A simple, practical no-nonsense guide to SEO and social media for PR people

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SEO and social
media for PR
People
A no-nonsense guide to
SEO and social media for
PR people
Dr Paul Marsden
Social Psychologist
Social Media Strategy
http://viralculture.com

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The most important front page in the world

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"Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-
management system...” Clive Thompson - Wired

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"...Once you know the rules you can use it to control
your image in ways you never could before.”

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Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the
process of improving the visibility of a website
or a web page in search engines via the
"natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic")
search results
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is about optimising
online visibility via search engine results pages...

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And for PR, SEO usually means ensuring that your news
gets covered in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

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Social
SEO
Media
And the best solution for ensuring that your news gets
covered in SERPs is to use social media

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Social News
SEO
Media Blog
Specifically, the best solution for ensuring that your news
gets covered is to publish your news to a blog

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A blog (web log) is simply an area on the Web for logging
your news - that appears in reverse chronological order

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Google
News Blog
Blogs have SEO built-in, they are designed to be Google-
friendly, so news is most likely to appear in SERPs

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So SEO for PR is essentially all about having a news blog
- and a blog strategy

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SEO is plagued with jargon, but it’s not rocket science -
in fact it’s more of an art than a science

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4bn searches per day, 175 million per hour
2.9 million per minute
83% on Google, 7% on Yahoo!, 5% on Baidu, 4% on Bing, 1% on others
We’re helped by the fact that - in most cases - the only
‘SE’ in ‘SE’O that really matters is Google

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There are only two ways to get onto the front page of
Google search results - pay for it or earn it

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Paying for coverage means buying advertising space on
SERPs - it’s advertising, not PR (but with PR possibilities)

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Earning coverage on Google means getting Google to
predict that your content will be relevant to search queries

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Google decides whether to ‘cover’ you automatically
based on a secret algorithm (secret so it can’t be gamed)

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1. ??
2. ??
3. ??
But we know Google coverage is essentially dependant
on three things...

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1. Indexing
2. ??
3. ??
Firstly, Google needs to have ‘indexed’ your content in
order to appear in search results

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So a key first task of SEO for PR is publish your news to
a news blog, ensuring it gets indexed by Google

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That means inviting Google’s virtual robots to index your
news blog, ensuring they can read it

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1. Indexing
2. Relevance
3. ??
The second thing determining whether you get Google
coverage is the relevance of your news to search queries

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“On-page optimisation” Matching
web page copy to search terms
So the second task of SEO for PR is to ensure your
content contains search terms people use - not PR speak

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1. Indexing
2. Relevance
3. Links
Finally, Google coverage depends on the number, quality
and relevance of pages linking to your content

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Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO and the Law
‘Black-hat SEO’ is the deliberate attempt to
game search engines, usually against terms
of service and sometimes the law. For
example, paying people to link to you (and
not disclosing it) may be cause for
investigation. Know the rules and stick to
ethical ‘white-hat SEO’
So the third key task of SEO for PR is link-building;
ensuring that your published content gets linked to

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Summing up
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving
the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the
"natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results
The higher a page appears in search engine results lists, the
more likely it is to be seen and visited
Search Engine Optimisation is about getting a page or site more
highly ranked by search engines, especially Google and includes
Getting indexed by search engines
Creating content that relevant to search engine queries
Building links to your content from popular third-party sites
also relevant to search queries

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Summing up
Why Bother with SEO? How Much Does SEO Cost?
1. Increased visibility SEO is about getting listed in
the unpaid ‘free’ section of
2. Helps achieve business goals search engine search queries
so it doesn’t cost anything
3. Competitor activity means you have to itself. SEO can be done in-
house, costing just time.
4. To help people find you Outsourced SEO costs depend
on the number and popularity
5. Because it’s easy to gauge success of search terms that pages are
optimised for with a starting
What’s the Relevance to PR? price of about £2K
PR is about reputation and publicity. Online, your reputation and visibility is
largely determined by the content of search engine results. So SEO for PR
is part of online publicity and reputation management

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Setting up your
news blog and
getting indexed

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Say hello to Wordpress
Your first SEO task for PR should be to install news
publishing software - i.e. a blog - in a new directory
on your website (called, for example ‘news’)
The most popular and easy to use news publishing
software is free, and it is called Wordpress
You can download Wordpress from http://
wordpress.org/download/
Use the 5 minute install guide at http://
codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress to
install Wordpress on your site in a folder called
news (http://oursite.com/news

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Fine-tuning Wordpress
You can begin publishing your news to Wordpress immediately,
but you can fine-tune the design and SEO options
For an attractive design that fits your corporate look,
download and install a Wordpress ‘theme’ from
Themeforest (http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress)
(Dashboard - Appearance - Themes)
To automatically ensure SEO install a free Wordpress
‘plugin’ called All-in-one SEO pack (http://wordpress.org/
extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/) Dashboad - plugins.
Activate with default settings
To ensure Google can read your news, install and activate
Google XML sitemaps http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
google-sitemap-generator/

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Linking Wordpress to Google
Google has virtual robots constantly crawling the Web and
indexing content, but to ensure Google knows about your news,
install the free plugin Google Analytics for Wordpress (http://
wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/)
(some ‘themes’ already contain this plugin)
You will need to register with Google for Google Analytics to
work (www.google.com/analytics/) and copy a special code
into your news blog dashboard in a place created by the
plugin
Google Analytics will not only link Wordpress to Google, but
also tell you who, and how many people read your news
As soon as Google robots are indexing (reading) your news
blog, your Google Analytics dashboard will tell you

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Linking Wordpress to Twitter and Facebook
In addition to linking Wordpress to Google, you can link
Wordpress to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google (again)
Whenever you publish your news, it gets automatically
published to your Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds
Register your site with Networked Blogs http://
www.networkedblogs.com/
Readers can publish the URL of your news to their friends
and followers by clicking on a like, tweet, share or +1 button
Download and install the free Wordpress plugin Tweet, Like,
Google +1 and Share (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
only-tweet-like-share-and-google-1/ ) to allow people to share
your news with each other

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Content
Creation &
Optimisation

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Content Creation: SEO-friendly news posts
Traditional best-practice journalistic copywriting rules
apply when publishing to your news blog - think
newsletter style rather than press release
Lead with the headline - draw people in
Use snappy section titles
Make it relevant, make it timely
Keep it short (500 words max)
Keep sentences and paragraphs short
Use images and video
Avoid Flash where possible (useless for SEO)

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Content Creation: SEO-friendly news posts
Google likes content that gets linked to, so use five story formats that are likely
to get linked to;
David and Goliath Story
Celebrity Story
Controversial Story
Shocking Story
Piggy-back Story
Use the six buzz buttons to get more links: the taboo, the unusual, the
shocking, the hilarious, the remarkable, secrets
Exercise: Take your latest news-release and adapt it
using these guidelines to create a news post
From Hughes, M (2005) Buzzmarketing

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Content Optimisation: SEO-friendly news posts
News optimisation is all about matching the copy of your news post to search
terms entered in search engines
To do news optimisation, you need to decide for which search queries you
want your news post to appear
You need to know the key-phrases people use to search
You need to add these key-phrases into your copy, especially headlines and
titles - in a way that human readers do not notice
Content optimisation for PR is about talking the same language as the
people who you want to find you - and that’s not PR-speak

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Content Optimisation: 1. Prioritisation
The first task of content optimisation is to decide
under which search queries you want your news to
appear
Make a list of key-phrase searches under
which you’d like your news to appear
Google ‘Google Traffic Estimator’ and use this free
tool to see how popular these key-phrase searches
are
Prioritise key-phrases that are most relevant and
have the highest search volume
Select the top one or two key-phrase searches
under which you’d most want to appear

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Content Optimisation: 2. Key-Phrase Generation
Now you’ve decided on your key-phrase priorities, you need
generate a list of search-relevant terms to use in your copy
Google ‘Google Adwords Keyword Tool’ and use this
free tool to generate a list of Google-friendly terms similar
to your key-phrases to include in your copy
You can also use Google suggest, the autocomplete
feature on Google; try typing the first word of your key-
phrase into Google and see what Google suggests
Your key-phrases should make sense together; ask yourself
would you expect to find them on the same page?

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Content Optimisation: 3. Copywriting
Now you know the words you need to use, you have to include
them in your copy
The first rule is that the copy should appear natural, a
human should not be able to notice it has been optimised
Use your priority key-phrase(s) to appear
as the page title
in the URL (do not use an punctuation)
in the main header (H1)
as image names and image alt tags
NB Repeating your key-phrases multiple times does not
affect the optimisation - use synonyms instead

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Link Building

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Link Building: The Essence of SEO
By far the most important aspect of SEO for PR is link-building;
getting your news linked to by popular and authoritative third-
party sites and pages relevant to your news
Each inbound link (AKA ‘backlink’) counts as a ‘vote’ for
inclusion in SERPs; the news with the most votes (links) wins
- and appears as the number one listing
But it is not just the number of links which are important to
SEO, but the quality of links is vital, a single link from a
popular and authoritative site may be worth 100 non-
relevant links
Whilst the ‘PageRank’ that Google assigns to your news -
based on number and relevance of inbound links it receives -
does not directly influence SERP position, it is a good proxy
for Google-friendly news

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Link Building Strategies: SEO = Quality Content
1. Quality Content
2. Quality Content
3. Quality Content
4. Quality Content
5. Quality Content
6. Quality Content
“Create great content, link to great content and
great content will link to you.”
Ken McGaffin - Linking Matters

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Link Building Strategies: Linkbaiting for SEO
2. “Linkbaiting”: Creating content “linkbait”
specifically designed to hook in links...
Infographic Hook
Media Hook (exclusive video)
Celebrity Hook
Resource Hook (list of sites/stories/how-to guide)
News Hook (a genuine scoop or exposé)
Contrary Hook (‘the lone voice’)
Attack Hook (‘flaming’ an adversary)
Humour Hook (bizarre image, story)

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Link Building Strategies: Syndication for SEO
3. RSS: Allowing people to subscribe to your content via “Real
Simple Syndication” and email - the more subscribers, the more
likely people will link to you...
On your news blog add a subscribe button, and also allow
people to subscribe by email to news posts
Register your news blog with Google Feedburner
(feedburner.google.com), and copy the RSS subscribe and
email subscribe snippit into your news blog sidebar to allow
people to subscribe
You can also consider submitting your news posts to an
online news release syndication service (prweb.com,
prnewswire.com, businesswire.com, prleap.com)

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Link Building Strategies: Blogger Outreach for SEO
4. Blogger Outreach: Consider sending a new angle on your
news, not published in your post to popular bloggers discussing
news-related subjects
Use Google Blog search and News search to find top
bloggers and journalists discussing subjects related news
Make comments on their stories, and include links to their
stories in your news
Linking to your own news on popular third-party sites won’t
directly improve SEO (due to rel="nofollow" rule), but by
engaging in news-related conversations on third-party sites,
you may stimulate new posts with organic inbound links
Make contact and offer them extra facts, insights, findings,
and images that you have not published

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Link Building Strategies: Social Media for SEO
5. Social Media Sites: Create your own page on
leading social media sites and link in to your news
YouTube Page (channel)
Facebook Page
Quora Page
Linkedin Page
Twitter Page
Slideshare Page
Flickr Page

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Link Building Strategies: Buying Links (Black-Hat)
6. Buying Links (Don’t)
Buying links from another site (e.g. paying for
them to cover your news and linking to you)
Buying links from a link broker (e.g. you agree
to link to 5 sites, in return 5 sites will link to you)
If you get found out, your future news may be
blacklisted
“Don‘t participate in link schemes designed to
increase your site‘s ranking or PageRank”
Google

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Dr Paul Marsden
on
So cial Media PR - Lond
p aul@viralculture.com
+44 777 95 77 248
I’ll look forward to helping you apply the strategy in the
‘Social Media for PR People’ course. Enjoy. Share. Profit.