Online Marketing Blog

 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.

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.

This is post #5 in a series of 10 on the intersection of PR and SEO.  We’ll discuss a few best practices content SEO tactics as well as a few things to avoid.

While there is much to understand about successfully implementing and maintaining search engine optimization efforts, there are a few  fundamental concepts worth starting with, including the notion of quantity, quality and time as appropriate to content and links.  For the most part, the more web pages, digital assets and inbound links, the better the search visibility.  Each link is a conduit and each page is a potential entry point into the web site.

As a general guideline, the same is true with quality. The higher quality content and link sources, the more competitive advantage for better search results. 

The core of search marketing  is the mix of keyword phrases that people use to search for  information on the web. Part of the value of Search Engine Optimization is to identify what searchers actually enter in the search box. If optimization efforts can focus on the phrases that are equally relevant and in demand, there’s a resonable expectation that the optimized news content will attract more visitors of the right kind: journalists, reporters, analysts, bloggers and even end consumers. 

Choosing the best keywords for news content starts with brainstorming using a mix of sources including the main topic of the content, talking to customers, analyzing competitor news content and topically relevant news that already rank wells. Effective keyword research generates a seed list of concepts from the brainstorming exercise and then proceeds to use keyword research tools to determine the popularity of those phrases as well as discovering related phrases in use.

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

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

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

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides a wealth of information directly from Google. Once you have verified a site with Google, they’ll give you access to all sorts of information.

Here are just a few features of Google Webmaster Tools:

1. Errors
Google Webmaster Tools will show all sorts of errors with a site. Not only does it show broken links on the site, but also links that are driving traffic to the site for which there is no valid page. Google even tells you pages it knows about but has been restricted from crawling. That’s good to know incase someone accidently blocks to much.

Google Webmaster Tools Error Report

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a necessary component of any successful business website. The internet has become the primary resource for information on virtually everything, from goods and services to relationships. To meet the needs of customers searching for solutions, businesses need to ensure their website content is easily visible and what better way than SEO  to achieve this?

For readers new to SEO, getting started can be a bit of a mystery, like planning a trip in uncharted territory. How do you know which keywords to use in optimization? Can you implement an effective SEO campaign yourself, or will you require outside assistance? TopRank Online Marketing has established 5 SEO Essentials for those who need optimization but don’t know where to begin.

Harrison Ford may have been a robot. SEO copywriters are not.

Copywriting, and all of marketing really, represent that beautiful intersection between business and creativity.  Those of us lucky enough to find our way into this niche find that, amazingly, we can actually make a living being creative.

Granted, the work we create may not always grab the attention of our hipster friends, but it will put food on our clients’ tables (most important), put food on our own tables (second most important), and put food on our aforementioned hipster friends’ tables (if they’re lucky).

Perhaps the biggest mistake we can make as copywriters when we find ourselves writing specifically for a search engine optimization initiative is becoming untrue to our own creative personalities.

Despite the constantly evolving nature of search engines and ranking methods, inbound links continue be a significant influence on website rankings. The higher quality the link, the more authority that link passes on.

Sites that have been live and active on the web for many years attract a substantial number of links when well promoted. But, what about those sites that are brand new? How should they go about getting quality links right off the bat?

Here is a list of 5 link building tactics for new websites to get them off on the right foot:

1. Links from Local Organizations - If your company is registered with the Better Business Bureau or the Chamber of Commerce, the links from these sites can be very relevant for geographically specific terms and topics. Also, locate other local businesses and organizations that maintain lists of businesses to request a link from.

It’s time for another SEO Basics post and this time getting more out of link building efforts is the topic. 

Link building continues to be an important part of marketing and optimizing web sites and web marketers can often get distracted by quantity goals rather than quality.  Link building efforts for search engine optimization purposes rely on clean links that can be crawled by search engine bots.  But what’s a “clean crawlable link”?  It’s one that is not blocked with Robots NoIndex meta tag, JavaScript redirect, blocked with robots.txt or a NoFollow tag.

There are hundreds of ways to attract and acquire links. If link requests, article submissions or other high labor, low impact tactics are used, then it’s important to make sure the links acquired are good for both users and search engines.

Whether you’re a marketer at a large Fortune 500 company or a small business, search engine optimization (SEO) can be one of the most cost-effective tools for reaching a broader audience and increasing online sales. A solid and persistent search engine optimization program can increase search visibility for many types of content affecting the bottom line:  sales, customer service, recruiting, public and investor relations.

These are challenging economic times calling for prudent marketing decisions.  Search industry, business and analyst publications agree: search marketing is recission proof, or at least recession resistant.  To make sure your SEO program investment yields effective and efficient marketing results, keep the following tips in mind:

In October we decided to mix things up a bit and offer more posts with practical tips, especially the SEO Basics series. While many of our readers appreciate industry insights, observations, conference coverage and interviews, it was the practical tips and resources that attracted the most interest.

While started out with tips focused on search engine optimization in October, we’ll begin offering similarly practical tips for digital PR and social media marketing as well.

The two day Social Media Smarts workshop in conjunction with the DMA will offer more than enough basic social media tips to share.  Here are the top 10 Online Marketing Blog posts according to visitors, post ratings and incoming links for October: