Starting with adding SEO to our media relations services in 2001 to providing SEO consulting  to PR industry leaders like Vocus, PRWeb and The PRSA, we’ve been in the thick of SEO and PR for some time.

The demand for smart Social Media and SEO information from PR agencies and corporate communications organizations has amplified significantly this year. We’re talking with numerous companies, helping them get up to speed with strategy, road mapping and training. One of the most useful insights we can provide is guidance on what to avoid when it comes to incorporating SEO and SMO (social media optimization) into PR content strategies. No one likes to #fail, so here are several things to avoid:

Shiny Object Keyword Syndrome

SEO advice is easy to find online including suggestions of doing keyword research using tools like Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool.  There’s a temptation to focus only on the most popular words and phrases even if they aren’t 100% on target. Or worse, if the website that PR staff can contribute to and edit isn’t anywhere near deserving of being known as THE authority for a highly competitive topic.

Those high popularity count keyword phrases are like shiny objects that distract from the language that is most relevant and realistic to achieve. It’s fine to have highly popular (and competitive), relevant keyword phrases as targets, as a long term goal and contingent that there’s a commitment to creating the content and attracting the links necessary. In the meantime, go after phrases that reflect the intersection of the topic your promoting and the most relevant queries being made. In fact, extend that search keyword research to social topics for more long tail concepts to optimize for.

Many journalist inquiries are pretty niche. They’re often looking for something very specific, and if you’re chasing high popularity keywords that will take a year to achieve, you may be missing out on a lot of search visibility that could inspire media coverage in the meantime.

One-Off SEO

Another temptation is to approach SEO very tactically and try new SEO knowledge on a single web page or press release. There’s nothing wrong with experimentation, but optimizing a single or a handful of documents isn’t what drives significant search traffic.

An extension of that would be to optimize a newsroom or website  without planning to revisit keyword lists and whether refinement is necessary.  I’ve heard comments like this many times, “Oh, we optimized our site already. In 2004.” SEO, like Social Media and Content is a journey – not a destination.

Missing Links

Google PageRank introduced the online marketing world to the importance of links beyond those that simply drive direct traffic. Today, PageRank isn’t as much of a focus, but links are still very important. Especially links from social networks and media sharing sites.  Many PR professionals consider the keyword optimization of web pages, press releases and digital assets all that is necessary – discounting the need to attract links.

Links are like electricity and help search engines discover new content. They also serve as a signal for use in assigning importance for ranking. PR professionals are in a unique position to attract some of the most valuable links possible – from online media websites. Asking journalists to link back to a website takes little effort and might result in a highly valued link that can send the most significant kind of signal or link juice to what it is that you’re promoting.

Additionally, sending out press releases through a news release distribution service like our client PRWeb, that are properly optimized with links to content that is being promoted can result in link acquisition as well. Sometimes it’s 5 or 10 links and sometimes 100′s of them.  Optimization with keywords is just the start. Link building and social promotion are what create awareness to journalists and bloggers directly as well as through improved search visibility.

Falling Short on Measurement

Improved search visibility is often measured with a ranking report.  With personalization, those reports are not as useful as they once were. Web analytics tracks visitors to a website and where they came from, like from a search engine. That’s about as far as most PR and Corporate Communications pros will go when it comes to measuring the impact of their SEO efforts.

However, there’s a lot more. Especially since increased, relevant traffic to the corporate website or news content can not only reach the media but end consumers looking to buy. If the content can warrant a link to a “buy page” where a conversion or inquiry can occur, PR practitioners would do well to make sure web analytics tracking is setup so that new business inquiries can be attributed to optimized PR content when appropriate.

How powerful would it be to show not only media coverage, but improved web traffic and new business inquiries as a direct result of PR’s SEO efforts?

Waning on Training

You don’t just flip a switch and become SEO savvy, I’m sorry to say. Achieving SEO competence takes training, practice and persistence. At TopRank Marketing, we have a consulting service but we’re in the business of helping PR firms and corporate public relations staff get up to speed with SEO and Social Media SEO skills. But there are many other places to get useful knowledge ranging from the upcoming SES conference in San Francisco to the online training provided by Market Motive you see in the right side bar of this blog.

The key thing is to understand that to gain momentum, providing SEO skills training to those in your organization in a position to create content online will be especially helpful. Going it alone as the sole SEO savvy person in a  large agency is tough to scale. However you get that training is up to you, just be sure to get it for yourself and for your team.

Frugal SEO Tooling

I’ve noticed there’s a tendency with many PR agencies and departments to be a bit conservative on paying for tools. It’s true that there are many free tools out there, but over time and without a business model to fund them, they get neglected and can become irrelevant or go away altogether. Then you’re up a creek without a paddle, scrambling for some other free tool, not knowing what really works and what doesn’t.

That’s why I like to pay for tools. I know they’ll be around and will have an obligation to provide some kind of service level and support. Whether its paying for WordStream for keyword research or SEOMoz Pro or Raven Tools for a host of SEO functionality and campaign management, don’t skimp on the tools. The impact of great SEO, especially SEO and Social Media Optimization, can have a tremendous impact and maybe even a multiplier to online media relations efforts. Tools will help you do quality work and more importantly, scale!

To Be Optimized, You Must Socialize

A big part of today’s optimization for better search performance means active social media content creation, curation and engagement. Building networks that you can share links with and inspire link propagation is essential for the social link and content signals being increasingly considered by Google and to some degree, Bing. Optimizing social media content improves the search visibility of brand content on the social web. The social network participation on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Quora and Google+ that goes along with brand social media efforts also provides Google with signals that can be used for ranking content on Google.com. Optimize and Socialize!

Conclusion

There are many more ways than this to fail at SEO and SMO for Public Relations, but as a foundation, these tips can serve to help PR Agencies and Corporate Communications avoid some of the pitfalls and become more productive, more quickly with their SEO efforts. Realistically, these tips are appropriate for any industry, but the boost in inquiries we’re getting from PR firms and business Comms pros, motivated me to create this post just for you

If you work at a Public Relations firm or in Corporate PR, have you hit on any of these areas to avoid? How did you get back on track, or did you?

Check out TopRank Online Marketing Blog for more articles by Lee Odden

Organizations advance their reach and engagement goals through content and Strategists work to audit, develop strategy, plan, create and maintain that content. Ahava Leibtag provides an excellent and practical approach at CMI in her post, “Creating Valuable Content” which outlines how content should be: Findable, Readable, Understandable, Actionable and Shareable.

SEO and content strategy intersect in more ways than optimizing web pages with keywords. My take on Margot’s question, “How does SEO and content strategy interact?” starts with understanding customer segments, behaviors and preferences for information discovery, consumption and sharing. Knowing what customers care about and how those concerns and interests manifest as search keywords and social topics folds very well into the keyword research practiced by professional SEOs.

Keyword Glossaries and Editorial Plans aid in planning relevant content that is inherently optimized for customers and target audiences.  Specific keyword optimization is appropriate as well, but the end content product becomes much easier to find, consume and share if there’s empathy with customer needs translated into topics and keywords from the start. Readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of optimizing for customers before search engines and that you can certainly do both.

An Editorial Plan outlines content types, topics and the keywords they’re optimized for. It indicates where and if the content will be re-published and re-purposed. The plan also shares what channels of distribution will be used to promote the content and share it via the social web. There very well may be an augmentation of the search optimization effort for the social web that emphasizes popular and relevant social topics vs. search keywords.

Planning, creating, optimizing, promoting and engaging with content on topics that customers and target audiences care about is where modern SEO has evolved: Content Marketing Optimization.  SEO expertise, which also includes knowledge of how search engines crawl and index websites, content management systems, the impact of how websites are coded and organized, provides a powerful ally to Content Strategists when goals and objectives are in alignment.

I think the publication Margot is researching will provide valuable insight not only for SEO, but any other element involved with an organization’s content from web developers & designers to copywriters and marketing executives. In case Margot reads this post, what tips would you share on how your area of expertise best interacts with Content Strategy?

Note: On August 18th, I’ll be giving a presentation on Content Marketing & SEO at the SES San Francisco conference which will be a deep dive into the topic with 90 minutes allocated. I hope to see you there.

Check out Top Rank Blog for more articles by Lee Odden

While many savvy online marketers don’t see content as a shortsighted substitute for social strategy or simply as a SEO tactic, but a proxy to creating customer experiences, there are even more who do.  Content is a vehicle for discovery, engagement and sharing.  Content is the mechanism for storytelling and if social and search optimization are also involved in a qualitative way to aid in discovery and sharing of those stories – then all the better.

Bob makes great points about the need to think of new ways to approach digital storytelling beyond single dimensions like videos that “go viral” and infographics that spread like wildfire on Twitter and Facebook. Engagement is indeed more than a click, a share or a link.

In the way that many business bloggers and marketers approach online marketing with an egocentric perspective, promoting messages they want to persuade audiences with vs. empathizing with customer needs and interests, many agencies that create content are more interested in creative self expression over experiences that are truly meaningful to customers.

In our Hub / Spoke and Constellation models for content marketing, we emphasize an understanding of customer needs and behaviors through persona development and attention to variances during the buying cycle. Those insights, combined with ongoing monitoring and engagement, drive content marketing strategy and the creative mix of content objects designed to help prospects have meaningful experiences with the brand.

The content itself is made easier to discover in more relevant ways through search engine optimization and social media optimization. A “Socialize and Optimize” approach to content marketing increases the connections between consumers that are looking (i.e. searching) and discussing (social networking) topics of relevance to the brand solution.

I’ve said it before, great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared.  Littering the social web with scheduled Tweets, status updates and blog posts alone is not engagement and certainly not creating the kind of experience that builds brand or motivates customers to buy, be loyal or advocate.

What say you? Can great user experience and storytelling co-exist with social media marketing and SEO?

Check out TopRank Online Marketing Blog for more articles by Lee Odden

While search marketing has been a key part of our consulting practice since 2001, our Online Marketing agency’s work with Public Relations and blogging since 2003 has helped us develop an appreciation of the influence and engagement outcomes possible with social media pretty quickly, vs. solely as a promotion channel for links. That sentiment is growing rapidly as of late with many traditional SEOs.

You too, may have noticed an increase in SEO practitioners (both agency and client side) singing the song of Content Marketing and Social Media. As this shift has occurred over the past few years, I’ve observed a series of phases of approach. According to your situation and market, your mileage may vary with these characterizations, but maybe you’ll see something familiar and get a clearer picture of where your SEO and Social Media integration is headed.

Phase 1: SEO With Social Profiles, Sharing Widgets & Blogs

Many Search Engine Optimization pros started their social media adventures with bookmarking and news services like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Reddit.  Promoting content to these channels, especially through “power users” could inspire content to go hot, hit the home page and attract spikes of traffic. The increased exposure attracts more links and subscribers.

Social bookmarking services and profiles within social networking sites allow for users to include links back to their own websites creating a potential source of link traffic and light signal for search engines. Many of those links were subsequently made “nofollow”.  Such links are simply a matter of filling out forms and ultimately no more impactful than directory submissions.

Blogs are used to publish content in a more search engine friendly way than most CMS are capable of and commenting on other blogs provided great links until they too, were made “nofollow” by most bloggers and blog CMS.

Success is measured in SEO terms: links, rankings and traffic.

Phase 2: Social Media Optimization

Coined by Rohit Bhargava, SMO has had different meanings for different people.  Marketers develop the social profiles they’ve created into more robust sources of information with some building out of social networks. Developing social channels helps to create an audience to promote content to in the hopes of attracting links.

Blogs are often the hub to the social media spokes for optimized content promotion for traffic and link acquisition. Attention to building blog subscribers and email lists is stressed.  There’s an honest appreciation for creating useful content for specific audience segments and a developed skill in the art/science of content formats, types and writing headlines that inspire sharing.

Success is measured primarily as SEO outcomes like links, traffic and conversions. Social KPIs like fans, friends & followers are monitored as well as basic engagement metrics like comments and interactions. But those metrics are more about “social proof” than social ROI.

Phase 3: Integrated Content, SEO & Social Media Plan

By now,  SEOs are more likely to identify as Online Marketers and understand the key to a killer social SEO strategy is content.  Audience categorization becomes persona development which guides content marketing strategy.  The keyword research expertise from SEO is factored into Editorial Planning of web and social content.

While content is planned for certain outcomes with segments of the community, it’s an adaptable online marketing strategy that allows for opportunistic content marketing and social promotion based on social media monitoring and trends. Social media savvy isn’t just for Marketing and Public Relations, but as much of the organization as possible.

Anyone in a position to create content, engage with customers and prospects online has basic skills with search and social keyword glossaries, social search and social networking on behalf of the brand.

To maximize the relevance of the Content Marketing Plan, search keywords and social topics representative of customer interests are factored into scheduled editorial for web, social and mobile content.  Content creation and promotion is coordinated across functional areas like Advertising, Public Relations and Marketing as possible.

The findability of content is improved through keyword and social topic optimization. Social content that is easy to find through search can help grow the social network.  As the network grows, so does word of mouth for inherent promotion of useful content that attracts links, shares and comments. Those social signals can be gauged by Google in combination with other SEO ranking factors to improve search visibility of brand web properties.

It would be realistic to add other phases, but I’m trying to be more practical with this post. I think this approach of an adaptable, customer-centric and content focused strategy that leverages topic optimization for both search findability and social engagement is where many online marketers will find themselves sooner than later.

What do you think about these phases? Phase 3 is a tall order to fill and I think many marketers will see a blend as their reality. If you have an appreciation for the impact coordinated Social SEO & Content can have, how would you characterize your organization’s approach?

I’ll be elaborating on these phases and more later this morning at OMS Minneapolis in a session called “Develop a Killer Social SEO Strategy“. I hope to see you there.

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If you work for a company or agency that received a standard SEO audit, you may have experienced the need for the SEO advice to be translated into something meaningful for your specific area of responsibility.  This affects designers, web developers, copywriters, marketing, PR and other departments.  A lot of SEO audits are technical in nature or focus on keyword usage and links.   As the importance of content grows, it makes sense to package SEO advice in a way that considers the capabilities and constraints of content strategists, creators and marketers.

Here are some fundamental and practical questions to answer when developing a SEO approach for content marketing:

• What are your goals? – Be specific. Sales, Awareness, Media Coverage, Customer Support, Attracting New Staff, Branding. Content Marketing affects a lot more than just sales.

• Do you have access to editing current content? – Companies vary on their policies regarding editing existing content, especially if there’s an arduous process for getting anything published in the first place.  But you need to know to what degree can existing content be slightly edited for SEO.

• Do you have access to website templates & code edits? - Most content marketers are not web developers so having access to IT or a web team is a pre-requisite for getting to templates.  Websites that use content management systems use templates to produce web pages. SEO edits that can be made at the template level can affect hundreds or thousands of pages. Having access to making those kinds of changes can result in a very significant impact on search engine visibility.

• Can you provide SEO training for content creators? – Providing SEO best practices training to those in the company responsible for creating content helps create SEO scalability in the organization.  Try to get them together in person or virtually for SEO and keyword usage training.  Provide best practices and guidelines customized to the company Content Management System and content creation/review/publishing workflow.

• What ongoing feedback can you provide?- Can you create a method to provide any kind of performance feedback on the content being optimized?  It can be very motivating for copywriters to know the keyword optimization tactics they’re using are actually having an impact.

• Do you have access for new content creation and publishing? - Competitive industries can rarely rely on existing content alone to satisfy search engines’ appetite for content and links.  Companies are increasingly creating more content as part of their online marketing efforts and a competitive SEO approach to content optimization requires the ability and access to create new content. Such efforts should be driven by the desire to meet consumer needs first, then keywords for placement within search engines. Oftentimes, SEOs think the other way around. Hopefully, you’re not one of those companies that feels you have all the content you need and nothing more.

• Do you have the ability to measure KPIs & outcomes? – In the end, marketing and tactics like SEO are about making more sales.  There are also key performance indicators with content marketing and optimization that can be helpful for refinement and feedback to those producing and promoting new, search optimized content.  Rankings are less useful but link acquisition, social references, keyword referring data, social media referrals, pre-sales activity, conversions and other outcomes are essential for understanding the impact of an effective content marketing optimization effort.

Based on an evaluation of goals, capabilities and access to resources and ability to implement, a particular approach towards content optimization can be developed.  Here are three common forms:

Optimize What You Have – Audit existing content & focus on refining current content & digital asset optimization

High Value Plus Planned Content SEO – Optimize priority content (doable and most profitable topics) and add new content according to already planned marketing and PR purposes following SEO best practices.

Holistic & Integrated Content SEO - You’ve heard about “being social”?  This approach is about “being optimized”.  Develop a new site content & editorial plan for adding content according to keyword/persona targets. Train all content producers on SEO corporate wide and implement SEO at the template and content publishing process levels.

Obviously these are not hard and fast strategies for approaching content marketing with a SEO focus, but they do provide guidance and can even be treated as a phased approach.

On Friday I’ll be giving a presentation on Content Marketing Optimization as part of MarketingProfs University “Content Marketing Crash Course” that drills more specifically into how to develop a content optimization strategy, best practices on developing searcher personas, an editorial plan, keyword glossaries and how to determine your mix of original content vs. curated content. I hope to see you there.

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Shopzilla and Bizrate market millions of products and Michael Nguyen’s SEO responsibilities for those sites are substantial. In this interview Michael talks about Google’s recent MayDay update, a SEO checklist, his top resources for staying current in the field and the unique challenges (including duplicate content) that come with optimizing huge web sites.

There’s a bit of a trend as we’ve interviewed lead SEO practitioners for well known brands. They seem to have the combined experience of independent consultant, agency and having worked in-house. Please tell us about how you got into search marketing and how your past experience in these roles has contributed to your current position. Also, what’s the most interesting thing about working with Shopzilla?

Sounds like I’ve had a very similar path as your other interviewees. I started my career as a web developer for Aerospace Corporation, mainly building dynamic web sites and internal search engines. I spent a good amount of time testing and understanding search engine optimization on my own during that time – partly out of interest and applicability to my work. From there I did some independent consulting for a couple years and eventually joined an agency (SEO Inc). Spent a few years there working for a variety of clients, small and large. I had a chance to move in-house with Shopzilla about 4 years back and I took it. Been with Shopzilla ever since.

I do a lot of technical SEO on our large and complex sites, so it’s required that I understand the technical detail behind the scenes. It’s much easier to communicate with the development team if you understand what’s going on in the backend.

The greatest thing about working in the comparison shopping / product reviews space is the challenge. Our market is extremely competitive and there are many large players. You really don’t have time to rest, but it keeps me interested. With Shopzilla specifically, I’m given all the tools I need to do my job – it’s a simple concept, but in reality not many SEOs can say the same. I have access to large amounts of data, analytical resources, development teams, specialized tools, etc all tailored towards SEO. At the highest level, Shopzilla is a company that really understands search and user behavior. It’s the perfect environment for an SEO because we work at the intersection of search and users.

Working with large organizations and also companies with large web sites is unique for a variety of reasons. What have you found to be the best advice for getting quality SEO recommendations implemented with large web sites (or companies)?

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but the best way to get things implemented within a large company is through education. Things get done faster when everyone is on board. So that requires constant educating and training. The more people that understand SEO the better. You want advocates for SEO in every area of the business – from engineering to upper management.

What are some of the unique SEO challenges that you encounter with a business like Shopzilla with its own network of sites and so much data being published?

With a business like Shopzilla, I’m always challenged with the sheer size of our sites. We have millions of products and various different business lines. So keeping everything indexed and ranking is a constant battle. I spend a lot of time thinking about optimal site architecture and site performance. For large sites, even small changes in indexing can equate to significant revenue shifts.

The comparison shopping and consumer review market is pretty interesting. Shopzilla not only competes with other shopping engines, but we also compete for organic traffic against informational portals, niche review sites, review aggregators, and blogs. We’re both a head and long tail business. All of us (Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag, etc) start off with the same basic data from merchants. We all aggregate products and provide comparison shopping features on our sites.

So in order to drive traffic to our sites, we need to improve our product and provide value on top of that data. In the end it comes back to the user – what does the user find valuable and what is the user searching for?

Users want to easily compare a variety of products and make a confident buying decision. So at Shopzilla, we devote a lot of resources to ensure those two things happen on our site. We take millions of products and organize them around what users tell us is the most usable categorization. We allow users to refine by a variety of useful attributes. We help them understand the products they are interested in with user reviews, buying guides, and comments from the point of sale. We assist with merchant selection through our merchant reviews. So while we start with essentially commoditized data, we add a ton of content and value on top of that starting data. Increasing product value results in increased organic traffic.

In a sense, SEO is the product and the product is SEO.

What advice can you offer about dealing with content syndication and duplication? What are some common situations you’ve encountered and their solution?

301 Redirects and rel canonical are your friends when dealing with any sort of duplication/content syndication issue. It’s pretty common for sorting features (for example a “sort by price” feature) to create duplicate content. Rel canonical is perfect for getting rid of that type of duplication.

For content syndication, I recommend placing a variety of signals within the content that helps Google understand the true source of the content. Depending on the type of content this could be: links within the content pointing back to your page, a rel canonical, a URL, or your domain.

Can you offer some of your experience and insight regarding Google’s recent Mayday update? What can companies with large sites that rely on long tail traffic do about Mayday?

It’s even more important now with Mayday that large sites reconsider the signals they are sending to Google regarding their deeper pages (long tail). Obviously not every single page on a large site deserves to be equally promoted, so craft your navigation around the fact that different pages have varying value. Spend some time building links to deeper pages to support sections with weak indexing.

While it’s a little overdramatic, imagine how your site would perform if domain authority did not exist. Start tailoring your SEO strategy with that in mind.

If you were to provide a friend a checklist for marketing their new B2C website online, what would you be sure to include”

Guess my checklist would be pretty simple:

1. Build something people want
2. Make it extremely easy for search engines to crawl/index your site
3. Get people talking about your site online
4. Keep improving the site

Google’s guidelines are really helpful for a new site.

What web based SEO or social media marketing tools would you recommend for that new web site? Any tools we’ve probably never heard of?

These tools are more tech heavy than your typical SEO tools, but I figured some of these might be new to your readers:

1. 80legs – Crawl your own site (or a competitors) and extract whatever data you want
2. SEOmoz API – Mashup all that juicy SEOmoz data
3. Solr – Great for understanding the basics behind a search engine
4. nutch – Similar to SOLR, this one is great for understanding crawling/indexing

Monitoring tools are useful too, setting up a Google Alerts and Twitter RSS feed is helpful for keeping up with what others are saying about your brand online. Once you know what your users are talking about, you can join in on the conversation.

You’ve received kudos from people like the GM of your current company for “staying on top of what’s going on in the search marketplace”. How do you stay current? What are your favorite information sources? (Conferences, Blogs, Newsletters, Books, Forums)

I used to monitor a ton of different blogs/sites/sources, but I’ve paired it down to handful of sources recently. Here’s what I check regularly:

1. Hacker News
2. SEO Book
3. SMX/Search Engine Land
4. SEOmoz
5. SEO by the Sea

If it’s important, it will eventually make it to one of those sites. I’d also love to attend a WWW Conference someday.

Thank you Michael!

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For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight.

There’s some entertainment value to this as well of course. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “:

And what about Yahoo?

Or Bing?

So, we have “Google is Skynet”, “Yahoo is better than Google” and “Bing is not Google”.   It’s amusing and insightful at the same time. As the clear market dominator, Google queries offer a peek into searchers’ perception of Google as a powerful force that can incite polarizing opinions.  Yahoo as a long standing second in the market brings about more functional phrases and just one indication of passion for the brand. While Bing shows some negativity, the good news is that they are inciting reactions from people. Better to make friends and enemies than for no one to notice you at all.

By the way, Google recently announced the addition of localized search suggest and spelling correction to the suggest features that searchers might find handy.

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