SEO4PRSearch Engine Optimization for Public Relations

A Webinar Presented by Horn Group and SEO-PR

September 13, 2007

For Discussion

+ New Realities+ Tools and Tips+ SEO4PR @ Work

Shannon LattaPartner & EVP

Horn Group, Inc.www.horngroup.com

Greg JarboeCo-Founder

SEO-PRwww.seo-pr.com

News landscape has changed dramatically since the early 1990s

77

5460

28

58

4047

36

0

31

0

20

40

60

80

Local TV Network TV Newspaper Radio Online

The Changing News Landscape

1993 2006

Source: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, July 30, 2006

Many failed to see “search” as paradigm shift in communication

“The press is no longer gatekeeper over what the public knows.

Journalists have reacted relatively slowly. They are only now beginning to re-imagine their role.

Their companies failed to see ‘search’ as a kind of journalism.”

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism, March 12, 2007

If you Googled ipod touch on Sept 8…

Source: Google, September 8, 2007

Image and news results at top… …and video and blog posts if you scrolled down.

If you Googled Steve Jobs…

Source: Google, September 8, 2007

Image and news results ranked #1… …and video and blog posts if you scrolled down.

Google’s Universal Search is clearly changing the landscape

“One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and PR related issues.”

Source: David Dalka, Creating Revenue and Retention, Aug. 21, 2007

Images in Universal Search results change our eye scanning patterns

Source: Enquire Research, Aug. 16, 2007

Search reverses classic model of communication from push to pull

Sources: Harold Lasswell, 1939, and Greg Jarboe, 1998

95mm unique visitors/month visit online news sites

8.2

8.6

19.5

21.1

24.1

34.4

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

Million

New York Times

Google News

CNN.com

AOL News

MSNBC.com

Yahoo News

Source: comScore Media Metrix, Dec. 2006

It is now as important to appear in Google as is to appear in PC Magazine

Source: Google, September 12, 2007

You’ll often find releases when you conduct a news search

Source: Google News, September 14, 2005

Press releases have passed trade publications as top source of news

Source: InformationWeek, June 6, 2006

Optimizing press releases for news search is a 5 step process

1. Conduct keyword research to find 2 to 3 relevant news search terms that your target audience is likely to use

2. Make sure your release actually includes your target terms – particularly in headline and first few sentences

3. Add hyperlinks intended to help people find interesting, related content, when applicable

4. Use press release distribution service crawled by Yahoo! News, AOL News and Google News

5. Measure results of your campaign – whether your objective is to build brand awareness, increase web site traffic, generate sales leads, or sell products online

Variety of tools can tell you which news search terms are used

Source: Google Trends, August 17, 2007www.google.com/trends

Hot Trends reflects what people are searching for on Google today

Source: Google Hot Trends, Sept. 7, 2007www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Sources: The New York Times, April 9, 2006, and Google News Report, August 16, 2007

Media relations should include on the top Google News sources

Search is #1 way journalists obtain additional story information

+ Survey of 1,100 technology journalists at all job levels across the media spectrum, including newspapers, business press, consumer magazines, trade publications, broadcast and online

+ Search engines were the top ranked means for researching companies and trends

+ 78% read blogs

Sources: Bennett & Company, Aug 5, 2005, and Fusion PR, Aug. 13, 2007

Journalists say visuals important 41% say it dictates content

+ 90% of journalists say that visuals are somewhat or very important to them+ 41% say that visuals could dictate their content+ “A release e-mailed with a jpg or tif file has a much better chance of

making it into our newspaper,” said one editor

Source: Bennett & Company’s 16th Annual Media Survey, August 15, 2006

Online video has also had major impact on news media in the past year

+ IDG News Service: “Any plans to add a video component to Google News?”+ Nathan Stoll of Google News: “We don’t want to preannounce any features, but our

Google News philosophy is to give users access to all the perspectives on a news story. To the extent that a lot of those are in video and becoming available online, we’d certainly love to make those perspectives available and easily discoverable.”

Source: Hitwise, April 2007, and InfoWorld, May 23, 2007

93.8 million blogs todayUp from 100,000 in March 2003

+ Technorati says there are about 1.4 million blog posts per day, over 58,000 per hour, about 16 per second

+ PubSub found 3 new outlinks were created for every 2 new blog entries

+ So, blogs are creating 24 links per second

Source: USA Today, July 30, 2007

Social mapping tools help identify most influential bloggers

“In certain categories, blogs are becoming the de facto industry press, and their ability to generate traffic, buzz and referred coverage shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Sources: BuzzLogic and MarketingSherpawww.buzzlogic.com

Blogs can generate 30x more visitors than articles

Sources: MarketingSherpa and SEO-PR, August 11, 2006

ClickTracks thought that click fraud could become a very hot topic in 2006

Source: Google Trends, December 27, 2006

We optimized press releases, pitched stories and case studies to journalists and bloggers

Source: Internet Financial News, Nov. 22, 2006

19 press releases generated 354 visitors 350 stories generated 15,660 visitors to their site

Inbound links from news articles and blog posts helped ClickTracks rank #1 for web analytics

Source: Google, December 27, 2006

Windows Secrets editorial director Brian Livingston got a hot scoop

Source: Windows Secrets, March 15, 2007

Windows Vista activation rapidly becoming a popular search term

Source: Google Trends, June 9, 2007

40 influential bloggers and journalistsmapped in this conversation

Source: BuzzLogic, March 8, 2007

News articles and blog posts generated record number of unique visitors and news subscriptions

Source: Windows Secrets, March 22, 2007

+ We invited 40 influential bloggers and journalists to online meeting

+ 8 target bloggers and journalists attended online meeting with Brian Livingston, including Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and Gregg Keizer of Computerworld

+ 155,681 unique visitors that week, 64,370 more than previous record

+ 3,528 new subscriptions a week, 1,800 more than previous record

Measure your success from PR outputs to business outcomes

31%

56%

31%

24%

52%

27%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%

Conversion

Site traffic

Click through

Blog mentions

Press mentions

News ranking

Source: MarketingSherpa, Search Marketing Benchmark Survey, August 2006

Google News and Google Blog Search are changing the PR playbook

Use SEO for public relations to generate:

+ Higher ranking of releases in major news search engines

+ Additional press mentions+ More blog mentions and inbound links+ Increased site traffic after announcements+ Better conversion rates to leads or sales

+ SuperPages.com generated 1,286,459 searches for “florists” the week before Valentine’s Day

+ Symmetricom generated $200 million in qualified leads for chip-scale atomic clocks

+ Southwest Airlines generated more than $2.5 million in online ticket sales

Thank You!

+ Questions+ Contact Shannon for a copy of today’s presentation+ Join us for our next webinars

+ Positioning and Message Development + Horn Group and Marketing Arts+ October 16 at 10am PDT

+ Social Media Boot Camp+ Social Media Director Kyle Flaherty+ December 4 at 10am PDT

Shannon LattaPartner & EVP

Horn Group, Inc.415.905.4030

www.horngroup.com

Greg JarboeCo-Founder

SEO-PR415.643.8947

www.seo-pr.com