Uploaded byDominic Litten
Ignoring SEO, at your own peril
The document discusses the critical relationship between public relations (PR) and search engine optimization (SEO), emphasizing that PR practitioners should take ownership of SEO strategies. It outlines common pitfalls in PR's approach to SEO, such as neglecting site architecture, underestimating keyword research, and failing to leverage link building effectively. The document advocates for a collaborative approach that combines PR, SEO, and social media to enhance online visibility and accountability.
More Related Content
Similar to Ignoring SEO, at your own peril
![Crafting an SEO Strategy That WORKS [Case Study]](https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/seostrategyin2019-190703160558-thumbnail.jpg?width=640&height=640&fit=bounds)
Ignoring SEO, at your own peril
- 1. Why PR failsSEODominic Litten – Lead, Interactive Marketing at Point to Point
- 2. 2About Point toPoint.We don’t live in silos.We say no a lot. We have clients. www.pointtopoint.com
- 3. 3About MeRecovering PRpractitioner.#humblebrag time.I think I am hilarious. I speak really, really fast (sorry).
- 4. Today’s nonsense.Organic SEOfor PR practitioners.Be measureable. Be actionable.That’s it.4
- 5. Why SEO? Welcometo the pinhole.5
- 6.
- 7. Why you care:PR should own SEO, like Social.PR + SEO = Good.PR + SEO + SMM = Better. PR + SEO + SMM + CM = Crazy Delicious. 7
- 8. Why you care:This is how you’re found. 8
- 9. Why you care:Social alone isn’t enough.9
- 10. Why you care:Higher rank, more clicks.No. 1 ranking = 42.1% of clicksNo. 2 = 11.9% No. 3 = 8.5%No. 4 = 6.1%No. 5 = 4.9%No. 10 = 3.0%Nos. 11-20 = 10.1% (combined)Nos. 21-1,000 = 1.2% (combined)10
- 11. Why you care:More AGI for your agency/dept.11
- 12. Why you care:Kumbaya with IT (or skip ‘em). 12
- 13. Why you care:You are replaceable. 13
- 14. Why you care:Everyone is a publisher, stand out. 14
- 15. Why you care:Be more accountable. 15
- 16. 16SEO is justone way through the pinhole.The intersection of need & want.
- 17.
- 18. 18The reality?Google’s algohas 1000s of variables.
- 19. Want to bebe clear: Doing SEO assumes…Have. Know. Love. Analytics.SEO matches existing goals. Have a site that allows easy changes to:HTML.Copy.19
- 20. Four levels ofoptimization.1. Indexable, crawlable site. 2. Onsite keyword targeting.3. Know the link. Be the link.4. Smart social and content. 20
- 21. Step No. 1:Is your site ready to be indexed?21
- 22. Where PR failsSEO. We pass the keys on to IT. Or worse, outsource.22
- 23. Common errors.Content inflash? In PDFs?Pages hidden from engines?Site too flat?23
- 24. Site/URL architecture. Likethis.24
- 25. Site/URL architecture. Notlike this. 25
- 26. Back to thepinhole. Is my site developed in a way my audience can logically navigate?26
- 27. Is your contentspread out over URLs?27
- 28. Is there duplicatecontent?28
- 29. PR/SEO Myth 1:Scoring software = All I need.29
- 30. Indexing, Crawling ToolsGoogleWebmaster ToolsBing Webmaster ToolsSEOMoz Crawl TestXenuYes, Hubspot Website Grader30
- 31. Into process?Before allsite redesigns.Before any content marketing analysis.Before starting a blog.31
- 32. Step No. 2:Keywords and onsite optimization.32
- 33. Where do keywordsstart? Personas. 33
- 34. Where PR failsSEO. We take shortcuts. 34
- 35. 35Where else?Existing searchtraffic. Duh.
- 36. 36Where else? Yourcompetitors.
- 37.
- 38. Remember the pinhole.Your keywords should answer the questions your audience is asking.38
- 39. Keyword example: Savemy ticker. Cardiologist? Heart doctor?Heart surgeon?Cardiovascular specialist?39
- 40. Where PR failskeywords.We think we can have any keyword we want. 40
- 41. Once we havekeywords finalized? Do. Immediately. 41
- 42. 42That means everything. Not just what you like.
- 43. Onpage keyword infusion.Commence. Title tags.Describes page to engines.Be descriptive. “Home” vs. “Cleveland PR Agency”Less than 65 characters. Unique on every page.43
- 44. How it looksin Google SERPs. This is not ideal. 44
- 45.
- 46.
- 47. Onpage keyword infusion.Commence. Meta descriptions.155 characters or less.Unique on every page.Call to action.47
- 48. Again, this isnot ideal. 48
- 49.
- 50. Onpage keyword infusion.Commence. Body copy. Blog titles.Page titles.Unique on every page.50
- 51. Write naturally. Don’toverdo it. Google knows. Trust us. 51
- 52. PR/SEO Myth No.2: All SEO advice works for you.52
- 53. Keyword, onsite tools.Competitive keyword software.Google trends.Google Adwords.Existing PPC data.Character counter. Ranking software.A URL chart.53
- 54. Into process? Eachpiece of onsite content produced should include:Title tag.Meta description.Page title (H1).Copy.Inventory everything. 54
- 55. Step No. 3:Link building.55
- 56. PR/SEO Myth No.3: Release distribution = Links 56
- 57. Link building ishard. Too bad. Link “cold calling.”Research, then ask nicely. Great onsite content. Guest blogging.Blogger relations.Paying. 57
- 58. Where SEO failslink building.You’re already the best at pitching, why doesn’t PR own link building?58
- 59. Pinhole. Which sitesare most relevant to my audience and can I get a link from them?59
- 60. Link building tools.Yahoo! Site Explorer.SEOMoz.Raven.Majestic SEO.Ontolo.Your (my) big mouth/email. 60
- 61.
- 62. No. 4 Contentdevelopment and social media.62
- 63. Good news? PRowns social media. 63
- 64. Good news? Smartcontent is SO pinhole. Fills a niche.Attribute content to a place in the sales cycle.64
- 65. Good news? PRpeople are great writers.We can produce content out the wazoo.blog postscase studieswhite paperswebinarsvideo65
- 66. Bad news? TheGOOG doesn’t care. Yet.Ranking factors according to 2010 SEOMoz SurveyAuthority of domain (age, breadth of site) 24%Link popularity 22%Anchor text of external links 20%On-page keyword usage 15%Social graph 6%66
- 67. Social often onlyranks for low search. #humblebragLinkedIn No. 1.Twitter No. 2.NingNo. 3. Quora No. 10. YouTube No. 11.67
- 68. Bad news? Contentalone does nothing. 68
- 69. Good news? Content+ social does work. Blogs can account for 20-40% of organic traffic.Blogs can increase all traffic 55%.57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog. 69
- 70. First step. Optimizeoffsite assets.YouTube. Twitter.LinkedIn.Quora.Slideshare.Other shiny objects.Etc.70
- 71. 71Next step. Getall editorial-yDevelop an editorial calendar.
- 72. Content marketing tools. Editorialcalendar.Title.Topic.Keywords.Posting where?Additional assets needed?72
- 73. For example, developa process.Every press release.Posted on Twitter?Posted on Facebook?Posted on company blog?Posted on distribution site?Video to YouTube?Images to Flickr?73
- 74. 74Wrap up. Quicktips. Onsite > Offsite. Twice on Sundays.
- 75. 75Wrap up. Quicktips. Test your theories. Always.
- 76. 76Wrap up. Quicktips. Do. Measure. Report. Do. Measure. Report.
- 77.
Editor's Notes
- #5 This is not how to spam. This is not how to trick the search engines.Honestly this is about wanting PR to embrace stats.We bicker all day long about how to measure PR or social media.You can measure SEO-related PR efforts right nowThese are all whitehat tactics.
- #6 Marketing communications is changing. We’re getting bombarded.Rapidly. Video----- Meeting Notes (4/14/11 21:57) -----We're getting filtered out.
- #8 At the end of the day, SEO is about disciplined content and writing. Social media can answer good questions.SEO can put your best foot forward.
- #10 I know we’re at a social media conference. But, um, we have a problem. What type of information are we reading and PR people talking about? Social and social by itself.
- #11 According to SEOMoz data. That means the different between 1 and 10 is astronomical. That also means your assets, not just your site. Video, news, etc.
- #12 If you are a VP/partner at an agency, or hope to be someday, search marketing will grow 16% this year to $19.3 billion. If you don’t offer SEO, your competitor will. If haven’t realized everyone else thinks they can do PR. A lot of PR firms build sites, you could conceivably screw your client in SEO by designing poorly.
- #13 If you work at a large corporation or in a PR firm that does outsources web development and hosting, he/she who owns the website runs the day. The biggest bottlenecks in enterprise SEO is with this department. If you start to talk and know they’re language, you can do a lot of thinks yourself.
- #14 We’re not snowflakes. PR people are a coming out every year. Most KSU PR student knows more about SEO than I did coming out of school.Also, PR firms and departments are getting their lunch handed to them in SEO by
- #15 Content is exploding. 51% of businesses report that they plan to increase their spend in content marketing over the next 12 months. Some even say the amount of content will double
- #16 When you add SEO and SEO-based thinking into PR firms and departments are getting their lunch handed to them in SEO by ad firms. If you own the site, you have the power.You also get a lot more stats to play with. Show your bosses.
- #18 Google’s algorithm was built on links to crawl the web. Call them bots, spiders, doesn’t matter.
- #20 Can we agree on this?Goals cannot be sales guy said we don’t rank No. 1 for blue widgets. We will
- #21 Where does PR usually live? In the bottom two. It’s also where content marketing and social media live. The problem is the bottom two won’t work without top two.Why because your site is still your most important asset
- #22 Site is still your greatest, most expensive asset. 1 out 4 clients sites we come across has serious indexing issues.
- #23 How many people think that the internet is going away? Then why aren’t we doing this stuff. Instead of taking ownership of the website. PR sits in the corner. Quietly. If PR doesn’t try to take on the website from clients, someone will. Usually that jerk in advertising.
- #25 In a perfect world your site should be organized thusly. We call this a directory structure or silo structureTells the engines which content is more important.
- #26 This is an example of a flat site. No amount of social media marketing or content marketing will help this. We can spend months getting a client reorganized.
- #27 More simply, ask yourself. If so, you’re well on your way.
- #28 This is a huge problem with many agencies and client sites. We get too cute. If your content is on three different domains, the main site doesn’t benefit. Pinhole. Why would someone go to three sites to find relevant content?
- #29 We see duplicate content all the time. Some content management systems have a URL rewrite feature that doesn’t get rid of the URL. So both are indexable, both are crawlable.
- #30 I know, I know. Everyone loves Hubspot website grader. Great tool. Problem is? It can’t tell you everything that is wrong, or fix it. I’ve found sites with unindexable content scoring in the 90s.
- #33 Keywords can be process.
- #34 It’s a huge, time consuming process.At SEO conferences, there are super long presos on this. Should start during the first stage.
- #35 What is one of the first things we do in PR? Remember that part about knowing your audience?
- #39 WALK AROUND.
- #40 Cleveland-based hospital The client was convinced 1 and the user used another. OK, now that we have keywords, now what?Numbers don’t mean as much as user intent. We always recommend using a keyword generating software and scoring, don’t let it run your life. Don’t let stats run your keyword list.
- #41 Here’s the bad news. Ranking for a lot of stuff is hard.Don’t fall in love with data.A lot of keywords are not doable in a year, or even over years.It’s ok to say no.
- #42 Get your site optimized.
- #44 Does everyone know where the title tag lives? Kent state.One of the most important ranking signals of all onpage SEO. Each page on your site has a field called a Title tag. Does
- #45 As a PR person, this is how we are being judged by the outside world. This is how we are perceived by the world. Imagine if this said home? Would you click on this?Total aside, looking at the some of the marketing firms here today, 80% don’t have a descriptive home page title tag..
- #47 Next step.
- #48 The meta description field has zero influence on rankings. But gets people to click.
- #49 Why would I click on this result? Where is it located? What are their specialties?
- #50 Remember
- #52 Don’t add keywords to irrelevant content. Also, there is no magic number of times to use it to get it on the page.
- #53 Really easy to have advice. So much misinformation. There are many different subsets of SEO and most information deals with small sitesEnterprise SEO is different.Treat SEO just like PR.
- #56 This is the bad news. Link building is still the best and fastest way to rank well. Crudely, do you have more and better links?
- #57 Clicking on the SEO checkbox You probably know more about SEO than the sales people. Great tool, but guess who owns the content? Do it, but know what it means. This is temporary.Most sophisitcatedalgos in the world. Don’t you think Google knows this trick?
- #58 This. never ends.
- #60 Ask simply.
- #62 If you already have a link building process, you’re shouldn’t be in here.
- #63 Don’t worry, this is the home stretch.
- #67 What do we keep hearing about? Google +1 Bing’s Facebook integration.Still a small part of ranking well.
- #68 I searched for my name last night and got this. Everyone else try it. What’s No. 1 for your name?
- #69 We read all about content marketing and strategy and the growth, but the part they don’t tell you is how much if it is designed for smaller sites.
- #70 Think about that last part. For many of us, one client is all we need to make this investment in time worthwhile.
- #71 2nd most popular search engine isn’t Yahoo, it’s YouTube according to comScoreFollow guidelinesDon’t be spammy.
- #74 Do same for case study. Or white paper.