How Public Relations and Search Engine Optimization Are Merging

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Julianne Coyne in blog 1 Comment

Search engine optimization is becoming all the rage. All over the country, business owners are saying “I want some SEO for my website,” without really knowing what it means or how it’s done. And three years ago, it was understandable to think that SEO was a form of unknowable dark magic that helped businesses make money, but not anymore.

In the last two years, Google has done everything they could to take the power from those dark magic practicing SEOs with the search engine’s Panda and Penguin updates, which penalized bad content and manipulated links. No longer could websites use thin, stolen content and still rank for important keywords. Search engine optimizers could no longer benefit from spamming the Internet with links to their websites. Google’s updates turned the SEO industry on its head.

What Does Google Want Now?

Google wants what they’ve always wanted: quality content built for people, not the search engine robots. They want people to stop slapping a link on comments to sites that aren’t even a little bit relevant to their own website.

How to make Google happy:

Create your industry’s best blog posts, videos, podcasts, white papers and more
Build a circle of devoted fans who will share your content in social media and on their own websites
Provide content to other websites to help that website and to build your own website’s following
Ensure that your pages are optimized for Google to find them by using proper title tags and good site architecture

Does this sound familiar?

If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is public relations, and it’s been around for decades.

Public relations professionals:

Create compelling content
Build fan bases
Provide content to publications
Know how to adhere to style and formatting guidelines

In the past, public relations professionals focused their efforts on journalists, but the Internet gave the profession an end-around straight to the public. Companies are now able to communicate directly with their audiences without having to catch the attention of an overworked reporter first.

Essential Skills for Professionals in Public Relations and SEO

The last few years have been disruptive for SEO and public relations, and the skill set someone in one of these professions had five years ago could be meaningless today.

Here are skills that professionals in both fields need to have to stay relevant:

An ability to build and engage a community through a website, social media, events and other means
A solid understanding of on-page SEO, including proper title tags, page hierarchy and information architecture
The ability to quickly produce high-quality content
Knowledge of media outreach procedures, tools and techniques

While public relations and SEO haven’t fully merged yet, they’re getting closer and closer. Search engine optimizers and public relations professionals should begin taking cues from one another to be even more effective in helping their clients. Do you have a different opinion on this subject? Comment below or send me a tweet at @fahrenheitllc, or visit the Fahrenheit Marketing website to see how we’re bringing SEO and public relations closer together.

How to Create Continually Captivating Web Content

Posted on July 9, 2012 by PRMarketing.com in blog, Content Marketing 3 Comments

This post was written by Sam, a blogger who specializes in website conversion rate optimization and other online sales conversion services.

Website Content As Google continues to emphasize the importance of quality content over tricky SEO practices, the complexion of Internet marketing is slowly changing. Where once every self-proclaimed guru on the Web was eager to sell you a million backlinks for one low, low price, there is now a consensus that bloggers need to help each other and allow pages to develop as naturally as possible. The old methods are the fastest way to get a website shuffled to the bottom of search rankings, and browsers have come to expect engaging, insightful writing instead of a poorly-crafted sales pitch. These are five ways to keep your content interesting, bring in new customers and hopefully make a sale or two in the process.

Know Your Audience

This first rule is an essential one for any marketer. You should have a good working knowledge on any niche you get into. Even more importantly, you need to understand those that are new to the topic as well as the experts. By knowing what people of different experience levels are looking for, you’ll be better able to gear your products and information to them. People who feel like you’re meeting their needs are also more likely to stick around for more, giving you a loyal and voracious readership.

Solve One Problem Per Post

One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is to wander over several topics in a single post. Not only does this hurt your SEO, but it’s also a waste of potential future posts and makes it harder for users to track down a specific piece of information. Every article you publish should form a tightly-woven narrative that explores a single problem and then either solves it or points to a product that can. Try creating a loose outline before getting down to the real writing, and you may find that your posts both sound more professional and convert better.

Keep it Evergreen

Evergreen content is more difficult in certain niches such as sports and technology, but whenever possible a post should not be easily dated. Although Google values fresh content, there will always be a place for solid information that stands the test of time. If your niche is horse racing, for example, it’s better to write about how to handicap a major stakes race than discuss a particular running of that race. You can always write both posts, of course, and get the best of both worlds. Both time-oriented and evergreen content can be profitable on the Internet. The proper ratio on your blog will depend upon your niche and style. Online Content

Refresh Published Content

When you do write content that is likely to age quickly, you can enjoy the immediate benefits of news-related searches and then go back and rewrite it to be more evergreen. Similarly, keep your permanent pages on Google’s radar by updating them occasionally with new information or developments. This is especially important if you are relying on searches to bring traffic into your website. Walking the fine line between fresh and outdated is one of the hardest things a blogger must learn, but it can mean the difference between long-term success and failure.

Worry About Readability Over SEO

Finally, pay close attention to the one company that can sink your business: Google. The days of poor-quality link-building and keyword stuffing are over; developing communities and providing real value to searchers have become the new SEO. If your content is worth reading and you reach out to your fellow bloggers, you’ll see your rankings improve and cultivate a reader-base that is truly interested in what you have to say. Many bloggers are finding that this is a vast improvement over the old days spent stressing over one percentage point of keyword density, so keep an open mind and you might find your blog succeeding more than ever before.

Crappy Rankings due to Google’s Latest Update? Hire an Online PR Firm

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Lori Gilson in blog 8 Comments

Losing Rankings Google makes changes to their algorithm frequently. These changes affect how websites rank in the search engine results. However, none of their recent changes have had quite the effect as this week’s algorithm update. In fact, SEO.com’s Greg Shuey indicated that this update is one of the worst updates in years in regards to eliminating webspam.

The Back Story

Earlier this week, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that they are going live with an over-optimization algorithm update. We started seeing the first impacts of this update on the evening of April 24th. The update focuses on cleaning up webspam and taking action against sites that violate Google’s guidelines.

What Does This Mean?

Depending on your on-page and off-page optimization strategies, your website may have taken a dive. We have heard from a number of our clients that do SEO on their own, as well as those that utilize SEO firms, that their rankings have suffered. We work closely with a few SEO companies that optimize sites and build links the right way, but it is my belief that many SEO firms (especially overseas) use gray and black hat tactics. Eventually, Google notices and these sites are penalized heavily.

So, Now What?

Hire an online PR firm. Now. Seriously. None of our clients with a budget for good, strong, relevant content have seen issues. If you work with a PR company that writes quality articles and works hard to promote those articles on news sites, relevant blogs, and trade magazines, you will receive quality links from pages with high PageRanks (in addition to new customers). These links are relevant, and will build your online authority quickly, landing you at the top of the search engines faster than writing crappy content and spinning it 20 times. Bad SEO firms, bad!

Search Engine Success or Search Engine Sabotage?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Marilyn Buckner in blog 2 Comments

Congressional Challenges with Search Engines

Almost all of us use Google searches, but are you aware of some of the potential problems Google searches can now create for your business?

I recently read an article titled “Search Engines Are a Thorn in Congress’ Side.” The article was about some of the challenges search engines are creating in Washington. Search engines have apparently become a major public relations problem for some members of Congress. In spite of Congressional staffers controlling the content on their websites and social media pages, and the use of search engine optimization and advertising techniques, there’s little they can do about search engine auto-complete suggestions that pop up as users begin to type their query.

Unintentional Branding?

Here are a few examples from the article:

Former Congressman Alcee Hastings was impeached by the House in 1988, and also removed from his job as a U.S. district judge in Florida on charges of bribery and perjury. Although he was later cleared (there may be some new charges), some Google results might make it look like he has been impeached again.

Representative Jean Schmidt’s past just won’t fade away, thanks to Google. While my own Google search for her only brought up the term “ethics,” I looked in Google Images and suggestions like, “ethics,” “corrupt” and “Armenian genocide” showed up. Although cleared on the ethics charges, terms like that can steer voters away from the representative’s website and perhaps a vote for them on Election Day.

For nine other members of Congress, the search scuttlebutt is about whether or not they are gay.

We live in a very transparent world wrapped up in an electronic-cellophane package called the Information Age. SEO and a smart social media marketing plan are certainly essential tools, but who is to say how powerful the imprint of split second exposure to negative terms really is on the human brain? And it’s a no-brainer that having users click through on negative terms can be tough on the PR of not only politicians, but businesses as well.

How exactly do these auto–suggestions work?

The auto-suggestions that show up for a particular user are affected by a long list of items, including some major factors shown below. For more in-depth information on how Google’s auto-complete gears are driven, check out this article from Search Engine Land.

Popularity

2. Location: The region in which the user lives. This one can be particularly frustrating if you are looking for something outside your geographic area. Solution? Change your location, and you change the results.

3. Language: Have you ever looked up a foreign term or name and then had all your results show up in that foreign language? Now you know why.

4. Previous Searches: Whatever a user has previously searched for will alter the results of future searches.

Can anything be done about negative search engine auto-suggestions?

The biggest problem about monitoring or attacking the problem is how auto-suggestions work. What comes up even for a group of people in one part of the country may not be what appears for anyone somewhere else. The best key may be to monitor your social media for any advance warning, be honest with yourself, and then be proactive about any potential problems that could surface.

Media pros working with political celebrities like Herman Cain and Barack Obama have utilized Google AdWords to steer traffic created by negative auto-suggestions to information that could help diffuse the problem. Google AdWords can be used to display a preferred message or website first when negative suggestions are selected. Herman Cain famously did this on “Herman Cain Scandal” as well as “Sharon Bialek,” who accused him of sexual harassment. It obviously did not help him get the nomination, but may have helped him stay in the race a little longer.

Google AdWords and their counterparts in other search engines are based on pay-per-click purchases of key words and phrases. The more popular (and often effective) the word or phrase, the more expensive it can be to purchase. You can check Google’s Keyword or Traffic Estimator tools for the actual popularity of any word or phrase here. Keep in mind, however, that professional pay-per-click companies do a lot more than just look at these statistics. Once keywords are selected, a number of ads are written and market tested for effectiveness in driving the most traffic to your intended site.

The best strategy, however, is to avoid situations that would cause these types of problems in the first place. Google AdWords can also be a very effective way to put across other messages, such as to buy from YOU.