The lines between PR, Marketing & Advertising are continuing to blur, especially on the web. And while there will likely always be professionals who specialize in one area or another, more and more people (especially those at smaller agencies & companies) are starting to wear multiple hats. In fact, some people are wearing all the hats. Many started out in a single role, but due to a variety of circumstances (e.g. layoffs due to the economic climate or their company wanting to jump on the social media bandwagon to name a few) they’ve found themselves the ‘go-to’ person for all things promotion. . There should be a new term for these people, someone get on that.

In the meantime, here’s a mini-guide for building buzz and traffic to a website to help out our PR pros who have found themselves thrust into the online marketing world.

1. Move your press releases online: Chances are you’re doing this already (if you aren’t you should be!). Today’s press releases need to be focused on keywords so that the search engines can find and index them easily. Many of the distribution sites allow clickable links and anchor text – Voila!, instant quality links back to your website of choice. For tips check out our post about “SEO-ify”ing your Press Release.
2. Twitter: Get a profile or, if you have one already, start updating it. Nielson has said that 60% of people who sign up for twitter post once and then never return. What’s the point? For Twitter to be a valuable strategy you have to commit to becoming a resource in your industry. This means that is it is important to ‘tweet’ information that people will actually find useful (they don’t care where you are having lunch today). Twitter pays off when you take the time to build up a group of followers who value your opinions and look to you for information, in short they trust you. The best part, it’s ok to promote yourself and clients (within reason & with disclosure).  Twitter can be a great source of traffic to the content you have elsewhere. FYI – you can follow us here: @PRChannel
3. Create a Resource List: Encouraging clients to create quality content on their website or blog is a must, and creating a resource list is a great way to do this. Examples of resources could include free tools, magazines and blogs relevant to your industry, or case studies and white papers that would be valuable to clients. Make sure that the resource list is targeted and industry specific. Not only will customers appreciate the information, chances are others in the industry will find the information valuable and link to it.
4. Article Syndication: Create great content that doesn’t go directly on the website. It sounds backwards, but writing articles on your client’s industry or products and submitting them to the plethora of article sites and directories will get you lots of links. You relinquish a bit of control on your piece, but the pay-off is worth it. Websites and online content publishers grab articles and re-publish them constantly. By submitting a quality article 2 or 3 times you can get 100 links back to your client’s site.
5. Top 10 lists: It’s called ‘link bait’ and it is good. Whether it be Top 10, 50, 100 or 5 (see what we did here) lists tend to be fan favorites when it comes to earning links. Lists can also give your client valuable ‘expert status’ when packaged correctly. They can also be a start to a series, giving you automatic ideas for future blog posts or articles. They can be about anything, and as silly or serious as your client wishes. Doesn’t matter the industry, lists are always good. Don’t believe me? Hair Salon – Top 10 Cuts for Fall. Law office – The Top 20 Craziest Lawsuits in History. Restaurant – Top 50 Things You Can Use a Spork For. People even makes lists of lists (I kid you not) Make it unique and interactive, a good discussion post will bring in comments and links for quite some time.

photo from here by Shane Michael

Wow!  We’re pretty excited about this…

PRChannel has passed the 1,000 follower mark on Twitter!  We joined mainly as another way to stay up-to-date on current PR related news and topics, but have since found a range of other great uses as well.

We use it to share ideas and thoughts that don’t quite make it into full-fledged blog posts, we tweet PR related news items that happen to catch our eye, we give ’shout outs’ to new companies that sign up for the directory (that now reach over 1,000 people), occasionally do a bit of self-promotion and, probably most importantly, we use Twitter to interact and network with others in the public relations industry.  We don’t tweet every 2 minutes (not even every day), and it’s always meant to be of real use to someone.

Thanks for following! (If you aren’t yet that’s OK…follow @PRChannel here!)

Press Release are a tried and true component of any PR campaign, but many PR people are continuing to write (and publish) press releases the “old” way.  The advent of social media, online newspapers and ‘google’ as a verb means that optimizing your presence online is more important than ever.  By writing and publishing press releases the same way as before, more traditional agencies are not taking advantage of the search engine optimization (SEO) potential that could greatly improve the position of their websites and releases in the search engines’ results.

Another advantage of an SEO Press Release is that even small businesses or Do-It-Yourself types can afford to write and submit these.  In fact, if you write the release yourself there are several places to submit it that are 100% free.

The main idea is to write your press release so that it will rank well in the search engines for certain keywords.  By ranking well you’ll get backlinks from other sites and higher rankings for both your press releases and actual website, resulting in more traffic.  Check out this hub from Christine OKelly for detailed info on How to Write an SEO Press Release.

Once you’ve got your press release written it’s time to publish it.  Instead of pitching it directly to reporters or editors, submit it to a few of the many online distribution services available.  These services will automatically distribute your release to thousands of outlets and put it up on their website.  The cost associated with the service varies based on levels of exposure, but there are several options that allow you to publish for free.  Check out our list of distribution services on the PR Dashboard for ideas on where to start.

The line between PR and online marketing strategy is becoming thinner and thinner.  An SEO professional’s job duties are more in-line with a PR campaign than the traditional marketing/advertising position anyway, and a PR professional will have a definite ‘leg-up’ if they understand the types of activities and strategies involved in creating good PR in an online setting.

So here is my attempt at an easy to understand guide to basic SEO practices for PR people- which I realize may be completely obsolete by next Thursday.

First off, you need to know there are 2 main categories for SEO: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. Here’s what these mean in a nutshell:
On Page SEO: everything you do specifically on your website, i.e. site structure and the web developer’s domain – as a PR person you may not have much control over this, but it never hurts to know what you are dealing with right off the bat.
Off Page SEO: everything you do outside of your  immediate website, i.e. your relationship to other websites

✔ Have a site map. If you don’t have a site map stop reading right now and go tell your developer/client to make one. Its one of the easiest ways to make sure the search engines find your site (and any new pages you add) easy to crawl.
✔ Keywords. Put the keywords you want to rank for in your URL and domain name if at all possible. Make sure your web design team puts them in your your title tag and, just for fun, in the meta tag as well. Now, Google says in no longer uses the Keyword meta tag, but others do, so it can’t hurt to put them in there. Be careful though – every single keyword in the keyword meta tag MUST appear somewhere in your body text, otherwise Google will mark it as irrelevant and penalize you.
✔ Links. Your internal links should have keywords, and lower level pages should be linked together appropriately. A general rule of thumb is that a user should be able to navigate to any page on your site within 3 or 4 clicks from the homepage. As for external links, make sure you only link to reputable sites (no links farms or ‘bad neighborhoods’) and check to make sure your links are all valid.
✔ Be old and new at the same time. Google likes old sites because of the perceived ‘trust’ they have, it also likes ‘fresh’ pages. The best site in Google’s opinion has been around for a long time and puts new content up on a regular basis. Good to know, even if you can only control the second part.

☠ Keywords. It’s a two way street, keywords are an essential part of good on page SEO but it can easily go wrong. Rules of thumb: Don’t have too many (keyword stuffing) and make sure every single one is 100% relevant to your site’s topic.
☠ Bad language/ethnic slurs/’stop’ words. This is just PR common-sense. Basically don’t use any word Google has associated with shady dealings in the past.
☠ All Flash with no HTML option. Most search engine spiders can’t read flash, make sure your developers give them an HTML option to read or they won’t index your page and your ranking may suffer.

✔ Links, Links, Links. Incoming links from quality sites are extremely important. You want stable (the older the better) links that contain your keywords in them pointing to you from a site that is a trusted source – you get bonus points if its from an “expert” site.  Bloggers/webmasters are just like journalists, so your PR experience in building relationships and pitching is completely relevant, it’s much easier to get a link from someone you have an established relationship with.  Also, everyone hates off-topic pitches, so don’t do it online either.
✔ Traffic. The more people on your site the better. If your site is new and you don’t have much traffic, you get a little boost if there is an increasing pattern, you also get a boost if people stay on your site for a long time (low bounce rate). If visitors bookmark your page…even better! I know this seems a bit out of your control – but by making sure you or your clients create content on your site people actually want to read and find interesting you can encourage better traffic.
✔ Article Submission/Blogs. By creating articles and submitting them to other sites you not only create links pointing to your site, you create interest among visitors. The same is true for having a blog. You’ll be creating new content on a regular basis (which Google loves) plus you’ll be building a loyal base of readers who may help your site to be seen as a ‘trusted’ source and give you a consistent stream of traffic.
✔ Page Rank. It’s based on the number of quality links pointing back to you, but other factors are included as well. There are differing opinions among SEO professionals as to just how important Page Rank is. Many say that it isn’t important at all anymore, some still rely on it. Our take? Don’t obsess over your site’s Page Rank, but don’t completely discount it either.

☠ Bad Links. Google is cracking down on link-buying by penalizing sites. Link exchanging is also an issue, while there is no penalty for exchanging links with other sites Google deems these type of links much less valuable than quality incoming (one way) links. You also want to look out for bad ‘link neighborhoods’ – sites linked together through spammy sites or link farms. If you link to these sites by accident chances are you’ll be OK, but if Google finds too many of these type of links on your pages you could be in trouble. Here is a tool to help check your links – Text Link Checker Tool.
☠ Being “spammy” aka pitching off topic. Link building activities can get a bad rep because there are so many ‘techniques’ that are just plain spammy. Mass-posting links into forums, posting links into comment sections of completely unrelated blogs, or mass-emailing hundreds of bloggers/webmasters asking for links are just plain annoying and not all that successful anyway.  Do your research and find the right sources/outlets for your specific site or topic – just like in the ‘real world’.

Keep in mind these are just the basics, there’s a plethora of resources out there if you’d like in depth info on one specific aspect of SEO. Check out Vaughn’s Google’s Ranking Factors for more Google specific details, its a great resource if you’ve got the time to go through it.

If you have any SEO or online public relations resources you use or just a great informational site let me know!