The Web Uncovered

Nowadays, a press release is not only used to inform editors and reporters of corporate news. While they are still called press releases, the content is often used to inform the public via numerous resources, including the company’s web site, blog and social networks.

Press releases that utilize the following Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidelines can also help occupy the leading search engine result positions for a wide variety of related topics.

1. Keywords: The most important part of any SEO campaign is keywords. When creating an SEO campaign, the first step is to identify at least 10-15 keywords that will be used on a consistent basis for any online-related activities. In order to indentify these keywords, find out how your target audience is trying to find you and your competitors via search engines. The SEO press release should incorporate the majority of the company’s keywords within the first 250 words, including the headline, sub-headline and lead sentence.
2. Headlines: Despite reasonable logic, headlines should actually begin with and focus on keywords and not the company’s name. Begin with keywords and remember that headlines should be written for web searching. Note that hyperlinks are not recommended in headlines.
3. Anchor Text & Hyperlinks: Keywords, company name’s and outside organizations should be hyperlinked in every press release to relevant and appropriate Web sites. Industry standards recommend including three to five hyperlinks as part of the press release body, as well as two fully written URLs – one in the body and one in the company boilerplate. Follow AP Stylebook guidelines when using fully written URLs (i.e. always use http:// portion of URL and place entire URL in parenthesis after the anchored link). To increase reach and relevance, be sure to link to at least one URL within the corporate Web site that is not the homepage and to at least one outside organization.
4. Documentation & Extras: From pullout quotes and side bars to images, videos and charts, adding additional documentation to your online press release will enhance web searching. Be sure to properly label and name each file with an appropriate caption.
5. Distribute: When preparing your SEO press release for distribution, consider using online distribution services. There are both paid online distribution services (i.e. Businesswire, PR Newswire, PRWeb) and free online distribution services (i.e. PR.com, PRLog.com, OnlinePRNews.com) available and each offer their own advantages and disadvantages. Paid distribution services   Some have additional costs but offer their own search engine optimization as well as share tools.
6. Share: Utilize social media tools to post your SEO press releases, release topics and links. Social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and social bookmarking tools (i.e. Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Reddit) facilitate sharing and can improve relevance and web searching. Each works differently and can potentially reach a different audience so determine which tools work best for your company. Be sure your corporate newsroom has share tools linked at the bottom to allow users an easy way to share your news with their own fans/followers.

Here are some helpful links to get you going:

• SEO Tools: http://www.seomoz.org/tools
• SEO Tools: http://tools.seobook.com
• Google Keywords: http://www.google.com/sktool
• Top Free Distribution Sites: http://www.bignews.biz/blog/?p=6

Written by Twitter Handle @jabraha7

The evolution of digital marketing has forever changed the way marketers have to think about how to build and manage a brand. No longer a “behind the scenes” function, marketers are now one of the most critical and visible functions of a successful organization. With responsibility for both traditional and digital marketing channels, an effective marketer must be a strategist, writer, online guru, relationship builder, executer and more.

But many communicators are struggling to find the most efficient and effective way to connect traditional marketing tactics and digital marketing tactics.

When connected effectively, traditional and digital marketing tactics offer immense opportunities to build market recognition, increase brand awareness and provide the foundation for strong and sustainable growth. To do so, successful marketers must turn to the “Multi-Touch” approach.

The “Multi-Touch” approach combines traditional marketing (advertising, public relations, events, etc.), which offers opportunities to reach the masses, with digital marketing (social networking, SEO, etc), which offers a more personalized, one-on-one communication opportunity. This integration allows marketers to offer consistent messaging that resonates to as many of the ‘right’ customers as possible, through all the proper channels.

The integrated marketing campaign that is created through the “Multi-Touch” approach provides marketers to use existing assets from traditional marketing for search and social media marketing efforts, and vice versa. Utilized by smart marketers, the “Multi-Touch” approach and integrated marketing campaigns can generate the measurable results needed to build your business quickly and effectively.

Written by Twitter Handle @jabraha7

While creating duplicate content intentionally as a means to bolster search engine rankings has long been punished by google, some people are being penalized for duplicate content would did not know they were commiting the offense.  This happens when you use the same web  content on multiple or sub-domains.   If this doesn’t make sense, essentially, if you have www.website.com, www.subdomain.website.com, and subdomain.website.com, you could (not always) unknowingly be penalized in google, and other search engine, ranking.  

Google has come up with a nifty way to avoid this.  In their webmaster tools, you can submit a preferred URL by which your site will be indexed.  This means that rather than going through all your (repeated) content, they will index your preferred version, which will keep search results consistent, and save you from getting penalized.  Google spells this out and more details on their Webmaster Blog.

According to Hitwise, the past month’s paid search traffic is down 26% from the same time-frame last year.  Hitwise said, “This is no doubt a result of cutbacks in marketing spent due to the recession.”  This analysis, however, seems shallow at best.

The online marketing blog The Marketing Pilgrim suggests a less worrisome reason.  Perhaps companies are no longer paying for their own names for paid search traffic, when their organic traffic is high enough, and of course free.  They ask, “is it likely due to a reduction in budget spent, or  is Orbitz et al are figuring out that they really don’t need to spend so much on paid advertising–considering they’re #1 in the organic results?”

The Takeaway:  Perhaps it is time for you to look at the keywords you are paying for in search traffic.  If your keywords render your website in the top results of a search engine, perhaps your money would be better spent on keywords that you are less likely to get organic traffic from.

Creating fake websites is a means towards several ends.  While some implementations are funny or catchy, some can be unethical and even illegal.   A Fake website is a website whole sole purpose is something other than what would seem to be the obvious.  One such example is the ever famous petsORfood.com, a website that pretends to sell unwanted pets for food, including species on the endangered species list.  It’s totally believable with its extensive online content, complete with order forms and checkout.

Why create fake websites?  There are two main reasons why you might consider this.  Firstly, by creating content that has virality potential, you could set up PPC ads and then just sit on the ad revenue.  While it may not turn into a cash cow, it could give you a nice side income.  Another reason why some people create fake websites is to create a reputable link to their site.  Not only could it bolster traffic, but it has positive SEO effects as well.   Find a list of such websites here.

The Takeaway:  

While creating a funny or unbelievable fake website may advantageous, make sure you are complying with FTC regulations regarding misrepresenting yourself.  Furthermore, avoid lawsuits from refraining from lying about medical matters.  Finally, consider the use of these fake websites as jokes, if yours isn’t in good humor or obviously a hoax once scrutinized, you may need to reconsider your own ethical limits.

As Twitter begins teasing users with the idea of bolstering their search engine so that it not only searches through tweets, but also crawls the content of links in tweets, a new door of possibility has opened.  This would create a much more time-sensitive search engine, where search results could be populated by content updates within the last hour.

Not only could this change search technology as we know it, but it also could impact your search engine management (SEM/SEO).  This would be especially true for buzz marketing.  One key way to generate a buzz marketing campaign in the digital age is to create a very specific campaign with a viral capacity, and to create a microsite that is solely used for the campaign (see my favorite example here).  While they are created with SEO in mind, with high keyword density, often times there is a lag between their release and when search engines actually show their content.  This new search engine technology would pick up on the microsite faster  than ever, granted you successfully generate attention to it with twitter users (who are increasingly becoming representative of the American market in demographics).  Utilize the power of now in the digital age.

The Takeaway:

With traditional marketing and public relations, timing is everything.  In the modern online marketing world, the same is true, and the specificity of time is more acute than ever.  While utilizing technologies that allow you this chronological targeting, begin recognizing how changing technologies further change the face of online marketing.