Online Marketing Blog

PRWeb has announced today the launch of their SEO Wizard toolset to help users create and distribute optimized press releases.

“The SEO Wizard will guide members in structuring their press releases in a way that will give them optimal results within news and search engines. The idea of search engine optimization, or increasing a company’s value in search engines by using specific keywords, has gained popularity in recent years. PRWeb’s SEO Wizard quantifies keyword traffic, so users can focus on the keywords that are popular search terms and valuable to their PR and marketing campaigns.”

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Aaron Wall has posted an excellent article on search engine relevancy over at SEOBook.com explaining his perception of the different relevancy criteria used by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Aaron offers both a short version and long version. Yahoo is great, but can still be manipulated. Google is best at determining relevancy. MSN is still new and currently easiest to manipulate. Ask is good, but their small market share does not necessarily warrant specific attention from a SEO perspective.

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Last week I had two interviews on SEO, blogs and press release optimization. One was a podcast and the other published in a newsletter. You can find the podcast interview over at the Novita Issue Communications Blog where Ernie Landante keeps me honest and runs through questions on the synergy of search engine optimization and public relations as well as some of the mechanics of the press release optimization process. At least until I started making death threats.

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Today I had a nice marathon meeting on a SEO project for a larger client that, despite the length, was a pleasure. With this project our SEO firm was brought in during the planning stages of a major web site overhaul that included siginificant front and back end enhancements. The project involves an advertising agency responsible for branding and overall creative direction and an IT consulting / web development firm that is tasked with all the programming, integration and web site implementation. And of course, there’s us.

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While I was doing a little research for interview questions with Yahoo SEO Program Manager, Laura Lippay, I noticed a post she made about the pros and cons of performing search engine optimization on web sites while they are being designed or redesigned compared to after the fact.

Laura makes some great points about the need to involve SEO at the planning stages of a web site, not after it’s been launched. This really stikes a chord since so many companies call our SEO firm saying things like, “We’ve nearly finished our new web site design and are now looking for a SEO firm to help market the site.” You can hear a pin drop when we explain how much could have been saved (time/money) had we been brought in during the early stage of the site design.

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Karen Sams over at our PR firm, Misukanis & Odden does a nice job explaining the value and benefits of incorporating search engine optimization with public relations in a short PR and SEO video case study.

You hear a lot of buzz about PR and SEO in articles, on forums, conferences, etc with few practical examples. Of the examples that are shown, they are often repeats of the same example. For some variety and insight, Our team put together a short video with information on one particular client campaign involving search engine optmization and public relations with impressive results.

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Last night a PR manager from the New Yorker emailed me about the Terry Semel interview, so I watched it and put up a link to the actual video. I emailed a few SEO related bloggers about it and thought nothing more. (other than the interview being great insight into Yahoo).

While the bloggers I emailed did not mention the video, a few other sites did link to the blog post I put up about it including Digg.com (front page right now) and the Financial Times.

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For some reason, when I get calls from companies with small SEO projects, I simply draw a blank when trying to think, who locally I should refer them to.

Of course several independant consultants come to mind, but the really good ones are always too busy. I don’t want to refer these projects into a situation where they can’t be helped. There are also a number of local agencies that “also do” SEO, but these projects are likely too small. Or the agencies aren’t very good at SEO.

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Spotlight on Search - Interview with David McInnis of PRWeb.

Undoubtedly one of the companies that has had a major impact on the convergence of public relations and search engine optimization is PRWeb. David McInnis and his talented team have created more innovations surrounding press release distribution than any other wire service.

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