative Commons license gives you, the content creator, full control over how you’d like your content attributed. As part of the process, attribution is required with a link. This is completely organic, as it is a legal reusing, remixing, and sharing of content on user’s own rendition without having to contact the content creator directly, or vice versa. The neat part about a CC license is you, the content creator, get to define how this attribution takes place.

Here’s the license page of the image of the ocean shown in this post. The artist set the following for attribution:

Sergio Tudela, creator of the image, has a homepage, yet his Flickr page is getting all the links and attention. He could easily change his CC attribution page, and link to his homepage instead of Flickr. From an SEO perspective, this makes a lot of sense, and he could make it as simple as this:

Clearly explain to people on both the page which hosts your content and the CC license page how you want them to link to you and attribute, and they must do so to use your material. Even if not everyone follows your instructions precisely, you’re still going to get plenty of link-love here, a CC license encourages natural sharing (with attribution) of good content.

Encouragement for influencers/professionals to use your material

As blogs increase not just in number, but in maturity, more and more are seeing their blogs as vital digital assets they want to follow all the rules on. It is becoming less of a “wild west” and more a formal publishing arena. Thus, many influential bloggers are careful not to infringe on copyrights for fear of lawsuits or DMCA take-downs. Why not use a CC license and make it 100% clear it’s okay to reuse your content on their blogs, just please attribute properly. The people you actually want linking to you, those with credible reputations and trust, will always comply with such requests.

As new business models are emerging from the idea of “free,” success stories are PR-worthy

When you have success using free as a promotions tool, capitalize on it for PR. Tech and marketing bloggers, business writers and even traditional media are interested in compelling stories of free. It’s a hot trend now and into the future.

Social proofing

Release content under CC, and then aggregate all the shares together in one spot as clear social proof of the value of your work. That social proofing can be used as leverage to achieve end business objectives.

Samples of success

Let’s look at just a few quick samples of Creative Commons success:

Fabian Scherschel and Dan Lynch created a tremendously successful podcast called Linux Outlaws through freely licensed content:

A vibrant community formed surrounding the show, spread among the Linux Outlaws Forums, multiple social networks and the #linuxoutlaws IRC channel on the Freenode network.

Using a Creative Commons license has enabled Linux Outlaws to grow way beyond anything its creators could ever have imagined and has created a vibrant and active community of listeners and fans. This surprising success of the show would never have been possible without the ability, and explicit encouragement, to share the content freely in every way possible.

Jonathan Coulton licensed his music under Creative Commons to try and break through as an artist:

Some of his songs have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times, and 45% of his income in 2007 was from paid digital downloads (Interview by James Milsom with Jonathan Coulton via email, 5 April 2008). This evidences the success Jonathan has had through the use of Creative Commons licences facilitating the ability to give content away for free. Jonathan’s content has been used in music videos made by fans and posted on Youtube, subsequently receiving (in some cases) over a million hits. Fans have also created cover versions of his songs, artwork, dances, plays, card games and even guitar instructional videos. Coulton says that this sort of outcome is very satisfying and validating, but more importantly from a business point of view, such enthusiasm from fans has meant that he has received a great amount of free publicity.

Mike Seyfang is an Australian education consultant, ICT strategist, amateur musician and notes:

What I do crave is recognition (not fame). The most profound recognition I have experienced is when someone mashes up or remixes my work. Like this, this, this, this or this. The biggest risk to me is that nobody will ever find my remixable digital work – or if they do that they might not have confidence to use it (ie that they might feel they need to ask permission first). Either way I gain more than I lose by having my work re-mixed into a new context. Had I licensed my work in a more restrictive way it is unlikely that anyone would have found it, let alone re-used it.

One more, as I walk the talk here – read what Cameron Parkins observed about my experience using Creative Commons as an artist and online marketer.

Next steps…

Take the time to learn more about the specific licenses and then register one for your work (it’s free). I suggest selecting an attribution or attribution share-alike license if you’re interested in the widest exposure possible.

Subscribe to this Feed

Is Your Web Site SEO and Social Media Friendly?

Lee Odden — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:00:58 +0000

Numerous companies are losing vast amounts of revenue due to their web sites doing poorly in the search engines. Web sites that are not easy to find via search miss out on attracting new customers as well as repeat customers that use Google to navigate sites they already know about. Is the same true for web sites that are not social media friendly?

People discover new sites through search, but also through recommendations made via email, word of mouth and through social media content. Making a web site social media friendly will facilitate the saving and sharing of content with others, extending reach and facilitating engagement.

Consumers find new content via social networking sites ranging from links on Twitter to Facebook to their favorite blogs. Content creation and links that occur as an outcome of social media participation can provide positive signals to search engines and affect search visibility. Making a site more social media friendly will expand the opportunity for content to be discovered directly and indirectly.

Search is the most efficient and effective way for consumers to discover content. Companies that want to take advantage now of where trends in information publishing, discovery and marketing would do well to ensure their content strategy factors in the value of search as well as social media.

Core concepts to understand search engine friendly web sites includes:

Crawlable content
Site organization
Internal links
Keyword usage – content optimization
Code/HTML optimization
Inbound links from external web sites

The notion of “search engine friendly” basically means making a web site easy for search engines to find, make a copy of, understand and rank in search results. Search engines are by no means perfect, not even Google. Making web sites more search engine friendly means making up for shortcomings in the search engines’ ability to crawl, index and sort web content.

This is why SEO is an important asset to the performance of natural seasrch results. All major search engines invest in continued improvements in order to achieve a better search experience for users. Some of the things that SEOs have traditionally done for web site publishers are now handled automatically by search engines such as many of the features included in Google’s Webmaster tools.

Improving a web site’s availability to search engines as well as keyword usage and links (internal/external) helps the search engine provide better search results to consumers. It’ also helps companies marketing their products and services to attract more qualified buyers. Not only can web site traffic increase, but the right kind of visitors will self segment themselves by the keywords they use to search.

Many companies have the search issue handled or at least they’re on their way. A recent study by eMarketer shows B2B companies rate Search Marketing as one of their top marketing investments for 2009. A poll run on Online Marketing Blog with well over 500 responses also ranked SEO as a top digital marketing tactic for 2009.

Standard search is evolving but it’s not enough to remain competitive to focus on standard Search Engine Optimization tactics. The social web is the web of the near future and real time search results through services like search.twitter.com or even the new sort by recency option within Google are giving consumers more control over the freshness of the information available to them.

The increasing demand for fresh, live web content as well as the expectation of consumers to interact with what they find in the search results demands that web site owners and content publishers make their web sites both search and social media friendly.

Here are a few ways web sites can make themselves more “Social Media Friendly”:

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

Social content – Not all of a company’s social web participation needs to happen offsite with third party tools. The addition of a blog, reviews, forum or even a social network to the company web site can provide intersted consumers opportunities to interact with other brand fans as well as the company.

Easy to share – Besides the ability to contribute to conversations happening on a corporate web site, there’s a tremendous opportunity and benefit to making it easy for site visitors to share that content with others. Many sites offer “share this” options that make it easy for readers to submit the page being viewed to popular social bookmarking and social news web sites such as Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon. Sharing options for Facebook, Twitter and email are also popular.Making it easy for web site visitors to share interesting content (web pages, video, images) facilitates the word of mouth recommendations people make in real life, except when done online, they become searchable assets.

The advantages of incorporating social features include improved online word of mouth, stimulating conversations with prospective customers and advocates and expanded market reach. The question is, are web marketing teams incorporating a social media strategy with their overall search marketing and vice versa?

Are you making your web site search engine friendly for the social web?

You can find 5 ways to make your web site search engine and social media friendly in this companion blog post at Mashable.

Subscribe to this Feed

Making News Content Search & Social Media Friendly

Lee Odden — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:31:37 +0000

Changes in consumer preferences towards news consumption and sharing habits via the social web present both challenges and opportunities for PR agencies. Searchers increasingly expect to interact with what they find via search.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe to this Feed

Link Building Tips for News SEO

Lee Odden — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:31:15 +0000

For those readers just joining us, this is post #8 in a series of 10 on the intersection of search engine optimization and public relations, “Top Ten SEO Tips for PR Professionals“.

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

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

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

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

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

General linking guidelines for news content:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe to this Feed

Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics

Lee Odden — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:45:07 +0000

Most web sites with active media relations programs host an online newsroom. Analysts, journalists and even some bloggers find newsrooms a useful resource for finding past media coverage, press releases, image assets, executive bios, company history, webinars, white papers, case studies and other information helpful for researching stories.

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

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

SEO and user friendly features of an online newsroom include:

Titles & categories optimized for keywords
Chronological press release archives
Site search that saves user queries for later analysis
Share/Save bookmarks
Subscribe RSS Feed
Optimized newsroom content: press releases, past media coverage, events, case studies, white papers, archived webinars, images, videos and audio
Cross link using keywords to related pages on main web site

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subscribe to this Feed

Essential Press Release Optimization Tips

Lee Odden — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:33:35 +0000

One of the most popular keyword optimization content types for SEOs and Public Relations professionals alike are press releases. As a news communication tool, the value of press releases has undergone changes. However, press releases provide a substantial amount of content to news search engines and can rank well in standard search engines like Google or Yahoo.

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:

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“.

Subscribe to this Feed

Online Marketing Blog » SEO Tips

7 Answers to News SEO Questions You Should Know

5 Ways to Show Digital Assets a Little Respect

5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010

1. SEO:

2. Social Media:

3. Email Marketing:

4. PPC:

5. Mobile:

Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009

Top 5 Reasons for Ongoing SEO Services

5 Must-Read Tips for B2B Search Marketing

SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices

5 SEO Tips for Online Retailers

PRSA09: Top 10 SEO Tips for Public Relations

5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization

Top 10 Pitfalls of International SEO

Basics of User Generated Content for Search Engine Optimization

SEO Copywriting On The Road: Strange Scenes Inside The Wizard Academy

18 Questions to Assess Readiness of Content SEO

Use A Creative Commons License As An Online Marketing Tool

Tangible marketing benefits from a CC license include:

Samples of success

Is Your Web Site SEO and Social Media Friendly?

Making News Content Search & Social Media Friendly

Link Building Tips for News SEO

Pull PR and Newsroom Optimization Tactics

Essential Press Release Optimization Tips