SEO PR TIPS

The use of social networking and blogging is growing increasingly popular every day, with more and more people looking to find reviews and true product knowledge on all topics. From finding what a specific holiday destination is truly like from real life experience of a blogger, to using Twitter for recommendations of restaurants and cafes in a certain city. The use of online networking has escalated to new heights, in a positive way; this will continue to rise in the future.

Blogs and forums are used to promote products / services and to inform people about issues which you may need to research about a product, or for example, DIY to give you up-to-date information. Many people use forums to get information they need, not necessarily to join one. News stories from bloggers aren’t always dependable, although many people do find blogs for product reviews.

Social media is also advantageous in real life experiences, i.e. following selected people on Twitter can be beneficial, as Jenny, our online news and PR manager discovered. Also, the news on the Hudson Plane crash posted on Twitter was passed around the world faster than any of the media coverage on satellite or cable TV.

With social networking you tend to build your own portfolio and web presence, creating links to people you know or people who may be of interest to you, generating a network, whether personal or professional.

Blogging is all about giving your opinion on a subject and can be more educational, unless you have your own site you’re not going to be building a web presence. Blogging can go from giving your opinion on a subject matter to reviews of products or services.

Both blogging and social networking are very different, yet can offer the similar routes to problem solving and product knowledge, getting you the information you need.

Social media is a concept 2 years ago I wasn’t really interested in, I knew it existed, yet I didn’t really know anything about it and I didn’t really want to. I reluctantly joined Facebook to view my friends photo’s from her travels around the globe, and then got hooked! Over those 2 years in which I have been interested in social media, I think it has been catapulted into the limelight (from my perspective anyway, you may disagree), and now there is no escaping it!

The development of design, content, links, networking and media coverage of social media has improved enormously, it’s well documented and new innovations are continually being introduced. Social networking is a phenomenon I never thought I would get into, never mind checking my profile and searching for friends regularly, this was more so when I first signed up.

Online profiling on such networking sites as, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter or any type of blogging sites will enhance and develop your profile across the web, depending of course on your privacy settings. Content quality and use of keywords all effects how you rank in search engines, such as Google.

The following selection of tips may enhance your visibility and optimization…
1. Include good quality content
2. Utilise any links to other sites you blog on etc
3. Update your blog / social networking site regularly
4. Use keywords to enhance ranking capabilities.

Over the past few months my colleagues have been talking about Twitter, I didn’t really want to join another social network, (having one I thought was enough work for me), and a couple of months ago I decided I had had enough and finally gave in.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I have benefited from joining Twitter – from a work/industry perspective anyway. As I mentioned in an earlier entry I am fairly new to the world of PR and SEO, following people on Twitter who have much experience and sharing links / articles on related topics has helped me immensely.

I often find with social networking some can people become obsessed over it, depending on whether it’s used for social or business purposes…. Is it ok to be obsessed with it? What do you think? Am I alone with this perspective? And have you tried typing your name in Google to see where / if you rank?

Some basic SEO tips for PR’s who are venturing into the online world:
Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when building or developing a website, as well as the use of links, keywords and content. The need to use such information is to ensure the site achieves high rankings, for example, a good selection of links and the more links you have related to your site equals more traffic, plus, search engines are more likely to like the site.

Many larger corporations and anyone who can afford to use SEO companies and/or multilingual SEO organistions, are there to improve or enhance your site in order to gain better search rankings, however there is no guarantee that an SEO company will improve your site rankings. Search engines tend to keep you in the best position for your site, and unless you suddenly produce the best possible site there is a limited possibility that you will drop your position.

Consider the following factors to enhance your search results:
• Content – ensure the quality is good and contains plenty of keywords to maintain visitor numbers, to further your content make the use of niche words. Also bullet points in content will always be picked upon, try to add them in your content.
• Design of the site and software used to build it can also make a difference as to where you rank. Text is important in helping the visitor get to the information they have searched for, whether the content is written on your page or there is a link to whatever the visitor is looking for. If you have any images on the pages, ensure they have alt tags and title tags. Important Note: alt and title tags should always differ.
• Title of your site should contain no more than 12-14 words (include keywords in the website title). The header of the post must contain keywords also in order to attain higher page rank.
• Navigations should always be created using text, the use of images will deplete any page rankings you have. The keywords used in the navigation menu should always be the same as they are general web standards.
• Any links which are on your pages should relate to your site, to increase the chance of high search engine rankings, any external links should relate to your sites niche.
• An up-to-date site and an eye on your competitors will ensure you stay ahead, keep an eye on current SEO news and use the techniques to your advantage.

A colleague was asking me for some statistics on PR campaigns we have been doing for a client yesterday. I mentioned that we had been doing a lot of E-Shots (email flyers) for them recently and he replied:

“No link juice with E-Shots is there though?”

This got me thinking (Carrie Bradshaw-style) and so I wondered, can you generate link juice from email marketing campaigns?

Firstly, link juice is never going to be the prime mover in email marketing. As with other online PR strategies, the priorities are building brand awareness, relationship management and generating immediate site visits.

However, there are ways to exploit email campaigns and gain SEO benefits.
1. Host your email newsletters on a stand-alone domain. Optimise this site so it ranks – identifying it as a news site. This is an effective way to increase top level search engine visibility for your brand, products and services. (Part of the Ring of Fire)

2. Use your site CMS to build content pages for your e-newsletters and e-shots, the back pages, rather than the front page which appear in your readers’ inboxes. This is all good, relevant content that can be indexed by the search engines.

3. Do you send out messages with a strong visual impact? If you have designs that are genuinely interesting, it might be worth putting them on FlickR and other image directories.

4. Make a feature of the newsletter sign-up function on your website and make sure it is also included on any corporate blogs and forums. If you produce a well-rounded newsletter that isn’t just a list of points-of-sale, there is the opportunity to promote this as feature of your company / website in a PR campaign – thus, generating links!

I’m sure there are lots of other things, I’ll add them when I think of them. Have you got any tips to add?