SEO | Wadds' PR Blog

February 22nd, 2011 by Wadds

Job swap: when SEO met PR

SiteVisibility’s Jo Morley joined us at Speed last week for a job swap. It is part of a programme to help us better understand businesses adjacent to our own. Here’s how she got on (in her own words).

For the past week I have been immersing myself into the world of PR at Speed, a forward thinking agency that recognises that the PR industry needs to modernise. I’ve with the consumer PR team who have taken the time to teach me about their day to day lives and responsibilities.

Speed has some high profile clients with high demands and what I have seen at Speed in terms of creativity and hard work for delivering results has been impressive. Lesson number one, PR is hard work and requires long hours.

PR vs SEO
As a social media and SEO consultant at SiteVisibility, a Brighton based digital marketing agency my role focuses on building relationships, creating brand awareness and managing brand reputation online.

We focus on writing and publishing content that is relevant and engaging with links back to our client’s sites. This is all part of running a successful social media and SEO campaign and as I have now learnt is essentially what a successful offline PR strategy is about. Unbeknown to me I have been ‘doing’ online PR as part of my social media strategy without ever learning about PR in the traditional sense.

This week has given me a fascinating insight into what traditional PR is about, how the industry is changing and where social media and SEO fit in. Brand and reputation management is no longer just off line and must also focus attention on the online and embrace social media channels.

Social marketing
The real challenge for PR agencies is managing the shift from a one sided flow of information with consumers to a two way dialogue that centres around consumers needs and interests. With social media, consumers own the space and dialogue flows both ways.

Companies must be prepared to listen to what their customers are saying and respond appropriately.

Changing media, changing PR
After catching up with Stephen Waddington, Speed’s managing director, I understand that the PR industry is undergoing many changes.

One of these being the way the social sphere has changed the way news stories are approached and journalists are contacted. A journalist is just a likely to pick up a story from someone Twitter as they are to be sold it in from a PR agency which requires a more creative approach to getting stories published.

The most important thing I learnt is that successful PR centres around building strong relations with the media and journalists. I also gained an insight into the skills required to be able to utilise the information you have about a client and package this in a way that creates an interesting and engaging news story.

That old story called measurement
Another interesting insight from my week at Speed is that, PR in the traditional sense differs to my experiences in online PR within a digital agency in that, it seems to be lacking in the quantitative measurement associated with SEO campaigns yet to me, the two should fit closely together.

I take it for granted that I have always worked with Google analytics as a part of SEO campaigns and tracking web traffic is a daily part of the job. What I didn’t realise is that currently digital agencies are in many cases the only ones utilising this valuable and free tool.

Google analytics allows you to measure where traffic to your site is coming from and when. It allows you to see which sites are driving the most traffic and which keywords are successful in sending traffic to your site. Therefore, if a PR or advertising agency is running a successful campaign you would expect to see an uplift in branded keywords sending traffic to your site.

What this means is more people are typing your brand name in to Google. Consequently, an increase in branded search signals a greater awareness of a brand name and consequent change in behaviour to want to visit this site. Agencies should be taking the credit for this but many are not measuring it.

Speed is a forward thinking agency in that they have already recognised and addressed the way they do business and have embraced social media and built it in as part of their strategy, something many PR agencies are still not doing.

To find out more about my experiences of online PR and social media follow me at @jo_morley or read my blog.

Posted in PR
Tags: PR, SEO, Social media
2 Comments »

February 18th, 2011 by Wadds

SEO is broken – giving way to social search; deck from HIT ME! Optimise Your Search event

I spoke at HIT ME! Optimise Your Search at Microsoft in London on Tuesday. It was a cracking event that discussed the future of search and social marketing.

Microsoft’s Simone Schuurer has written up an excellent summary. Here’s my deck and a summary of my presentation.

In the last five to ten years digital marketing has reached a place where keywords and inbound links assume more importance on a web site than the actual content and audience.

We’ve filled the web with content and links in a bid to game search engines. It’s a game where the brand with the largest search budget and the smartest agency wins.

Search for car insurance and you’ll see what’s happening for yourself: highly competitive markets for pay per click and millions of natural results packed with brands vying for the top slot and web spam.

This isn’t a failure or search engine marketing. It’s being incredibly successful. But it is a failure of search engines.

But there is plenty of evidence that search engines are fighting back. Strengthening their algorithms and taking action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

Shift to social
In the last five years we’ve seen the rise of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. But there are lots of others focused on niche communities. These are built from trusted friends.

And for brands they are powerful. You’re far more likely to trust a plumber or electrician that has been recommended to you by a friend, than one you find online.

I believe that we’re entering a new era of digital media: the discovery of brands and products through the recommendation of friends in our networks who share links.

Already brands are reporting that they are receiving more traffic via Facebook and Twitter than via search for targeted campaigns.

But I think we’ve yet to see the real power of social media. That will come when our personal networks are overlaid on today search results.

Search meets social
Google now uses retweets as a signal for both organic and news search and Bing does the same although it also incorporates the social authority of a user.

But for a real look into the future scratch the surface of the deal that Bing announced with Google in October called Facebook Instant Personalisation. Bing is incorporating Facebook ‘like’ into its search algorithms.

In future when I search for a film or restaurant results will be prioritised according to the opinions of people in my network.

In future when I search for the film or restaurant on Bing I’ll have the option to prioritised the results from Facebook where your friends have talked about the film.

Facebook Instant Personalisation was launched in the US in October. We’ve yet to hear when it will launch in the UK. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider the like function being complimented by retweets or links sharing. This may not be the future of search but its heading in the right direction.

Online search isn’t going anywhere as a means to deliver traffic and sell. But I think we’ll start to see the balance of power start to shift from SEO to social media optimisation.

Exploring its potential I believe will be the next wave for digital marketing.

Posted in Social media
Tags: PR, seach, SEO, social
5 Comments »

September 27th, 2010 by Wadds

Guest post: Small changes the PR industry should make to generate SEO revenue

I’ve been debating for the last three-months or so whether the PR industry has missed an opportunity in search engine optimisation (SEO). The rise of a multi-million pound industry alongside the PR industry indicates that this is almost certainly the case.

In the guest post that follows Kelvin Newman, SiteVisibility’s Creative Director, makes the case that SEO offers a revenue opportunity for the PR industry. He’s also the editor of the UK’s most listened to Marketing Podcast (according to iTunes).

Speed has pitched an integrated search and PR planning proposition with SiteVisibility to a handful of prospects. Its early days but the results are promising. As Newman says PR and SEO will almost become the same discipline in the future. PRs take note.

Here’s Kevin.

I’ve got a confession to make; I’ve been a bit of a man on a mission recently, after Stephen invited me along to the CIPR Social media event about PR and SEO, I’ve been blogging over at econsultancy about Whether The PR Industry has Missed the SEO Boat and if PRs Make Better Link Builders than SEOs.

I genuinely think in the coming years link building and PR are going to overlap so much that it will be hard to distinguish between the two. Though it’s inevitable; it’s not happening quick enough for my liking, hence my recent crusade.

And that’s how we came to this post, I wanted to start a conversation with the PR industry about just how easily they could be making money from link building, and the tiny steps they’d need to make to make huge progress.

Forget press release syndication
Ask some PR people about SEO and they’ll tell you with a smile on their face that they include keywords and links in their press releases with a smug expression because how they’ve mastered Google algorithms.

I hate to burst the bubble but press release syndication never has, and never will, be an essential element to an SEO link building campaign. Optimising them is about low hanging fruit. If they are going online, you’re mad not to be giving them the once over for keywords, but I doubt many link builders would be to distraught if they lost the ability to syndicate press releases.

Where you an add value with press releases is by putting together an amazing story that people can’t help but cover, online or off. Time spent refining that pitch is going to have a much bigger impact on the SEO value than dropping the odd keyword and link.

Your contacts are more important than ever
I like to think of myself as a pretty good link builder who’s helped a number of journalists come up with some tasty online editorial, but like most search marketers I just don’t have the contact book and relationships of a PR pro. The long-lunch may be a long dead myth but you should appreciate that your connections built over years has a huge value.

You understand what pitches work with which journalists, use that experience and get some high quality links pointing at a client site. If they are interested in SEO they’ll quickly appreciate how these links are adding significantly to their link equity and suddenly it’ll become a big part of your brief.

Measure links as well as mentions even if the client isn’t interested in SEO
What if you’re clients are only interested in mentions and don’t care about links? Maybe SEO comes from their I.T budget so links aren’t considered their problem? Doesn’t matter, still report on the natural links your achieving. Clients are coming round to natural search and you have an ongoing record of achieving links you’ll stand a good chance of getting any work as and when it does come to pitch.

Trusted partner
You might not have the need for someone in your team who has search marketing experience at the moment but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have someone to turn to who knows what they are talking about. There’s search conferences and events a few times a month, get yourself along, see who sounds like they know what they are talking about and has a similar approach to your agency. Buy them a beer afterwards and you’ll have someone to bounce ideas off in the future.

Posted in Media, PR, Social media
Tags: search engine optimisation, SEO, Sitevisibility
1 Comment »

July 2nd, 2010 by Wadds

CIPR Summer Social debate finds PR and search marketing remain separate worlds

The PR industry has failed to embrace search marketing. That was the conclusion of a group of PR, social media, and search marketing professionals that met yesterday as part of the CIPR’s Social Media Summer series to debate the issue.

There are well-publicised exceptions highlighted by the recent NMA search league tables but the majority of the PR industry has seemingly yet to wake-up to even the basics of search marketing.

Analysis by Escherman’s Andrew Smith shows that the majority of the PR Week Top 150 agencies are failing to make even basic efforts to optimise their own web sites.

Disparate functions
But perhaps that’s not important. It is unlikely that PR and search marketing will be integrated until clients break down silos and recognise the opportunity for an integrated approach. And that’s going to take at least a generation of marketing professional according to We Are Social’s managing director Robin Grant.

“The opportunity for earlier wins lies in targeting entrepreneurs, small-to-medium sized businesses and marketing directors that outsource their marketing programmes,” said Grant.

Friend and foe: PR vs search
Site Visibility’s creative director Kelvin Newman spotlighted the similarities between PR and natural search. Content creation, syndication and engagement are all PR techniques he said.

Newman’s view is that the integrated use of PR to drive brand and search to drive sales is a potent combination.

But never the two shall meet according to Nixon McInnes’ managing director Will McInnes. PR and search are completely different disciplines with their own unique cultures.

“We’ve been talking about integrated PR and search marketing for at least four years. If it was going to happen it would surely have happened by now,” said McInnes.

Opportunity?
But developments such as the semantic web and social search could provide the PR industry with fresh impetus to regain ground according Klea’s director David Phillips.

Phillips is a long time PR industry commentator and said that he believed that the next generation of search engines are likely to make it increasingly difficult for search marketing agencies to manipulate search results.

Uniting around a crisis
Crisis management is the one area where search marketing and PR are integrated and the role of the normally discrete functions is well understood according to Lanson’s head of digital Simon Sanders. PR typically takes the lead advisory function but will pull in search professionals to clean up the aftermath of a crisis in search results he said.

One person that has been closely observing how PR and search marketing shakes out is Daryl Willcox, chairman and founder of DW Publishing, the media group whose products include ResponseSource and SourceWire.

In 2007 he wrote a white paper that warned that the PR profession risked being sidelined by search marketing. Today his biggest customer is a search agency.

“A fifth of the 850 press releases that are posted on SourceWire a month are from search agencies. Less than half of the releases from PR agencies include links [indicating a low awareness of SEO],” said Willcox.

Many of the individuals present had a story to share about media confusion that had resulted from search marketing agencies using what have traditionally regarded as PR channels to distribute content.

Search agencies buy PR skills
PR agencies may have been slow to embrace search but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that search marketing agencies are hiring PR professionals in a bid to understand the editorial world.

But it’s not just the talent that they are seeking. We Are Social’s Grant said that a higher premium was placed on search marketing agencies. “Valuations are at least three times the multiple of PR agencies,” he said.

Grant predicted that search marketing agencies may start to seek out PR firms as acquisition targets in a bid to create scale. It’s unlikely to happen the other way round.

The CIPR’s Social Media Summer Series will continue to explore different aspects of digital PR and social media each Thursday evening in London throughout the summer. Please check the wiki for upcoming topics.

Posted in PR, Social media
Tags: #CIPRSM, CIPR, PR, search marketing, SEO
7 Comments »

June 17th, 2010 by Wadds

PRCA breakfast: SEO for PR

The PRCA hosted a breakfast at Ketchum Pleon this morning where myself and Fernando Rizo (@fernandorizo) ran attendees through the basics of organic and pay per click (PPC) search.

My presentation covered organic SEO as part of the PR process. Fernando spoke about using paid search to kick start PR campaigns and conversations. Its a neat tactic that he calls contextual marketing “so as not to threaten the ad guys.”

Here’s my slide deck.

Posted in Business, PR
Tags: PR, PRCA, SEO
3 Comments »

June 14th, 2010 by Wadds

The rise of search marketing (and the failure of PR)

Return on investment is a dirty term in the PR industry. It’s a bit like margin. The industry would rather not go there.

In almost every other area of marketing professionals are able to plan an outcome against a level of investment. And generate a healthy bottom line.

But PR is different we say. It deals with influence in the editorial world and that’s beyond the comprehension of a spreadsheet.

The PR industry’s inability to communicate in the language of the boardroom means that it has failed to gain recognition in all but a limited number of cases.

PR for too long has been a craft and not a business discipline. But that is changing. But the change is far too slow for my liking.

Here’s a cautionary tale for anyone in the PR industry. Andrew Smith has scrutinised NMA’s latest league table of UK search marketing agencies for the third year running.

“[…] search firms continue to generate very respectable profits – certainly compared with the PR sector. And search firms are making no secret of continuing their land grab for PR work. The PR sector must therefore continue to up its game in terms of the quality and value of the digital services it offers,” says Smith.

Search could have been a new revenue stream for advertising (pay per click) or PR driven editorial (organic).

But with a couple of exceptions (Golley Slater and Chime-owned VCCP) according to Smith neither discipline has moved fast enough to capture the market and a new industry has emerged.

Social media is the next battleground. Be warned.

Posted in Business, PR, Social media
Tags: Andrew Smith, NMA, PR, Public relations, Search, SEO
3 Comments »

September 21st, 2009 by Wadds

Scotland needs to work on its SEO

We can find no evidence of any reputational impact to Scotland online as a result of the Scottish government’s decision to release Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The mainstream media reported last week that businesses in Scotland were concerned about the impact of the decision on Scottish business particularly with the US.

We’ve looked hard and believe that claims of a boycott have been largely exaggerated. Its a good old fashioned PR stunt to drive interest in Scottish products.

But results from Google Insights for Search do show that searches around keywords relating to Scottish products are cyclically focussed around Summer and Christmas and that search volumes have been in decline since 2006.

Search term: “scotch”
Search term: “Scottish shortbread”
Search term: “Visit Scotland”
Search term: “Scottish tartan”

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Google Insight, online pr, online reputation, Scotland, SEO
3 Comments »

PRCA breakfast: SEO for PR

Scotland needs to work on its SEO

Stephen Waddington

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