SEO & PR

#1Why we want to be

50%Over half of all organic traffic goes through the

first link

5%Less than 5% of organic search traffic goes through the 5th

link

87% of UK search traffic goes through Google

The closest competitor is Yahoo with around 3%

The alternative, paid search, is expensive.

It works well for new brands and sites

Traffic Source Bounce Rate Pages/Visit Avg Duration

Paid 48% 3.2 2m 10s

Organic 38% 4.4 2m 36s

A brief history of search

The spiders take over!

SEO’s can now manipulate search results based on research and testing

Google Page Rank released in 1998

Starts a long history between SEO and links

Meta tags, descriptions and optimised landing pages become important

PR toolbar released in 2000

Many brands still aren’t optimising for search

People with knowledge of SEO are able to rank well for a wide range of terms

Keyword stuffing: Packing long lists of keywords on your site.

Invisible text: This is putting lists of keywords in white text on a white background in hopes of attracting more search engine spiders.

Doorway Pages: Essentially a fake page that the user will never see. It is purely for search engine spiders

Duplicate content – Scraping content from other sites and optimising the pages to appear higher in rankings

Poor quality content – Content that draws people in but provides little or no quality

Hidden content – showing search engine spiders content that’s not seen by the user

Link farming – creating websites for the purpose of sharing links within that group

What does an SEO do?1. Keyword research - Identifying the least

expensive and competitive but most powerful and profitable keywords for client sites.

2. Builds sitemaps, reviews site architecture, writes optimised headlines and header tags, HTML and CSS coding.

3. Looks for opportunities to exploit the search market using a range of technical approaches.

Google finally starts to penalise keyword stuffing and over optimisation of homepages with an update called ‘Florida’.

2009 – Enter social

Search engines can now find fresher, better content from social networks

A new algorithm update called ‘Caffeine’ means Google can now index the web more often, providing more up to date search results

This is shortly followed by real time search which now includes results from sites like Twitter

Google CEO says the internet is becoming a cesspool of false information

He suggests that brands are the best way to solve the problem

Google releases ‘Vince’ algorithm update

PANDA TIME!

New algorithm update prevents sites with low quality content getting good rankings

Now SEO’s have to focus on GOOD CONTENT

Lot’s more SEO is dead blog posts

Another update called ‘Penguin’ starts to punish sites that build low quality links

Blog networks and link directories are hit hard

Duplicate content is also penalised

SEO changes (a lot)

People start marketing to people again

Publishing the right content in the rightplace at the right time becomes the key

Content must be helpful, fulfil intent and not

be interruptive

Content that people want to share

Jimmy McCann, head of SEO, Search Laboratory

Brad Miller, Director of Business Development, Fathom

SEO is now about creating a good

website that users like and then doing proper marketing

and PR so you maximise the

digital signals of quality and relevance.

To improve your company’s SEO, you must embrace the skills and techniques

that PR professionals have been using for years.

You’re Dead… If You Don’t Integrate

Social Media & PR Into Your Local SEO

Strategy.

Trond Lyngbø, Senior SEO Strategist, Metronet Norge

What does an SEO do?1. Builds relationships and trust with journalists,

bloggers and key opinion leaders

2. Creates stories for clients and looks for opportunities to build a story around trends and other news

3. Sells in stories, infographics, videos and other content

4. Delivers technical SEO advice & reporting/evaluation

SEO is significantly more powerful when integrated with PR activity because

we can enhance the value of content and use it to build the authority and reputation of a website

CONTENT+

BRANDING=

GENUINE LINKS&

AUTHORITY

Optimising Content

1.Goals and objectives2.Timing3.Technical Optimisation

4.Conversion

What is content?

1. Goals and Objectives

When thinking about the purpose of yournews, press releases, blog posts oreducational pieces ask yourself:

1. What are your goals with the content?2. How do they tie in with our online

objectives?3. How will we measure success?

2. Timing

• How long will this content remain relevant?

• Is it an educational piece that will always be useful?

• Is it a news item that will always be interesting?

All three determine where content should go, how it should be optimised and how it should be used

3. Technical Optimisation

• Title - use keywords, put them at the front and be natural

• Content – Should be unique, frequently updated and generally longer (500+ words)

• Keywords – Ensure they are included but also focus on a natural flow

• Linking – Only link to relevant content, link to internal pages, link naturally

• We also want to create content that converts

• Driving targeted traffic is good, but consider the call to action and make sure that is included in your content

4. Conversion

Don’t apply a one-size-fits-all method to your optimisation.

• Links are still really important in building authority

• Don’t pay for links

• Linking from multiple places is very beneficial (social, websites, microsites etc)

• The best links will naturally come from your best coverage

• We can track the direct impact of your online coverage

product page

product pageusing keywords

We can observe what people do, by looking at the words

and phrases they used to find information.

When aggregated, you get a nice view of the words people most often use when thinking

about and searching for a certain topic.

Longtail of search

Sharing

SEO has become about producing compelling content that other people

want to share and promote

Good, shared content gets linked and promoted which increases trust and builds authority for websites, helping them gain better visibility in search

1. Use the power of social media to gain exposure for content, which results in natural links and other signals of quality and relevance.

2. Focus on enhancing the natural authority of websites, pages, and individual writers, which creates industry influence and trust with Google.

Using social

• Search engines can still be gamed to some extent, but the goals of search engines are similar to those of general marketing and they are getting very good at finding brands who break the rules and tend to punish them accordingly.

• Creating compelling content and beneficial relationships are link attraction strategies that won’t get you banned or penalised. You’re also achieving your overall goals of engaging and entertaining users, driving them to your website and converting them into customers.

Final Thoughts