Kitta 1 Public Relations and Search Engine Optimization: Best Practices for Public Relations Professionals to Leverage SEO to Increase Client Visibility on the Web A Senior Project presented to The Faculty of the Journalism Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science in Journalism By Chelsea Kitta June 2013 © Chelsea Kitta
Kitta 2 Abstract
The following study investigates how public relations practitioners can leverage
search engine optimization in order to increase client visibility. With the number of people using search engines on a daily basis is increasing (Purcell, Brenner, Rainie), it is imperative that public relations understand how to optimize the content they produce and leverage their skill sets to help increase client visibility on the web. “If helping our clients to be more visible is the heartbeat of public relations, then learning to integrate basic SEO skills into the work we do is essential to keeping that heartbeat strong. SEO is a must-‐know skill in PR” (Morgan). This study focuses on the best practices for public relations professionals to leverage search engine optimization in order to increase client visibility.
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Table of Contents Chapter 1 ................................................................................................................................................. 5 Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 5 The Problem ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 Setting for the Study ...................................................................................................................................... 7 Research Questions........................................................................................................................................ 8 Organization of Study.................................................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 ...............................................................................................................................................10 Literature Review ...............................................................................................................................10 2.1 The Beginning of Public Relations ...................................................................................................10 2.2 Public Relations Practices Today .....................................................................................................11 2.3 The Beginning of Search Engines .....................................................................................................13 2.4 Search Engine Optimization Market Today ..................................................................................15 2.5 How Popular Search Engines Rank Content .................................................................................16 2.6 Search Engine Optimization Practices............................................................................................19 2.7 Public Relations and SEO: Where They Converge ......................................................................26 Chapter 3 ...............................................................................................................................................40 Methodology .........................................................................................................................................40 Data Sources ...................................................................................................................................................40 Participants ....................................................................................................................................................40 Interview Design...........................................................................................................................................41 Data Collection...............................................................................................................................................42 Data Presentation.........................................................................................................................................43 Limitations......................................................................................................................................................43 Delimitations..................................................................................................................................................44 Chapter 4 ...............................................................................................................................................45 Data Analysis........................................................................................................................................45 Description of Participating Experts......................................................................................................45 Search Engine Optimization Questionnaire ........................................................................................47 Discussion .......................................................................................................................................................68
Kitta 4 The Importance of Great Content............................................................................................................69 The Value of Utilizing Keywords .............................................................................................................70 Relationship Building: It’s All About Links ..........................................................................................72 Social Signals: The New Form of Links ..................................................................................................74
References ............................................................................................................................................81 Appendix A ...........................................................................................................................................93 Interview Transcripts: Glenn Friesen ................................................................................................................. 93 Appendix B ........................................................................................................................................ 104 Interview Transcripts: Ryan Miller ....................................................................................................................104 Appendix C ......................................................................................................................................... 108 Interview Transcripts: Anne Stahl......................................................................................................................108 Appendix D ........................................................................................................................................ 112 Interview Transcripts: Allison Duly...................................................................................................................112 Appendix E......................................................................................................................................... 117 Interview Transcripts: Andy Brewer.................................................................................................................117
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Chapter 1 Introduction The Problem
In a Pew Internet study on Search Engine Use in 2012, researchers found that 91%
of online adults use search engines to find information on the web. In addition, the survey found that on any given day online, 59% of those using the Internet use search engines (Purcell, Brenner, Rainie). More people have access to the Internet and are flocking to the web, specifically search engines, to find the content and answers they need. The growing issue is that there is an excess of content and hundreds of page results for almost any give query typed into search engines. Sociologist Alex Havalais characterizes the “web’s ecosystem as an “attention economy” driven by competition for the scare commodity of users’ attention” (qtd. in Killoran 51). Now, more than ever, search engines are playing one of the largest roles in how people seek information. “In such an economy, the key logistic role of channeling users’ attention is played by search engines” (Havalais, cited in Killoran). Public relations and SEO professionals have the same bottom line, to drive client visibility and increase sales. “PR and SEO teams share a common goal–to increase a brand’s presence in the marketplace–but they take different approaches. Forming stronger ties between these two teams can lead to new content, better publicity and even new business”
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(Morris). With the increasing importance of search engines and the platforms’ direct link to target consumers, public relations practitioners are scratching their heads wondering where their role is within a search engine optimization effort. “The PR department does influence a variety of key areas that are important components of SEO and therein lie the opportunities for the PR pro to contribute to – and benefit from– the company’s SEO program…” (Skerik). With public relations professionals pitching online media news outlets and bloggers, it’s important to have SEO in mind, as it can make PR efforts measurable and drive increased coverage and more company buzz. Ken Deutsch, a PR professional and EVP of JPA reflects on typical public relation practitioner knowledge of SEO, “Many PR people stop at getting media coverage and think their job is done. They get a placement in The New York Times but they don’t follow up to make sure a link is put in. So they’re not taking advantage of the SEO side of the story” (McGaffin). This study will define current SEO practices and break down the key components that are most applicable to the PR effort. It demonstrates the connection between public relations and search engine optimization and specifically highlights the importance of writing great, optimized content, relationship building for linkbacks, and strategic social networking. The identified skill sets are heavily used within the public relations industry
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and can efficiently and effectively be leveraged to increase client visibility, ultimately driving sales. Purpose of Study
The main purpose of this study is to link the rapidly evolving field of search engine
optimization to the public relations practice. If PR practitioners can leverage SEO in their public relations efforts, it could take the public relations effort to a new level and assert PR as an integral part of search engine optimization for clients. By strategically integrating SEO into a PR effort, the public relations practitioner is only increasing their net worth and value to the client. Learning and successfully implementing the outlined SEO skills is essential and is a buzz topic that has only been increasing in discussion throughout 2013. If public relations practitioners want to increase client visibility, SEO is the key component to long-‐term success and results. Setting for the Study
This study will be completed with the use of data collection and interpretation at
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California as a Senior Project. Interviews will be collected from five experts within the field of search engine optimization.
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These industry experts will be asked a series of interview questions designed to develop a better understanding of the importance of various areas within search engine optimization that public relations practitioners can actively participate in and determining the best practices for the future. The interviewees will be asked the same set of questions and probes to get an adequate representation of data. Research Questions
The following questions were created to develop a comprehensive explanation of
the field of search engine optimization, its public relations related components, and determining the best practices for the future of search optimization.
1. How would one define the field of search engine optimization? 2. How would one consider the SEO effort to be relationships-‐driven? 3. What is the value of in-‐bound links for SEO practitioners and how can they be most effectively be garnered? 4. How important are keywords for SEO practitioners and what are the best practices for keyword selection? 5. What is the importance of social signals for SEO practitioners and how can social channels best be optimized?
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6. What are search engines most influential ranking algorithms? 7. What are the most beneficial and detrimental practices to SEO? 8. What are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future? Organization of Study
The study is broken into five chapters. Chapter one, the current, serves as the
introduction to the study. Chapter two contains the literature review where the research and sources will be evaluated and assessed. Chapter three is dedicated to the methodology, explaining how sources were gathered and research conducted. Chapter four is discussion driven and is where the SEO expert knowledge will provide detailed insight into the importance of various public relations related SEO components. Chapter five will finish with a summary wrapping up the study and discussing the importance of a SEO-‐conscious PR effort and where the industry is headed.
Kitta 10 Chapter 2 Literature Review Upon concluding research for this project, there is commentary that supports the idea that Public Relations practitioners can leverage SEO in an effective way to increase client visibility. 2.1 The Beginning of Public Relations
The first articulation of the concept of a public relations practice stemmed from Ivy
Ledbetter Lee’s “Declaration of Principles,” which stressed the idea that public relations practitioners have a public responsibility that extends beyond obligations to a client. Lee’s “Declaration of Principles” stated, “In brief, our plan is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about” (Cutlip 45). Lee’s “Declaration of Principles” established ethical standards along with credibility and professionalism into the rapidly evolving field of public relations. Lee is also acknowledged among the public relations community for inventing the “press release” for his client, the Pennsylvania railroad service in 1906. A train crash killed more than 50 people in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Lee decided to outline the facts of what happened in a public statement issued from the railroad service. It is noted that The
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New York Times was so impressed with his approach to corporate communications that it printed the first press release–verbatim–on Oct. 30, 1906 as a “Statement from the Road” and received praise from both newspapers and public officials for their transparency (Jarboe). Edward L. Bernays, the acknowledged “father” of public relations, is credited as being the first to use the term to describe the discipline. He admits to coining the phrase, “council on public relations” with his wife, Doris Bernays, and remarks, “we thought [it] described our activity better–giving professional advice to our clients on their public relationships, regardless of whether such activity resulted in publicity” (Heath). He positioned the profession and is also credited as being the first to identify the two-‐way communication model in public relations. From the launch of the first press release, to its early relationships-‐driven focus, the public relations profession has continues to build upon these principles to serve clients public relations needs today. 2.2 Public Relations Practices Today
Today, the profession has expanded to include many communications tactics that
work in unison to increase client visibility in more effective and efficient ways. Building on the traditional press release of the past and emphasis on building relationships, now the
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industry has evolved into a “digital” one. In 2011/12, PRSA, the Public Relations Society of America, led an international effort to modernize the definition of public relations to reflect the changes within the industry today. “…the most significant changes have occurred most recently, as the Internet and social media like blogs, Facebook and Twitter have transformed the relationship between the members of the public and those communicating with them. A process that for decades went one way — from the top down, usually as a monologue — now goes two ways, and is typically a conversation” (Elliot). In response to the digital shift in public relations, PRSA’s modernized definition of the industry is “a strategic communications process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics” (“What is Public Relations?”). In a 2010 survey of journalists, Cision, a provider of newsroom software for the public relations industry found among the journalists surveyed, “89 percent look to blogs for story research, 65 percent go to social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, while 52 percent check out what’s happening on Twitter and other microblogging sites” (Cision). With more journalists seeking out story content and information on the web, it is increasingly important that public relations professionals are not only maximizing all of the resources the web has to offer but also effectively targeting their efforts with search engine optimization to increase client visibility. Cutting edge, public relations practitioners are executing their PR efforts
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with the underlying goal of strategically building mutually beneficial relationships between and organization and its publics through media relations, press release writing, copy writing, blogging, and social media promotions among others. 2.3 The Beginning of Search Engines
The Archie search engine is considered to be the “grandfather of all search engines”
and is noted as the Internet’s first indexer of information, launching in 1990 (Baker). Notably in 1994, Jerry Wang and David Filo launched Yahoo!, a service originally intended to be an Internet bookmark list and directory of interesting sites (Baker). Beginning in 2000, Yahoo! used Google to power Yahoo! search, in 2003, the company realized the importance of establishing owned search and acquired several search engines including Inktomi, Goto, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb. In 2004, Yahoo! began powering their own search engine results and in 2009, Yahoo! dropped their self-‐powered search engine in favor of Microsoft’s Bing and continue to use it today.
Another search leader, MSN Search (Microsoft), launched in 1998 primarily relying
on search engines such as Overture, Looksmart, and Inktomi ("History of Search Engines”). Realizing as Yahoo! did of the importance of having in-‐house results technology, MSN switched from Yahoo! organic search results in 2005. In 2006, they announced their Live
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Search platform, and in 2009, launched Bing. This new search service altered search today “by placing inline search suggestions for related searches directly in the result set. For instance, when you search for credit cards they will suggest related phrases like credit card types, apply for credit cards, credit cards for bad credit, advice on credit cards” ("History of Search Engines”). In Search Engine History’s analysis of Microsoft’s “Bing SEO guide for Webmasters,” it remarks that the “additional keyword suggestions provided through this search platform helped pull down search demand to lower listed results when compared against the old results 6 through 10 when using a single linear search result set. Conversely, the Google format tends to concentrate attention on the top few search listings” ("History of Search Engines”). In 1996, Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched Backrub, a search engine created to rank sites based on inbound link relevancy and popularity (Baker). What differentiated BackRub, was the fact that is ranked pages using citation notation. One of their most impactful ranking algorithms included PageRank, where links count as votes, but some votes count more than others ("History of Search Engines"). According to Search Engine History, “Your ability to rank and the strength of your ability to vote for others depends on your authority: how many people link to you and how trustworthy those links are” ("History of Search Engines”). Little did anyone know that Backrub would eventually
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become Google in 1998, and evolve into the search empire that exists today. Since the early development of search engines, search has taken off with rapid speed to produce the two search market dominators, Google and Yahoo! 2.4 Search Engine Optimization Market Today
SEO Book defines SEO as “the art and science of publishing information and
marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries” (“The Search Engine Marketing Glossary”). In March 2013, comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, released its latest analysis of the U.S. search marketplace determining the top search engines by their percentage of explicit core search share. Google Sites dominated with 67.1 percent of the search engine market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 16.9 percent and Yahoo! Sites with 11.8 percent (“comScore Releases”). In John Killoran’s research, “How to Use Search Engine Optimization Techniques to Increase Website Visibility” he states, “For years, Web users have been favoring Google by wide margins over such competitors as Yahoo and, more recently, Bing” (Killoran 55). In 2009, Yahoo! announced a 10-‐year agreement to use Microsoft’s Bing search engine. In May, 2013, Yahoo! revealed in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
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Commission that it has extended its search revenue guarantee with Microsoft for solely the U.S. market and will continue to do so until March 31, 2014. “Recently, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer claimed that the company has yet to see much of a benefit from its search engine deal with Microsoft but there’s no indications that Yahoo plans to make any changes to the deal anytime soon” (Callaham). “Accordingly, SEO industry professionals, following their users, optimize their sites primarily for Google’s algorithm and secondarily for Microsoft’s Bing and others, and so this tutorial frequently focuses on optimizing for Google, though the SEO lessons detailed below also apply in varying degrees to most other general web search engines” (Killoran 55). Most SEO research that exists today is geared specifically towards Google’s search ranking algorithms because this is the most frequently used search engine by a wide margin above competitors in the search field. 2.5 How Popular Search Engines Rank Content
As Google dominates the search market, one of its most distinctive search
algorithms is PageRank, which measures the popularity of a webpage as determined by the hyperlinks from other pages linking to it, as well as the popularity of those linking pages themselves (Killoran 53). Google searches for the most relevant results to deliver back to the web user. PageRank is just one of the 200 factors that Google uses to determine search results (Cutts, cited in Killoran 54). In Killoran’s analysis of Google software engineer, Matt
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Cutts’ video explaining Google’s algorithm, he breaks down the 200 factors into two main points: (1)
“Trust–of which PageRank is only the most well-‐known component–an assessment of a site’s authority and reputation.”
(2)
“Relevance–an assessment of how well as site topically matches a particular query”
(Killoran 54).
With search engines ranking extremely high as some of the United States’ and the
world’s most visited websites (Alexa.com), companies are looking to search engine marketers to increase their online visibility to drive sales. As stated in Killoran’s research, “…many studies have observed that searchers tend to limit themselves to the first search engine result page (Hochstotter, Koch, cited in Killoran 55), (Jansen, Spink, Pedersen, cited in Killoran 55), and often to just the top-‐ranked results on that search engine result page (Jansen, Spink, cited in Killoran 55), even when the order of those results has been experimentally reversed from top to bottom” (Pan et al., cited in Killoran 55), (Lorigo et al., cited in Killoran 55). Based on this information, search engine marketers are tasked with not only getting on the first couple of pages, their clients need to be within the top rankings on the first page.
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In correspondence with consumer behavior, search engine marketers are competing
for the first page of search engine results. As a result, some have attempted to game the system with deceptive SEO tactics labeled as “black hat.” These tactics attempt to manipulate Google among other search engines to try to push mediocre and undeserving pages to the top of results pages. Killoran identifies two black hat techniques within his research, keyword stuffing and link farming. Keyword stuffing consists of inserting excessive keywords within the coding or behind the content of a webpage (Killoran 54). Link farming is describes as a process where sites filled with outbound links are posted for the purpose of making the destinations of those links appear popular to search engines (Killoran 54). These tactics among hundreds of others have led search engines such as Google to frequently update its search results ranking algorithms in order to deter black hat practitioners. AJ. Kohn, owner of SEO consultancy Blind Five Year Old and vice president of online marketing at Caring.com remarks in Customer Relationship Management, “It’s a chess match between the SEO gurus trying to figure out the algorithm and Google, who’s constantly tweaking [it] to make sure they’re delivering the best possible results to the end user” (Tsai). Two of Google’s well known algorithm updates include Panda and Penguin. In essence, Panda identifies quality content through all of the excess unrelated material existing on the web today, and Penguin filters over optimized content
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and manages link spamming (Monaghan). Due to the rampant use of black hat SEO tactics and Google’s emphasis on providing the most accurate and relevant results for consumers, the company is on its 25th update of Panda and recently released Penguin 2.0 on May 22, 2013. Google’s Webmaster Tools for Search Engine Optimization states, “Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google, or even the removal of your site for our index (“Google Webmaster Tools”). The search engine leader is serious about promoting white hat practices and is dedicated to maintaining its position as the most used search engine in the world (Sullivan) today. 2.6 Search Engine Optimization Practices
One of the key elements for SEO is creating unique, accurate page titles. An SEO
professional can indicate to Google’s indexing system of what the page titles and the topic of a specific page by utilizing title tags. These specified page titles are displayed when search engine users type in a relevant query (Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, p.4). Upon developing title tags, it is important to utilize the “description” meta tag for a website. “A page’s description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about…Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages” (Google Search Engine Optimization Starter
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Guide, p.6). Anchor text also plays a vital role in successful website optimization. Proper anchor text makes it easy for Google and users to identify the page they are linking to. “…the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you’re linking to is about” (Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, p.16). Images are another aspect of website optimization and can contribute to higher rankings. “The “Alt” attribute or “tag” allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason” (Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, p.18) Optimizing image file names and alt text allows for more opportunities for content to be displayed in Google Image Search results because the crawlers can understand and categorize the data from the image.
Optimizing web content with keywords is one of the key elements of SEO that can be
easily accomplished. Keywords reflect search engine queries and are plugged into content to increase the chance of target audiences viewing the material when typing queries on the web. Killoran’s research reveals that the best keyword candidates for search engine marketers include “…words and phrases naming the problems or needs that the organization or site resolves (Grappone, Couzin, cited in Killoran 56), and terms identifying the organization’s off-‐web location” (Rognerud, cited in Killoran 56), (Grappone, Couzin, cited in Killoran 56). Killoran also remarks “Along with researching the keywords that their
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own site’s targeted audience would use in a query, web developers are recommended to research the keywords that their competitors are targeting by examining their webpage titles and text (Grappone, Couzin, cited in Killoran 57), (Malaga, cited in Killoran 57). We know SEO is an ongoing, long-‐term process. More specifically, it's the process of continually discovering highly converting, non-‐branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions. “It’s about understanding search intent and how keywords used to describe your products and services evolve as a prospect progresses through the buying cycle. It is then about having insight into great data and taking action by including those optimized keywords in your content marketing plan” (LaRiviere). Keywords are broken into two categories, “head” and “tail” keywords. “Head” keywords are generic and about one or two words long (e.g., writer or technical writer) (Killoran 57). “Tail” keywords are considered subcategories of “head” keywords and are three or more words long (e.g., Silicon Valley technical writer) (Killoran 57). In a 2012 SEO industry Survey conducted by SEOmoz, the top 5 keyword research tools used by SEO marketers included Google AdWords, Google Insights, SEMRush, Wordtracker, and Raven (“2012 SEO Industry Survey”).
A 2012 Moz.com article discussing the value of external links states, “Top SEOs
believe that external links are the most importance source of ranking power” and that
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“…getting external links if the most important objective for attaining high rankings” (“External Links”), (“2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors”). “Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-‐based and freely-‐volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance”(Ohye). In response to search engines focusing on inbound links from other websites, some SEO practitioners focus on the quantity of links instead of quality. Killoran discusses this issue in his study, “However, both Google and Microsoft emphasize the quality of inbound links over their sheer quantity, specifically the authority of the linking sources and the topical relevance of the linked sites to each other” (e.g., “Bing Webmaster Center FAQs, Microsoft, cited in Killoran), (“Bing Webmaster Tools Help & How-‐To Center, Microsoft, cited in Killoran), (DeJarnette, cited in Killoran). Google and Bing are focused on providing relevant and accurate results and thus, offer search engine marketers guides identifying various ways to garner inbound links. As referenced in Killoran’s study, “Google suggests: • providing a useful product or service • posting new, insightful, entertaining information • maintaining a blog with regular, original, interesting posts
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• engaging the community of related websites and web 2.0 social media sites that might, in turn, elicit back links or other connections.” (“Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide,” Google, cited in Killoran), (Szymanski, cited in Killoran), (Ohye, cited in Killoran). Killoran also cites Microsoft’s suggestions for inbound links in his study, “Microsoft suggests: • offering to guest post an article or blog entry on someone else’s site in exchange for a link back to one’s own site • joining relevant associations that post links to their members’ sites, or approaching business partners about posting a hyperlinked notice about the partnership
• participating in online forums related to the site’s field • engaging the media by issuing online press releases or pitching a story to a reporter • informing leading and active figures in the field about the site and its content in hopes of earning their attention.” (“Bing Webmaster Center FAQs,” Microsoft, cited in Killoran), (“Bing Webmaster Tools Help & How-‐To Center, Microsoft, cited in Killoran), (DeJarnette, cited in Killoran).
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The inbound link gathering process is noted among SEO practitioners for being relationship driven. “…Grappone and Couzin (Grappone, Couzin) recommended seeking out quality inbound links from sites of organizations and individuals with which one already shares some relationship, such as sites of one’s:
clients, customers, and fans
service providers, vendors and partners
business and professional associations and accrediting organizations”
(qtd. in Killoran 61).
Social media is predicted to play a much larger role in the future of search as sites
like Facebook is ranked number one globally, followed by YouTube at number three, and Twitter at number 12 (Alexa.com). “We’re moving ever closer to a place where social signals and social sharing are going to become increasingly dominant factors in Search Engine Optimization” (Gervelis). “The concept of social media optimization was originally proposed by Rohit Bhargava, who described SMO strategy as “optimiz[ing] a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines . . . , and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs” (qtd. in Killoran 62). Bhargava offers five SMO practices in his article, “The 5 New Rules of Social Media Optimization,” they include:
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(1) “Creat[ing] shareable content…The better your content is, the more people will want to share it with their entire social networks whether they link it, like it, dig it or share it.” (2) “Make sharing easy…Once you have shareable content, it has to be one-‐button easy so people will [share it] with minimal effort or thinking.” (3) “Reward engagement…Today the real currency [in SEO] is around conversation or engagement…This is the behavior that matters most in the social web and the one that we should all focus on rewarding when it happens.” (4) “Proactively share content…This encompasses everything from creating slides to post or offering embeddable versions of it, or using RSS feeds to syndicate it. Proactively sharing even includes posting your content to social networking profiles or creating profiles on video sharing sites.” (5) “Encourage the mashup…The concept of the “mashup” where people take and remix your content by adding their own input and voice has only grown over the past four years. Allowing people to take an ownership over the social content you publish will continue to be a key way that you can optimize your content for the social web” (Bhargava).
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In 2011, SEOmoz surveyed SEO professionals regarding their predictions as to whether the weight that Google’s algorithm distributes to social signals would increase, decrease or stay the same over the following year, 90% of those surveyed predicted the weight would increase (“2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors”). In addition, Google+ is a major player in the social game and is changing the SEO industry along with the more established social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. “Google+ is the single most powerful social force on the Internet today. Facebook may have a bigger market share, but Google+ has a bigger ownership of search power. Facebook doesn’t write the algorithms; Google does” (DeMers).
Ultimately, search engines are looking for the content that people care about and
find most relevant to their search queries. It boils down to shareable, engaging, unique content that drives brand buzz on the web. 2.7 Public Relations and SEO: Where They Converge
Mike Cherenson, former Chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America
and EVP of Success Communications Group, recently remarked on the integral convergence of public relations in an SEO effort, “The future of SEO is not in the technology, it’s in the ability to tell stories that readers and Google will find interesting…and that’s public
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relations” (qtd. in McGaffin). Google’s latest Panda and Penguin search algorithm updates now place much more emphasis on high quality, unique content that is linked by high quality sites (McGaffin). SEO professionals are in a consensus, search engine optimization needs to be approached differently in 2013. In a Econsultancy article, Simon Hawtin, a digital marketing executive reflects, “…SEO needs to be approached differently in 2013, in particular...the need for focusing on generating high quality content that people will happily share via their social networks” (Hawtin). With search engines continuously updating ranking algorithms to funnel only the highest quality, most shared and talked about results, public relations practitioners need to understand their importance as content creators and what it means for search optimization. “Both the PR and SEO industries face the same challenge–to produce attention grabbing and high quality content that resonates with their audiences. SEO, along with other digital resources and techniques, has made it possible for PR pros to bypass (not ignore) traditional media outlets and get exposure for their clients on the web” (Bailey). With the rise of online media and more than 181 million blogs existing around the world today (“Buzz in the Blogosphere”), it is essential that public relations practitioners actively integrate SEO when starting the content creation process (Morgan). The common thread throughout the research conducted pointed towards public relations utilizing search engine optimization within the following categories: writing
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engaging content with keywords, garnering inbound links through relationships, and maximizing the potential of social signals for the future of search optimization engineering.
Cherenson states, “Public Relations professionals are skilled storytellers and content
generators and should be a part of every SEO effort” (qtd. in McGaffin). With the latest Penguin and Panda updates Google has been very transparent about its preference for engaging content. Matt Cutts, Senior Search Engineer at Google said, “Google tries to make it so that sites “don’t have to do SEO.” First and foremost is good content” (qtd. in Falkow). Public relations practitioners should design content based on demand and research what target audiences are looking for on the web. “For lower-‐demand, niche content categories, consider content hubs on your website and offsite platforms for sharing content like YouTube. An example of this approach is TransUnion’s YouTube Channel, which provides tailored, instructive video content based on search terms such as “identity theft protection” and “getting out of debt” (Papagiannis, “SEO for Public Relations: A Step-‐By-‐Step Guide”). Tailor content for consumer specific searches and needs, but also consider high-‐demand search categories as well. “For popular, high-‐search-‐demand categories (student loans, for example), content responses may warrant greater sophistication, extending beyond things like articles, videos, or targeted ads to include contests, gaming/app ideas, or community outreach” (Papagiannis, “SEO for Public Relations: A Step-‐By-‐Step Guide”). These are
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examples of various campaign components that can increase the chance of it going viral and engaging consumers due to the fact that more people are searching for these areas of interest as they are high-‐demand topics. The key to great content is to write content that isn’t sales speak by nature (Kouremetis). Compelling and engaging content should speak to related industry news, facts or information in a fun and interesting way and not be a thread of constant self-‐promotion. Kouremetis offers advice on creating compelling content, “…search for web sites that are attractive, engaging and worthy of revisiting over and over again. What do they all have in common? Why do you go back? Once you’ve got that figured out, use them as templates for your own [content]” (Kouremetis).
One of the most commonly produced forms of content that public relations
practitioners create is the press release. As mentioned earlier, this communications tool has been around for a long time, but now it’s time for this essential PR tool to be updated for SEO, along with all other written content for the web. “Understanding how online audiences communicate about your organization’s products, services, and issues-‐ and then using the same language in your online communications-‐ is one of SEO’s cornerstones” (Skerik). It is critical to utilize the industry keywords that consumers are typing in queries to ensure the content written is being seen by as many relevant consumers as possible.
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Google Keywords and the other keyword researching tools mentioned earlier are efficient and reliable tools to identify brand-‐relevant keywords that target audiences are using. To give search engines a consistent brand theme to identify, it is recommended to include keywords once in every 100 words throughout the written content (Papagiannis, “SEO for PR: 6 Ways”). It is also important to not lose sight of the editors originally targeted with the press release when attempting to optimize for search engines. It is recommended to include at least one relevant keyword phrase that target audiences are searching for but to first and foremost write to engage and grab the attention of people (Jackson). Including hyperlinks to owned content such as press releases, company website pages, white papers can drive traffic and increase awareness about the brand as well. However, if inclined to include links, make certain to include no more than one link every 100 words to avoid the content from being categorized as spam (Papagiannis, “SEO for PR: 6 Ways”). To make the most of online written content, “Make sure your brand boilerplate includes language that’s beneficial for search and website rankings. Key product categories or service offerings should be mentioned along with the company name and relevant brand links (website, media room)” (Papagiannis, “SEO for PR: 6 Ways”). In conjunction, to increase the chances of a wider audience viewing the material, the press release can be distributed through various wire services such as Business Wire, PRNewswire and PRWeb, among others, that
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offer the use of anchor text, links, trackbacks, and URL customization. The final step following distribution and posting is to go back to the brand website and upload the optimized material. “The search engines love sites that add keyword-‐rich pages on a regular basis. The more pages, the better. And, if you can organize your press release by category (similar to how you might organize blog posts), all the better” (Jackson). “Embracing the opportunities today’s online media environment affords you-‐ and considering how your publicity efforts can support and leverage your organization’s SEO strategy-‐will help you produce better results that are highly measurable” (Skerik).
Link building is one of the most effective ways public relations practitioners can
integrate into an SEO effort. Ken McGaffin, former CMO of WordTracker and an expert in SEO states, “The biggest contribution that PR pros can make to SEO is encouraging editorial links. It not only allows people to click through but also boosts SEO” (qtd. in Morgan). Google refers to these linkbacks as credible and treat them as through they are endorsed or approved, thus pushing the brand’s content higher within search engine result pages. “Media relations is the ultimate link building strategy. Media coverage about your company with a link to your website is the perfect editorial link from an authoritative website” (Falkow). As mentioned earlier, the link building process is relationships-‐driven, thus making an ideal fit for the public relations practitioner. In “Why Online PR and SEO Go
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Hand in Hand,” McGaffin explains the connection between public relations and link building as being remarkably similar due to the fact that they are both relationships driven and require industry knowledge (McGaffin). “Building ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships can help create a more holistic strategy. PR and SEO both utilize relationships to promote websites and brands” (Morris). When public relations professionals pursue online editorial coverage, it is important to remember the importance of receiving a linkback within the published piece. “Most bloggers will happily include links to third party websites in their blogs and many media web sites are becoming more amenable to this practice too” (Skerik). Losing out on a link within coverage is something easily missed for the PR practitioner who is not well versed in search engine optimization practices. SEO experts agree, especially after the most recent Google algorithm updates, a fewer number of high quality links is worth drastically more than having hundreds of thousands of low quality links (McGaffin). Some PR professionals who integrate SEO into their practices, place such a high value on linkbacks that they will put less time into pursuing media outlets that refuse to offer linkbacks because the return on investment for SEO isn’t there (“McGaffin). Skerik lists several ways to facilitate the linkback process in her article, “Integrating Public Relations with SEO Strategies,” the tips include:
• “Bookmark[ing] or [Tweeting] interesting stories or blog posts and link back to
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those pages.” • “Develop relationships with bloggers and link back to their blogs (via trackbacks) within your organization’s blog when appropriate.” • “Treat influential, trusted bloggers the same way you treat influential, trusted journalists by giving them access to information and people.” • “Include blogs in your daily reading…stay on top of trends and developments in your space” (Skerik). Another popular approach to link building includes guest blogging on industry related sites to position the company as a leader or expert within the field. By writing for a highly ranked and credible site, this provides the writer with the opportunity to include linkbacks to the company website and other company-‐related web items that contribute to an increase in page ranking. Garnering linkbacks is a relationships driven process that is most well suited with the career skills and relationships emphasis of the field of public relations.
With SEO professionals predicting that Google will place more emphasis on social
signals within the year (“2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors”), public relations professionals can expect it to play an increasingly important role in job duties. USC Annenberg’s Strategic Communication and Public Relations Center 2012 Communication
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and Public Relations Generally Accepted Practices study reveals, “Seventy percent of PR and Communications departments report budgetary responsibility for social media monitoring and 66% for social media participation. This reflects a 17 percent and 13 percent growth, respectively, over two years ago. Further reflecting a shift to Web 2.0 communication is a rise in responsibility for search engine optimization” (“USC Annenberg Rolls Out”). As more public relations practitioners are now taking on social media roles, it’s important to understand how this new form of media can be leveraged for search engine optimization. Since Google and other search engines are incorporating social signals, (linkbacks, shares, likes, etc.), the key to social success is understanding the target audience and creating content they want to share with their network. Cline looks at Jonha Revesencio’s notes on research compiled by M Booth and Simply Measured outlining what encourages the most interaction on social:
• “On Facebook, videos are shared 12X more than links and text posts combined.”
• “On Facebook, photos are liked 2X more than text updates.” • “42% of all Tumblr posts are photos. On YouTube, 100 million users are taking a social action on videos every week. Photos and video posts on Pinterest are referring more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Google+” (Cline).
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Cherenson reflects, “Links [content], need to provide value to the reader. Media will be more likely to link to content that is compelling and provides information that goes beyond the original reporting” (qtd. in McGaffin). When blogging or posting on social networks, public relations professionals should ensure that the content can be easily shared. Installing programs including ShareThis, allows readers to share the content they want with their networks with ease. Ensure that at least Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest are tabs are available for users to share content (DeMers). To most effectively use social networks, just posting isn’t enough. Logging on Facebook and throwing a link to the company website or an article won’t cut it. “…it is about branding your company and interacting with your customers, fans, and influencers in a way that is aligned with your PR goals” (Cline). Build rewarding relationships with key influencers on social, for example, it is easy to access a list of the top 100 bloggers, diggers and reddit users online by conducting a simple Google search.
If attempting to produce viral content or so called “link bait”-‐highly linkworthy
content, Stephan Spencer outlines several tips within his article for Multichannel Merchant. Tips include:
• “Ideation: it all starts with a great idea-‐ and this step is key: Your content/angle
must be more than just clever to go viral. Gather a team of your most creative and
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knowledgeable SEOs and marketers to brainstorm possible ideas for link bait that is likely to resonate within social media.”
• “Content creation: Flesh out the chosen ideas into full-‐blown articles/blog posts,
starting with the research. For example, at topic of “Top 100 Beers from Around the World” will likely require many pages of information to be collected…”
• “Make sure to craft a killer headline: For example, take a number plus and
adjective plus a key phrase-‐ e.g., “13 Most Chilling Haunted Hotels” or “16 Incredibly Unconventional Hotel Rooms. You want a catchy title that will reel people in; you want to develop video or other visuals to support your idea. But you really need a “hook” to turn an article idea into something that will have legs in the social sphere. A clever contest, for instance, can work well.” • “Publishing: you will need a place to host your link bait. This really should be your own site. Also, make sure your site can handle the anticipated traffic” (Spencer). It is also critical to utilize Google+, as it is the search engine leader’s owned social network. “From a purely SEO perspective, it’s important to have a presence on Google+. Here’s why: Google has been explicit that social signals play a role in its algorithm. Twitter and Facebook matter some, but many of the search results from both networks are
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restricted. Therefore, the network that carries the most weight is Google+” (DeMers). Although other social networks have more active users, “Google +1s and Facebook shares are public data. Google’s algorithm is now considering how many +1s your page receives when it orders search results” (Papagiannis, “SEO for PR: Gauging the Success”). In addition, Google Authorship and Author Rank are two key components that are expected to greatly influence search engine result pages. “Authorship allows you to connect your Google+ personal profile to your original content anywhere on the web, while Author Rank is the idea that Google might use data gathered via Authorship to develop trust and authority scores for individual authors that could affect search rankings for their content” (Traphagen). Google Authorship is becoming much more relevant as it increasingly appears in results. “A proper Authorship connection can result in the author’s Google+ profile photo being shown next to search results…”(Traphagen). Author Rank is another factor that many SEO experts have been discussing in conjunction with Google Authorship. “…the idea of Author Rank is rooted in a series of Google Patents known under the collective rubric of “Agent Rank.” In these patents, Google described a system whereby they would use various signals, primarily social and other engagement signals (such as blog comments) to score various “agents” which could then themselves act as ranking signals for search.” (Traphagen). Demian Farnsworth, Chief Copywriter for Copyblogger Media discusses in the
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article “The Writer’s Author Rank Cheat Sheet” that there are several factors that Google values in regards to Author Rank which include: “For Your Google+ Account •
Participation–More participation on Google+ could mean a higher Author Rank score.
•
Audience size–How many connections do you have on Google+? How many people are connected to you? What’s the quality of those connections?
•
Your interactions with content–Google is probably also looking at how you interact with other content.
Factors External to Google+ •
Average PageRank of your published content.
•
Authority across other social media platforms.
•
Top-‐level authority indicators–Mentions in authoritative websites like Wikipedia, The New York Times, universities or government sites will suggest to Google that you’re a notable expert in your field” (Farnsworth).
Malthar Barai, a prominent blogger and social media consultant specializing in content strategy released a list of the “SEO Trends for 2013” in which quality of content, Author Rank and Social Signals all make the list. “The recent Panda and Penguin updates
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still tell you to focus on Quality of Content. Share fresh information…Author Rank is one of the most important SEO trends for 2013. Do make sure you claim ‘Authorship’ over your content…The recent Panda and Penguin updates have a lot of emphasis on your social signals–Google +1, Facebook Likes, Twitter Shares, Comments, etc.” (Barai). Both SEO and Public Relations are efforts that are essential to bring together in the digital age. With Google’s latest algorithm updates, the power of unique and compelling content comes full circle. As more of the public relations effort is directed to the web, practitioners need to utilize the tools such as content creation/writing, relationship building, and strategic social networking for the web with optimization in mind.
Kitta 40 Chapter 3 Methodology
This chapter will discuss the methods of data collection containing data sources,
collection and presentation of the data and delimitations. Data Sources
For the purpose of this study, experts within the field of search engine optimization
were selected and interviewed using a single questionnaire. The questionnaire follows and expands upon the original research questions used to determine the value of various SEO techniques and their relationship to public relations practices today. Participants
I interviewed five search engine optimization experts based in San Luis Obispo
county and the Silicon Valley. Glenn Friesen is a Search Engine Marketer at MINDBODY, an online business management software company with more than 23,000 clients worldwide. Ryan Miller is the owner and founder of SLO Design Solutions, a website design an Internet marketing services provider to local businesses on the Central Coast of California. Anne Stahl is the Digital Strategy Manager at Hathway, a San Luis Obispo based digital agency focusing on search marketing, design and application development, and digital strategy.
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Allison Duly is the SEO Director at Rosetta, a global marketing agency that specializes in digital search and media strategies for brands including Office Max, Express, Lenovo and more. Andy Brewer is the Founder of UpTrending, a Silicon Valley based web design and optimization agency with clients from the consumer, education, health, and high tech sectors, among others. Interview Design The following questions and probes were asked to each of the experts as part of the data collection for the study: 1. How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization? 2. What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them? 3. In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-‐driven and why or why not? 4. Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-‐quality inbound links?
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5. How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web? 6. How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized? 7. What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why? 8. Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices for SEO? 9. Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N) 10. In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future? 11. In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEO and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web? Data Collection
The data collection for this study consisted of five individual interviews with experts
within the field of search engine optimization. The interview questions were emailed to the
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participants in May 2013. Andy Brewer’s interview consisted of a Skype and phone call in May 2013. The experts were asked a series of questions from a single questionnaire based off of the original research questions. The purpose was to garner the most accurate and insightful answers on the topic of how public relations professionals can best leverage SEO to increase client visibility. In addition, the interviews served the purpose to highlight the importance of specific aspects of the search engine optimization field and the best practices for client visibility on the web. Data Presentation
The participants that were emailed questions sent back their answers in email
format. Andy Brewer’s Skype and phone interview data was collected using a standard audio recorder then transcribed into written verbatim notes. Paraphrasing was also used to clarify the context of the responses. These combined methods of data collection guarantee the most accurate representation of the interviews and data. Limitations
There are limitations to the study due to the amount of time available for research
and data collection. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s ten-‐week quarter system limited the amount of time available for extensive research on the subject.
Kitta 44 Delimitations
Due to the time constraints delimitations were present in the study. Since there was
only a certain amount of time for the study, only five interviewees were gathered for data collection. These respondents were personally selected based on their expertise on the subject and client focus. All of the data collected is based on their personal opinions. If more time provided, additional interviewees would have been chosen from a larger variety of agency settings.
Kitta 45 Chapter 4 Data Analysis
Chapter 4 will provide explanations of the experts in their respective fields as well
as their answers to the questionnaire. The data will be summarized in direct quotations and paraphrased responses. The interviewees’ answers will be compared to each other’s as well as the research findings from the literature review in Chapter 2. Description of Participating Experts
Glenn Friesen is a Search Engine Marketer at MINDBODY, an online business
management software company with more than 23,000 clients worldwide. He specializes in search engine marketing, advertising and optimization. Before working at MINDBODY, Glen founded a non-‐profit organization, mastered xHTML, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and dabbled in development languages. In addition, he was CMO of a leading Internet Marketing Agency in Santa Barbara, CA. Ryan Miller is the owner and founder of SLO Design Solutions, a website design an Internet marketing services provider to local businesses on the Central Coast of California. He has been in the Internet Marketing space for more than 15 years. He has done everything from e-‐commerce website design to pay-‐per-‐click management. Upon moving to
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San Luis Obispo in 2010, he saw a real need for a professional and affordable, local SEO company and started SLO Design Solutions. Anne Stahl is the Digital Strategy Manager at Hathway, a San Luis Obispo based digital agency focusing on search marketing, design and application development, and digital strategy. Stahl leads a small team to produce user tests to increase conversions, develop SEO and social media marketing strategies, optimizing websites for search, and working on clients’ online reputations. She is knowledgeable about the various technologies including HTML, CSS, JS and Design. Stahl specializes in Digital Strategy, SEO, Analytics, A/B and MVT testing, UX, and market research. She has previously worked as a Front End Web Developer and UI Developer. Allison Duly is the SEO Director at Rosetta, a global marketing agency that specializes in digital search and media strategies for brands including Office Max, Express, Lenovo and more. Allison delivers data-‐driven SEO strategies that drive efficient business impact, while leading inter-‐disciplinary teams. Involved with integrated digital programs that span diverse industries, she is well versed in Hospitality, Financial Services, Consumer Products & Retail, and Technology & Telecommunications. She joined Rosetta in 2006. Andy Brewer is the Founder of UpTrending, a Silicon Valley based web design and optimization agency with clients from the consumer, education, health, and high tech
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sectors, among others. Brewer is a web professional with more than 15 years of experience dedicated to the measurable improvement of web properties through innovative online business strategies and dedicated web services. Some of his specialties include Web Design, SEO, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Analytics, SEM, AJAX, JavaScript, XML, RSS. UpTrending specializes in Web Design, SEO, Ruby on Rails, WordPress and Mobile apps. Search Engine Optimization Questionnaire
Each expert was asked to complete the following questions regarding search engine
optimization: 1. How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization? •
Glenn Friesen: “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making things more accessible and more meaningful to people and to robots. The role of SEO is to make a domain and its content as relevant, authoritative, accessible, indexable, valid, structured, semantic, reputable, trustworthy, usable, transparent, and crawlable as possible–so that content on said domain earns high rankings in the search engines that direct relevant traffic into said domain” (Appendix A).
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•
Ryan Miller: “The practice of garnering more attention from Search Engines through a variety of tactics both on a website and throughout the Internet with the ultimate goal of driving more relevant traffic to a website, therefore increasing the amount of conversions completed” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “Working to make a website appear and rank well in search engine queries for predefined target keywords” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines via the “natural” or “organic” search results. SEO is a continual process that builds upon solid technical execution, expansive content optimization, and site promotion via strategic link building” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “In its most basic form it is optimizing a site to rank well on search engines through organic listings. Ultimately, SEO is there to increase revenue or increase profits or increase users. There is a business objective that SEO is trying to accomplish” (Appendix E).
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2. What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them? •
Glenn Friesen: “The three suggestions include: Reputation-‐Building Content Marketing, Keeping a Clean House, and Semantics. With Reputation-‐Building Content Marketing, building an awesome reputation is paramount. Great content earns great links. Originality really helps; you should definitely write about things that no one else is covering if you can. Keeping a clean house will keep your site valid, without waste, and fast-‐loading. Semantics are critical because all of our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “Keyword Research, On-‐Site Optimization and Structure, and Content Creation/Link Building. In regards to Content Creation/Link Building, I list these two together because they really do go hand in hand. If you write relevant content, people link to you. And if you have bad content, it’s really hard to get links. So a lot of what we do is helping clients to generate content that attracts links…” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “Discover and Define: see how the site is currently indexed and performing and define the goal, which includes defining keywords and
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phrases. Secondly: update the site accordingly and go after off site improvements. Third: analyze the results and recommend the next round of improvements” (Appendix C). •
Allison Duly: “Technical (accessibility): A solid foundation enables search engines to find, crawl and index a site. Content (relevance): Keyword-‐rich and authoritative content demonstrates that a site is an expert in their industry and a trustworthy source of information. Linking (authority): A strategic linking campaign builds authority for a site and directs users to the information they are seeking” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “I would say number one is understanding the business and its target market. Number two would be research. Keyword research is important to see where the traffic volume is located and then the competition research to see what keywords they are using. Number three is content development and html optimization. A hybrid approach is important, along with links back to your site. The more people that link to you and trust you, the higher Google is going to rank you organically” (Appendix E).
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3. In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-‐driven and why or why not? •
Glenn Friesen: “Yes, links are relationships. Hyperlinks are the primary mechanism by which search engines understand and measure relationships, including those between people. Interrelationships of pages within a domain, and among domains are intensely important for SEO. People evolve their understanding something as a product to understanding it as a brand through the search engine” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “Absolutely. If you get a link because of a relationship you have with say an influential blogger that is a link your competition cannot replicate. Whereas a link that is easy to get is a link that is easy to replicate. More and more, relationships have become a very important part of SEO” (Appendix B).
•
Allison Duly: “Yes, SEO is relationship driven because an ideal program is integrated, bridging the gap between internal site efforts (business goals, development, creative, marketing), complementary online marketing channels (SEM, online display advertising, email marketing, social media)
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and holistic brand marketing campaigns (PR, print, mail, T.V., etc.)” (Appendix D). •
Andy Brewer: “Yes, the SEO effort is very relationships-‐driven. For that reason, you have direct relationships to industry leaders. One link from an industry leader not only do you get the traffic from a well-‐respected person, but it’s going to give you much more SEO value. The same thing on relationships on social networks, getting those social links back is going to help tremendously plus build new relationships that you don’t have to sell” (Appendix E).
4. Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-‐quality inbound links? •
Glenn Friesen: “Links are the mechanism by which search engines measure a domain’s reputation (trustworthiness and authority)– they are incredibly important for SEO. Building a reputation starts with content marketing, guest blogging, PR, social media engagement, and networking with experts in your field. These processes– if optimized for search engines – also generate links in ways that increase the rankings of and traffic to pages across a client domain. Tips for garnering high-‐quality inbound links include: 1) creating
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useful, meaningful, valuable linkable assets, 2) avoid unnatural linking patterns, 3) competitor backlink mining, 4) creative link building, 5) future proof link building (link earning through content marketing, user-‐generated content, contests, guest posting, etc” (Appendix A). •
Ryan Miller: “Absolutely, and even though their power had been reduced somewhat recently, it’s safe to say that they are the most important factor in whether a website ranks well or not” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “While inbound links fall in and out of favor with regards to search engine ranking, they remain a crucial aspect of digital marketing and are consequently important for the client’s website success. The best way to get high quality inbound links, in my experience is a real person, manual, thoughtful assessment of relevant and quality sites to wither exchange links with or otherwise earn a mention and linkback” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Yes, gaining inbound links is one of the most powerful ways to increase natural search engine rankings for optimized site pages. Each link to a site can be viewed as a vote of confidence for the site. Effective link building balances quantity and quality links, taking relevance and authority into account. Consider the following when evaluating a site’s link portfolio:
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relevance, authority, quality over quantity, anchor text, deep link percentage, link placement, and avoid reciprocal linking an link networks” (Appendix D). •
Andy Brewer: Yes, we encourage our clients to grow their links very naturally through direct contact with bloggers. If you can go to a blogger from your industry and talk to him/her about your industry, product, or service; do it! Bloggers are very easy to talk to and I encourage them to do that. It is the most direct selling to talk to them about your company directly. If they see value in it, they will write and article about it, tell their users, and link back to your site–that’s high quality” (Appendix E).
5. How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web? •
Glenn Friesen: “Words are the bridge between the person and the machine. During the course of normal searching, keywords are the only input a person directly controls. Keywords are extremely important to SEO. It is important to identify the purpose of your content in as few words as possible, add modifiers to your keywords, group them into logical sets, gather data on the search volume for each keyword and determine relative competitiveness, then average out the ranking domain authority and page authority of the top
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3-‐5 sites for each term you’re targeting to better understand your playing field” (Appendix A). •
Ryan Miller: “Keyword research should be the foundation of any SEO effort. A basic way to determine keywords is to use Google Adwords Keyword tool combined with a basic understanding of your target demographic. The main thing here is to write content your readers can read and understand; if it makes sense to them it will make sense to a search engine” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “Keywords are still absolutely important in that users search by typing ‘words’ into a search engine, which they believe will find what they are looking for. Understanding what your clients’ users are likely going to search, and optimizing your site will not only the search in mind but also the content you then provide for the user, will make your site relevant and successful” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Keywords are the underpinning of an SEO program. It is critical to understand demand and marry optimization efforts with how users are actually searching for a site. A data-‐driven keyword approach involving choosing relevant, competitive keywords through a variety of sources is ideal. To be successful do the following: set focused goals, select
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relevant keywords, use keywords multiple times throughout content while making sure the text reads naturally for users, and position the most important target keywords close to the top of the content” (Appendix D). •
Andy Brewer: “Keywords are extremely important because that’s what you are targeting. The highest value keyword phrases are going to have the most traffic competition. Companies naturally tend to sort into that bucket because they’re just starting to so this research themselves but every once in a while you can find that diamond in the rough. There’s a good amount of traffic and nobody is really optimizing for it yet” (Appendix E).
6. How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized? •
Glenn Friesen: “Social signals are extremely important. Social signals are usually different forms of links–such as “tweets,” “re-‐tumbles,” “re-‐pins,” “Facebook likes,” etc. These “social signals” are really just “branded link forms.” Google considers links and social signals like “votes” from one site that another is authoritative on and relevant to a subject. To receive valuable social signals, the participation needs to be active and engage others on the
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network. The quantity of mentions on social sites is the most important social signal. After that, in order of influence on rankings: citations in Wikipedia, business registration with Google places, an official Facebook page, an official Twitter page, and official LinkedIn page and that the website is listed frequently on LinkedIn profiles as an employer. At a page-‐level, the authority of users tweeting to a page is believed to be the most important, followed by factors such as the quantity of tweets to a page, the quantity of Facebook shares to a page, upvotes for a page on social sites (e.g. Digg, Reddit, StumpleUpon), sentiment of social links and citations to a page. The “big three” social media sites all legitimate people and organization should be on are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn” (Appendix A). •
Ryan Miller: “Social Signals are crucial! As far as specific mediums and their value to search engine rankings, the two that are the most important are Google+ and Blogging. Google+ is crucial because Google has, for better or for worse, integrated their social platform into their search engine and now the amount of +1’s and the number of circles your content is shared with is a ranking factor. You want to be sharing and commenting on what authorities in your industry are doing and also creating content that compels your
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followers to share. Blogging is also very important, as it is the easiest way for businesses to produce content on an ongoing basis, which is a huge ranking factor. Guest positing is huge also, and provides for a lot of opportunities to reach potential customers on other websites” (Appendix B). •
Anne Stahl: “It’s important to utilize social media–but it’s more relevant to some than others. It depends on the client and industry, there is no one fit for all” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Social channels are important to search engine rankings in the sense that they are another signal providing “votes” of confidence, similar to inbound links. The best social channels to be active on truly depend on the brand. Every audience has a different social profile and it’s important to determine how target demographics interact with various channels” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “This is where SEO and social media optimization or social strategy are blurring together. The idea is to follow social media best practices of tweeting, posting and sharing valuable content when you have something important to say. It is also important to understand the mediums
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and how to utilize them effectively and cater to your target audiences” (Appendix E). 7. What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why? •
Glenn Friesen: “Traditional scientists are lucky, as the rules that govern their universe are static– if their rules change, that change occurs over eons. For SEOs, our testing environment changes daily. Worse yet, changes aren’t just random, but are deliberate and reactive. Out universe evolves, daily. Google often allows, or even rewards bad behaviors, for at time, so that algorithmically identifiable patterns emerge– so they can easily punish those many thousands of manipulative domains and prevent future abuses. User history is emerging as an influential ranking algorithm. We’re starting to see more personalization of results based on your own search history. In addition, last year Google started rolling out “Knowledge Graph,” a SERP-‐ integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see this appear more on SERPs over time. Panda’s “Content farm penalties” and Penguin’s “Unnatural link penalties” or “Over-‐optimization penalties” are cracking down on spammers and
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producers of thin content. The first of Panda’s updates hit many sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results. (Appendix A). •
Ryan Miller: “Very few people can tell you this with much certainty but I believe the three most influential factors are: Incoming Links, Domain Trust, and social signals” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “Google is famous for changing its search logic and for being very secretive about their algorithm. I believe that today, Google’s algorithm is so complex, that there is no ONE thing you can do to get a better ranking. So good SEO means, you have to create a really good website with really good content, food navigation/structure, good, accessible and compliant code, and excellent images” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Search engines do not publish the most influential ranking algorithm factors and leave it up to industry experts to test and develop best practices. Often times Google algorithm updates are documented by credible industry sources such as seomoz.org/google-‐algorithm-‐change” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “The one that has been king for ten plus years have been inbound links. Also, social media is becoming more and more important. I
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wouldn’t say that it is licking those traditional links but it’s certainly the fastest growing area of SEO. People linking to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, all of those have been strong indicators of clients moving up in search results when their social media presence is boosted” (Appendix E). 8. Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices for SEO? •
Glenn Friesen: “In general, the two most important SEO factors are 1) relevant and unique content and 2) one’s online reputation (links from authority, relevant, trusted sites). Common bad practices include buying links, keyword stuffing or “over-‐optimization,” duplicate content, and press releases without any meaningful news. Some beneficial practices include: using relevant words on pages and articles, developing useful and unique content, expressing the purpose of any given page in the meta title, URL, content of the page, Image alt text, and participate meaningfully in social media.” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “Most detrimental I have seen is probably getting low quality links and over optimization of pages. Those two things can cause sites to be penalized or even removed from search engines altogether. Most beneficial
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for SEO always has been and always will be creating shareable content.” (Appendix B). •
Anne Stahl: “Black hat tactics would include writing content purely to get listed. There are countless more, and unfortunately appears that some people still fall for some companies’ claims to ‘get you to page one in a week.” White hat or good SEO practices would include improving your client’s website with the user in mind” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Unethical industry practices are classified as “black hat SEO” and in the most general sense, can be described as techniques used to intentionally manipulate search engines. If detected, sites may face penalties, or even be removed from search engine indexes in severe cases. Beneficial practices for SEO are vast and each expert approaches the craft slightly differently” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “Once Google cracks down on bad practices, it increases the penalties so much, that’s when it gets labeled as black hat, so anything black hat is just really silly, you should never ever do it. Clients have come to us and said their rankings dropped 100 or 200 spots and then you look at the site and they have black hat SEO going on. You also have to write for the
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consumers, not for search engines. Otherwise, you are going to have a website that ranks well but converts no one. The biggest way you can backfire the end result of conversion is writing specifically for search engines. The most beneficial practices would be really understanding the business and the target audience” (Appendix E). 9. Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N) •
Glenn Friesen: “Yes” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “Absolutely agree with both of these statements” (Appendix B).
•
Anne Stahl: “High quality content is probably one of the most important aspects, but certainly not the only important aspect” (Appendix C).
•
Allison Duly: “Yes and yes” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “The old content is key metaphor came from the idea that everything has to be an encyclopedia. Way back in the day when Wikipedia dominated every search result because they had so much content and the idea was build tons of content and the more the better. However, it’s more about high quality content” (Appendix E).
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10. In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future? •
Glenn Friesen: “These absolutely are and will likely always be: content quality, the link profile (keywords association through links; the trustworthiness and authoritativeness of a domain according to its measurable reputation), social signals (perhaps more importantly to Google, +1s), localization, and personalization. The most notable new factor Google has introduced which will grow more important in the near future is AuthorRank. This measures the credibility of a site or specific piece of content depending on the link profiles of the authors of that content” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “I would say Google AuthorRank is probably the biggest. Basically they are going to start ranking content based on authority of the author that originally wrote it. In addition, with authors being able to claim their content have it provide value to them whether on their site or another’s site will increase sharing and collaboration in a crazy way. This is a huge change and will only be more and more of a factor in the SEO space in the coming years” (Appendix B).
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•
Allison Duly: “Unique and differentiated content and optimization across all digital assets, authentic authority building, true integration of SEO considerations with site and marketing initiatives versus treating it as an isolated channel” (Appendix D).
•
Andy Brewer: “I think social signals are going to continue to become more and more important. Google is already using a lot of personalized recommendations on their search history and this might become more and more tailored. I think SEO is going to a more solutions-‐based model. So I think it's getting away from that tradition of optimizing the content on you're website, it’s like the individual facets; the images on you're site, the products on your site, individual pieces of info. Google is trying to curate those and provide those to the user. The whole point of a search engine is you want info, you want it quickly and so Google rather than making you click into the site and hunt a big page for this piece of info, they're trying to return that info directly to you. I wouldn't be surprised if that is just expanded out. I see that on a lot more queries. I try to do some searching and they give me the answer right there and I think optimizing for that is going to be pretty important in the future” (Appendix E).
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11. In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEO and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web? •
Glenn Friesen: “The purpose of the web page should be directly stated in all of the following areas: the URL, the page title, the alt tags of images, and content of the page. Don’t build on rented land; publish your best content on web properties you personally own. Help, not hype your customer, and help the potential customer trust you. Write what people want to read, not what you want to write. Create content for every type of reader; branch out your normal niche into related interests and parallel markets. People pay more attention to contrast than to the same old thing. Include pictures, they’re worth 1,000 words, especially when properly alt tagged. Don’t forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Once something is published, it’s important to promote it– be creative. Anyone who produces digital content should also claim their authorship via Google+” (Appendix A).
•
Ryan Miller: “Public Relations and SEO have become entwined so much over the last few years and the relationship will only grow closer and closer, I would say that taking responsibility for the press release process would be one major way Public Relations professionals could help with the SEO effort.
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Crafting engaging press releases for clients that attract attention from news outlets is crucial and most SEOs don’t have the skill set to do that. Beyond that, optimizing the content is important, like using the right keywords but not using them too much, and writing engaging content that people want to share” (Appendix B). •
Anne Stahl: “PR and SEO goes hand in hand. Members of both teams must work together, not just because a fully aligned strategy can amplify the success for both teams, but also because more brands want to show a branded and united approach to their customers. SEO experts can help PR understand how a search engine 'sees and understands' copy, and PR experts can help SEO folks with actual copy. Both teams should know when the other is working on a new campaign and should support that campaign. You also ought to factor in SEM and any other digital marketing (social media, email newsletters, affiliate programs etc…)” (Appendix C).
•
Andy Brewer: “It's my opinion that PR practitioners should have a "best practices level" knowledge of SEO, meaning that they understand it well enough to provide consultation to their clients about best practices. They can certainly still work with an outside SEO firm to do the keyword research,
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HTML/content optimization, etc., but they should be able to guide or help clients select keywords, as SEO keyword selection should be in line with core messaging and branding. PR practitioners should also in my opinion be trained or knowledgeable of how to integrate keywords into various online campaigns (press releases, social media, blog posts, etc.). PR focuses on creating a unified, consistent voice for a company. It's my opinion that they're great at doing this, and should continue to do that, but also have the company voice consistent with their SEO voice, so a company is communicating to Google in the same way it's communicating to their target market. If they can stay consistent and fully integrate SEO with their traditional online efforts, it can have a great, long-‐term impact on SEO” (Appendix E). Discussion
The SEO Book defines SEO as “the art and science of publishing information and
marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries” (“The Search Engine Marketing Glossary,” SEO Book). The SEO experts interviewed expanded on this definition and Andy Brewer identified an
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encompassing definition, “In its most basic form it is optimizing a site to rank well on search engines through organic listings. Ultimately, SEO is there to increase revenue or increase profits or increase users. There is a business objective that SEO is trying to accomplish” (Appendix E). This relates to the fundamentals of a public relations effort, because ultimately it is serving the clients needs and helping drive their bottom line. The public relations practice is focused on building a relationship with the consumer and with the increase of the number of people utilizing search engines every day (Purcell, Brenner, Rainie), it’s now about getting exposure for clients on the web. “Both the PR and SEO industries face the same challenge–to produce attention grabbing high quality content that resonates with their audiences. SEO, along with other digital resources and techniques, has made it possible for PR pros to bypass (not ignore) traditional media outlets and get exposure for their clients on the web” (Bailey). The Importance of Great Content
Cherenson states, “Public Relations professionals are skilled storytellers and content
generators and should be a part of every SEO effort” (qtd. in McGaffin). A common thread among the SEO experts’ responses when asked to identify some of the most important and beneficial SEO tactics to implement today they repeatedly stressed the power of great
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content. Across the board, the experts agreed, “high quality, engaging content is king,” in and SEO effort and that it is one important aspect among many others (Appendix C). The key to great content is to write content that isn’t sales speak by nature (Kouremetis). All of the survey respondents agreed with the idea that content is for people first. It’s about knowing your consumer so well that you are providing them content they love to read and share with their friends because it’s new, unique, and interesting. In his interview, Friesen states, “Help, not hype the customer, help the potential customer trust you. Write what people want to read, not what your want to write. Create content for every type of reader, branch out your normal niche into related interests and parallel markets” (Appendix A). Ryan Miller, an SEO expert interviewed remarks, “The most beneficial practice for SEO always has been and always will be creating shareable content” (Appendix B). One of the many ways to create great content for SEO is to take advantage of keywords, which will be discussed in the next section. The Value of Utilizing Keywords
Public Relations professionals are producing a lot of content and one of the most
commonly written pieces of content includes the press release. This fundamental PR tool is just one of the many that can greatly benefit from keyword optimization. Keyword research
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helps the practitioner better understand their clients’ target markets and to understand what queries they are searching for within specific industries. “Understanding how online audiences communicate about your organization’s products, services, and issues– and then using the same language in your online communications–is one of SEO’s cornerstones” (Skerik).
All of the SEO experts interviewed agreed that keywords are important for
optimization. Friesen remarks, “Words are the bridge between the person and the machine. During the course of normal searching, keywords are the only input a person directly controls. Keywords are extremely important to SEO” (Appendix A). Miller revealed, “Keyword research should be the foundation of any SEO effort” (Appendix B). Duly expressed, “Keywords are the underpinning of an SEO program. It is critical to understand demand and marry optimization efforts with how users are actually searching for a site” (Appendix D). As the experts suggest, keywords have a high level of importance within the SEO effort and should be used throughout all content produced for the web. However, as the research pointed to earlier, it is important to include at least one relevant phrase that target audiences are searching for but to first and foremost write to engage and grab the attention of people (Jackson). As Miller mentions in his interview, “The main thing here is to write content your readers can read and understand; if it makes sense to them it will
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make sense to a search engine” (Appendix B). One of the most important aspects of keyword-‐optimized content is its destination. Both the research and interviews stressed the benefit of posting content on owned platforms to maximize the most search engine optimization. In line with the research, Duly offers these takeaways for success with keyword optimization, “To be successful, do the following: set focused goals, select relevant keywords, use keywords multiple times throughout the content while making sure the text reads naturally for users, and position the most important target keywords close to the top of the content” (Appendix D). Relationship Building: It’s All About Links
“The biggest contribution that PR pros can make to SEO is encouraging editorial
links. It not only allows people to click through but also boosts SEO” (qtd. in Morgan). When asked if the SEO experts considered the SEO effort to be relationships-‐driven they all responded with a concrete yes and explained that it all comes down to link building. Ryan Miller states, “Absolutely, if you get a link because of a relationship you have with say an influential blogger, that is a link your competition cannot replicate. Whereas a link that is easy to get is a link that is easy to replicate. More and more, relationships have become a very important part of SEO” (Appendix B). Friesen went so far to state that “Yes, links are
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relationships” (Appendix A). The key to garnering links is fostering relationships with key stakeholders and industry leaders within the industry, which is exactly what public relations professionals are equipped to do. In her interview, Allison Duly stated, “Gaining inbound links is one of the most powerful ways to increase natural search engine rankings for optimized site pages. Each link to a site can be viewed as a vote of confidence for the site” (Appendix D). This response parallels the rest of the interviewees’ answers. Brewer says, “…we encourage our clients to grow their links very naturally though direct contact with bloggers. If you can go to a blogger from your industry and talk to him/her about your industry, product, or service, do it!” (Appendix E). Public Relations professionals focus on building relationships with industry leaders and A-‐list media to garner coverage so the same applies to links. As McGaffin explains in “Why Online PR and SEO Go Hand in Hand,” McGaffin explains the connection between public relations and link building as being remarkably similar due to the fact that they are both relationships driven and require industry knowledge (McGaffin). Public Relations professionals should understand how important the linkback process is and how they play a large role in the way these are linkbacks garnered. With the PR team onboard for garnering not only coverage, but also links back to the client’s site or company
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store, etc., they are investing in increased client visibility on the web, building relationships, and driving potential sales. Social Signals: The New Form of Links
In a 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors study by SEOmoz, the SEO professionals
surveyed predicted that Google will place more emphasis on social signals within the year (“2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors). The SEO experts all agreed that social signals do matter to Google in some capacity. Friesen states, “Social signals are extremely important. Social signals are usually different forms of links–such as “tweets,” “re-‐tumbles,” “re-‐pins,” “Facebook likes,” etc. These “social signals” are really just “branded link forms” (Appendix A). In order to have buzz surrounding your social media postings, it is key to keep the reader in mind when creating the content. Cherenson reflects, “Links [content], need to provide value to the reader. Media will be more likely to link to content that is compelling and provides information that goes beyond the original reporting” (McGaffin). Ultimately the goal is to grab the reader’s attention with compelling content and get them motivated to share the content with his or her network. Friesen highlights the highly weighted activities that Google factors the most on social media include: quantity of tweets to a page,
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quantity of Facebook shares to a page, up votes for a page on social sites, and sentiment of social links and citation to a page” (Appendix A). In his interview, Miller reflects that blogging is one of the most important aspects of being involved on social media because of its content value. “Blogging is very important, as it is the easiest way for businesses to produce content on an ongoing basis” (Appendix B). As the research suggests, public relations practitioners can easily optimize blog posts with keywords and making sure the content can easily be shared.
Google+ is also a network that was found both in the research and during the
interviews, to be the “next big thing” in the search engine optimization industry. Miller said, “Google+ is crucial because Google has, for better or for worse, integrated their social platform into their search engine and now the amount of +1’s and the number of circles your content is shared with is a ranking factor” (Appendix B). As the research suggests, “…the network that carries the most weight is Google+” (DeMers). One very influential component to Google+ is Authorship and Author Rank. When asked about the suspected SEO factors that will influence search the most in the near future, Friesen and Miller both commented on Google Author Rank. Miller expects it to “increase sharing and collaboration in a crazy way” and remarks, “this is a huge change and will only be more and more of a factor in the SEO space in the coming years” (Appendix B). It’s important for anyone who
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writes content for the web (i.e. public relations practitioners) to claim their Google Authorship profile and establish themselves as a trusted and noteworthy source for Google to factor into search engine results (Appendix A). An SEO Perspective on the Public Relations Practitioner
Miller says, “Public Relations and SEO have become entwined so much over the last
few years and the relationship will only grow closer and closer” (Appendix B). With Google’s latest Panda and Penguin updates, public relations matters more than ever. “…SEO needs to be approached differently in 2013, in particular…the need for focusing on generating high quality content that people will happily share via their social networks” (Hawtin). Many of the SEO experts interviewed reflected on the value of the press release and how powerful that form of content can be for clients. “Crafting engaging press releases for clients that attract attention from news outlets is crucial and most SEOs don’t have that skill set to do that” (Appendix B). With the powerful ability to write and create compelling content and build effective relationships, public relations practitioners have the skill and expertise to take their clients’ search engine optimization to a new level.
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Chapter 5 Recommendations and Conclusion Recommendations for Future Research
With the completion of this study, substantial research has been conducted on the
various ways public relations professionals can leverage search engine optimization to increase client visibility. After analyzing the information, it is important to offer recommendations for future research, as search engine optimization is rapidly changing field.
When asked “what are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and
why?” most of the SEO experts responded saying that Google is rapidly evolving and there isn’t much certainty in this subject. Friesen remarks, “Traditional scientists are lucky, as the rules that govern their universe are static–if their rules change, that change occurs over eons. For SEOs, our testing environment changes daily. Worse yet, changes aren’t just random, but are deliberate and reactive. Our universe evolves, daily” (Appendix A). This is critical to note because due to the unpredictable nature of Google and various other search engines, most commentary on “best practices” is from industry experts who have tested various search optimization techniques. As with anyone involved in the search engine optimization effort, it is essential that public relations practitioners stay updated on
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industry trends and the latest Google algorithm updates. Anne Stahl notes, “Google is famous for changing its search logic and for being very secretive about their algorithm” (Appendix C). As the public relations professional leverages search engine optimization techniques, it is important to commit to staying updated on the latest updates as they can drastically update and change, influencing the practice.
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Conclusion
“If helping our clients to be more visible is the heartbeat of public relations, then
learning to integrate basic SEO skills into the work we do is essential to keeping that heartbeat strong. SEO is a must-‐know skill in PR” (Morgan). Given the findings of this study, there is a real urgency and need for the public relations practitioner to understand search engine optimization and how it can be applied to his or her practices. The two industries forge a common bond at the most fundamental level of both practices–to increase client visibility. The PR team and the SEO team both want consumers to be aware of their client and engage with the client on the web. With public relations practitioners’ unique skills of crafting shareable and compelling content and specialty in fostering strong relationships, these communications professionals have the core skill sets to successfully leverage search engine optimization effort at the PR level. In his interview Brewer states, “It’s my opinion that PR practitioners should have a “best practices level” knowledge of SEO, meaning they understand it well enough to provide consultation to their clients about best practices” (Appendix E). After analyzing all of the research, there isn’t any reason why public relations practitioners should avoid search engine optimization practices. Public relations professionals can provide clients with much greater value for their services when incorporating search engine optimization into their PR efforts. Whether it be writing
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website copy, a blog post, crafting a press release, posting on social media, or building relationships with bloggers and editors; all of these tasks can be optimized. “The message should be clear: Great PR and SEO is likely not as hard as you think. Communicate clearly, be appropriate, and provide the meaningful information readers and prospective customers really do want to know” (Conner). Follow the rules, create compelling content, and know your audience; then you can effectively leverage SEO to increase client visibility.
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Morris, Jon. "Perfect PR and SEO Relationship: 3 Tips." Inc. N.p., 25 Feb. 2013. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.inc.com/jon-‐morris/perfect-‐pr-‐and-‐seo-‐relationship-‐3-‐ tips.html>. Ohye, Maile. "Good Times with Inbound Links." Web log post. Google Webmaster Central Blog. Google.com, 9 Oct. 2008. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/good-‐times-‐with-‐ inbound-‐links.html>. Papagiannis, Nick. "SEO for PR: 6 Ways to Make Your Press Release Search Friendly." Ragan's PR Daily. N.p., 23 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/SEO_for_PR_6_ways_to_make_your_press_ release_searc_11154.aspx >. Papagiannis, Nick. "SEO for Public Relations: A Step-‐by-‐Step Guide." Ragan's PR Daily. N.p., 28 Feb. 2012. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/SEO_for_public_relations_A_stepbystep_g uide_10942.aspx>.
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Papagiannis, Nick. "SEO for PR: Gauging the Success of Content Marketing." Ragan's PR Daily. N.p., 9 May. 2013. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/SEO_for_PR_Gauging_the_success_of_cont ent_marketin_14431.aspx>. Purcell, Kristen, Joanna Brenner, and Lee Rainie. Search Engine Use 2012. Rep. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 9 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Search-‐Engine-‐Use-‐2012/Summary-‐ of-‐findings.aspx>. Skerik, Sarah. "Integrating Public Relations with SEO Strategies." PR Newswire. N.p., 4 June 2010. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.prnewswire.com/knowledge-‐ center/content-‐marketing-‐strategies/Integrating-‐Public-‐Relations-‐with-‐SEO-‐ Strategies.html>. Spencer, Stephan. "Leveraging Social Media for SEO." Multichannel Merchant 28.1 (2011): 1-‐3. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 10 June 2013.
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Sullivan, Danny. "Google Still World’s Most Popular Search Engine By Far, But Share Of Unique Searchers Dips Slightly." Search Engine Land. N.p., 11 Feb. 2013. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://searchengineland.com/google-‐worlds-‐most-‐popular-‐search-‐ engine-‐148089>. "The Search Engine Marketing Glossary." SEO Book. N.p., 2013. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://www.seobook.com/glossary/#seo>. Traphagen, Mark. "Google Author Rank and Authorship: What We Know So Far." WindMill Networking. N.p., 30 Apr. 2013. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://windmillnetworking.com/2013/04/30/google-‐author-‐rank-‐and-‐ authorship-‐what-‐we-‐know-‐so-‐far/>. Tsai, Jessica. "Search Engineering." Customer Relationship Management July 2009: n. pag. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://ezpoxy.lib.calpoly.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.ca lpoly.edu/docview/222769285?accountid=10362>.
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"USC Annenberg Rolls Out Study on the State of the PR Industry." Entertainment Close- Up (2012): n. pag. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 10 June 2013. <http://ezproxy.lib.calpoly.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.c alpoly.edu/docview/952865019?accountid=10362>. "What Is Public Relations?" PRSA. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/PublicRelationsDefined/>.
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Appendix A Interview Transcripts: Glenn Friesen The following interview was conducted to get expert opinions about search engine optimization. Interviewer: Chelsea Kitta Respondent: Search Engine Marketer at MINDBODY, an online business management software company. Format: Email Interview Interview Transcriptions: Chelsea Kitta: “How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization?” Glenn Friesen: “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of making things more accessible and more meaningful to people and to robots. The supermajority of all web traffic is driven through search engines – in the US, mainly through Google. Just like how people use social media to discover and share, people use search engines to find what they want and need. People type in queries in SE’s and the SE’s serve those people an ordered list of the most relevant sites for what it believes is the intent of their search. The role of SEO is to make a domain and its content as relevant, authoritative, accessible, indexable, valid, structured, semantic, reputable, trustworthy, usable, transparent, and crawlable as possible – so that content on said domain earns high rankings in the search engines that direct relevant traffic into said domain. SEO includes, but is not limited to, understanding how people interact with search engines, search engine friendly page design and development, keyword research, usability testing, site accessibility, content strategy, link building / link earning, search verticals (image, local, video, etc.), reputation tracking, new search protocols, content creation and development, and reduction of page load time.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them?”
Kitta 94 Glenn Friesen: “Probably the most important, most-‐oft-‐neglected SEO tactic is quite simply to follow Google’s directions for SEO; starting with their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide; through their Webmaster Academy; through their testing center. Also, I can’t recommend SEOmoz’ SEO quiz enough for new and veteran SEOs. It always helps to focus on the foundations. The three suggestions below derive from guidance directly from the master of search, Google. Reputation-Building Content Marketing (off-‐page, and on-‐page) Building an awesome reputation is paramount. The link profile will reflect the real-‐world reputation you’re building. Great content (or a great tool) earns great links. Originality really helps (you should definitely write about things that no one else is covering if you can!). Reputations grow especially fast if you’re solving (or highlighting) someone else’s problems rather than your own – content that serves this generous problem-‐ solving tends to earn valuable, authoritative links. Keeping a Clean House (on-‐page) Code validity matters. Code validity matters a lot. W3C valid code will force you to comply with actual, honest coding standards and methods of presenting and organizing information – which Google respects and loves. Simplicity is a virtue. Reducing or eliminating waste (including unnecessary navigation and links; irrelevant ads or messaging; and low-‐traffic pages altogether...) is SEO gold for a variety of other reasons, such as usually reducing page load time (which directly affects rankings, inbound traffic quantity, and the user experience & bounce rates of those visitors). Page load time matters. Page load time matters a lot. Among the suite of things, minification, gzip compression, ending with the trailing slash, and caching help improve page load time. Keeping a clean house will keep your site valid, without waste, and fast-‐loading: important factors for visitors to your site (including SE’s). Semantics, a.k.a. the study of meaning (mostly on-‐page, less important off-‐page) All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work. Everything depends on our understanding of them. Semantics separate the signal from the noise. There’s room for improvement of semantic structure of every domain; it’s URL structures; it’s URL taxonomies; it’s page template structures; it’s alt texts; it’s link title attributes; it’s canonicalization; etc. Usually, there’s tremendous opportunity (IOW, sites often don’t make semantic sense.). On page elements should read like a “table of contents” with headers meaningfully describing their relevant content; and the page should contain co-‐ cited words to their target keywords, so as to make semantic sense (as measured, say, with Latent Dirichlet Allocation analysis). URLs should not use meaningless numeric
Kitta 95 parameters (like ?clientid=1234), but should make semantic sense, and use words (like /clients/pepsi/).” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-driven and why or why not?” Glenn Friesen: “Yes. Links are relationships. Hyperlinks are the primary mechanism by which search engines understand and measure relationships, including those between people. Think about that for a moment. Interrelationships of pages within a domain, and among domains are intensely important for SEO – for keyword-‐agnostic factors (e.g. the number of links to a page), as well as for keyword-‐driven factors (e.g. keyword presence in anchor text of inbound links). In terms of personal relationships between people, at the end of the day, all marketing is relationships-‐driven. One of my favorite attributes of SEO is that, unlike nearly every other form of marketing (that currently exists or ever has), everything in SEO is measurable, including the values of relationships (a.k.a. links). People are the gatekeepers, and the decision-‐makers. People are the editors of the best news sites where we want fresh links. People are the “web traffic”; the “audience”; the “community”. The brand is the relationship between the product and the people. People evolve their understanding something as a product to understanding it as a brand through the search engine. They start their search with “customer service training”; then, they click “impactlearning.com”; and insodoing they’ve formed an association between the concept and the brand. This process of association is the foundation of real brand association. Indeed, search engines robots have a very concrete understanding of what exactly “the brand” is: the domain, it’s keyword-‐association, and it’s link profile (i.e. “reputation”).” Chelsea Kitta: “Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-quality inbound links?” Glenn Friesen: “Links are the mechanism by which SE’s measure a domain’s reputation (trustworthiness, and authority) – they are incredibly important for SEO. Building a reputation starts with content marketing, guest blogging, PR, social media engagement, and networking with experts in your field (publicly and online – not behind closed doors). These processes – if optimized for SE’s – also generate links (in ways that increase the rankings of, and traffic to, pages across a client domain). In the world of search engine optimization, inbound links and reputation building are commonly folded into the meta-‐
Kitta 96 category of “off-‐page SEO.” Note: until 2012, there were no such things as “bad links”. Now, unnatural links are punished – like paid links, link wheels, comment spam, bad directories. Indeed, Google continues to push the “unnatural link penalties” (penguin updates) to even include punishing “manipulative” links from low-‐quality press releases and infographics. Thus, links must be future-‐proofed to be valuable for a site over the long run. The best practices for generating high-‐quality inbound links? The golden rule: Pursue links where you do not have control over the anchor text of the link. 1. Create useful, meaningful, valuable linkable assets. 2. Avoid Unnatural Linking Patterns: Unnatural: Scalable, Obvious Patterns, Controlled Anchor Text. Natural: Not easy to scale; Few (if any) patterns, No Control over anchor text. 3. Competitor Backlink Mining: Reverse engineer link profiles of those that compete for the same attention you do (any company that ranks for the same keywords you’re targeting). Learn from them. 4. Creative Link Building: create meaningful news, then write stories about it; program useful, valuable tools and give them away for free; create interactive properties (like Conflict of Pinterest); Connect with the linkerati; create and own the media channels guest bloggers seek... 5. Future Proof Link Building (Link Earning): content marketing, user-‐generated content, Q&As, Contests, outreach, guest posting. Keep in mind, a hammer can build a house, or it can kill. Ultimately, no medium or method is inherently evil, “bad”, “unnatural” or “punishable”. It’s the way people engage the different mediums that matters. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, lots of people operating websites don’t behave inline with Google’s standards (or, well, even human moral standards) – and in fact, for most of these people, when they think they’re helping rankings/SEO, they’re actually hurting rankings/SEO. LOL.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web?” Glenn Friesen: “Words are the bridge between the person and the machine. During the course of normal searching, keywords are the only input a person directly controls. Keywords are as important to SEO as lottery numbers are to the lottery: extremely important.
Kitta 97 How to develop the keyword theme for your content: • Describe the purpose of your content in as few words as possible to identify the “marquis keyword(s)” that perfectly describe your content. Your marquis keyword is your "seed". • Grow your keyword list • List acronyms & jargon related to the seed keyword. • List synonyms, plurals, and related phrases. • Add modifiers to your keywords. For example, if you're promoting "coupons", then add "online" to the phrase, making "online coupons." Or get even more specific: "online coupons for hawaii". • Group these keywords into logical sets. If possible, in a hierarchical taxonomy. • Repeat the process with each keyword group you develop. • Once you’ve developed a long list of keyword targets, it's time to prioritize them. • Firstly, do your research. Gather data on the search volume for each keyword in your list. Gather information about keyword difficulty and relative competitiveness. Determine search intent for each keyword/query (e.g. label each a “commercial investigation” “non-‐commercial informational query” etc.). • Figure out if you have existing resources available to serve up for each keyword in your list. • Average out the ranking domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) of the top 3-‐5 sites for each term you're targeting to better understand your playing field. • With this data, you can now make educated decisions about which keywords from your set to target first. • Once you prioritize keyword targets, produce or develop content for these keywords. Content strategies vary.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (ie. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized?” Glenn Friesen: “Social signals are extremely important. Social signals are usually different forms of links – such as “tweets” “re-‐tumbles” “re-‐ pins” “facebook likes” etc. These “social signals” are really just “branded link forms”. Indeed, links are social signals. Blogs are social media. Google considers links (and social signals) like “votes” from one site that another is authoritative on and relevant to a subject. For social media participation to send valuable social signals, the participation needs
Kitta 98 to be active, and engage others on the network. The more people that retweet / share / etc., the more authoritative & relevant the destination page is considered. Also, these fresh links help keep a page in Google’s rankings (for Google will stop ranking pages as high if they don’t keep earning fresh links). It’s probable that weights on the ranking factors below have changed since 2011; but through my observations and testing since the 2011 Ranking Factors Correlation and Survey Data from SEOmoz, I’d argue that the relative influence of these also probably factors hasn’t changed much; except that Google is no longer relying on Google Buzz data as much, replacing it with trying Google Plus data. At a domain-‐level, data shows that social signals are less influential on rankings than the search volume for a brand/domain; and are less important than a quantity of mentions of the brand/domain in news sites; but are much more important than whether a domain has an official tax-‐paying business associated with it. The quantity of mentions on social sites is the most important social signal. After that, in order of influence on rankings: citations in Wikipedia; business registration with Google places; an official Facebook page; an official Twitter page; an official LinkedIn page; and that the website is listed frequently on LinkedIn profiles as an employer. At a page-‐level, the authority of users tweeting to a page is believed to be most important, followed by factors such as the quantity of tweets to a page; the quantity of Facebook shares to a page; upvotes for a page on social sites (e.g. Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon); sentiment of social links and citations to the page. The best social media sites on which to participate differs depending on what site you’re optimizing. The “big three” social media sites all legitimate people and organizations should be on are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. How to optimize social media presence depends on your audience, product or service, and brand; but generally, to succeed at social media, be: authentic, transparent, generous, fun, exceptional (doing something someone else hasn’t), and empathetic to the needs of your audience.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why?” Glenn Friesen: “Traditional scientists are lucky, as the rules that govern their universe are static – if their rules change, that change occurs over eons. For SEOs, our testing environment changes daily. Worse yet, changes aren’t just random, but are deliberate and reactive. Our universe evolves, daily. Google often allows, or even rewards bad behaviors, for a time, so that algorithmically identifiable patterns emerge – so they can then easily punish those many thousands of manipulative domains and prevent future abuses.
Kitta 99 An algorithm is the step-‐by-‐step set of rules followed in problem-‐solving calculations. Each search engine has its own unique algorithm. Different factors are added or removed to the single algorithmic formula. The Google algorithm changes roughly 500 times/year. Most ranking algorithms are still dominated by features originating from classical ranking algorithms developed in the field of Information Retrieval. These algorithms often have easy to understand intuitions behind them. Below is a brief summary of important features and components of ranking algorithms. • term normalization: the tokenization of documents and normalization of these tokens, including lightweight normalization, such as treating naive and naïve as the same term, or stemming, which attempts to conflate terms to their word roots, such as treating markets, marketed, and market as the same term during ranking. • term proximity: some retrieval systems will reward documents where the query terms occur near each other in text. • tf-idf: most retrieval algorithms combine a notion of term frequency and inverse document frequency. Term frequency rewards additional occurrences of a query term in the document, while inverse document frequency penalizes the term frequency weight of very common terms. Term frequency functions tend to have logarithmic growth functions as a function of the number of term occurrences, so the increase in term frequency measures of 3 occurrences versus 2 is greater than that of 303 occurrences versus 302 occurrences. • length normalization: tf-‐idf scores may have a bias toward retrieving documents of certain lengths that are different from the distribution of relevant documents with respect to their length. It is common to include a parameter to a tf-‐idf scoring function that helps adjust this bias or perform some transformation of the tf-‐idf score to correct the bias. • document structure: the location of the query terms within a document (such as titles) or alternative representations of a document (e.g. one formed from the text of links pointing to the document) can be an important indicator of relevance. Many ranking algorithms will place additional weight on these fields. • user history: we're starting to see more personalization of results based on your own search history. This could include promotion of documents you've visited before, helping you refind information, or session-‐ based methods, which look at your behavior on the queries you recently used. Some approaches take an even longer-‐term view of your history, using your click-‐throughs to build a profile of your interests to slightly bias the rankings toward those interests. • LETOR: Perhaps the most influential recent advance in search engine algorithms has been the development of Learning to rank (LETOR) machine-‐learned ranking. LETOR is has
Kitta 100 some unique differences from other methods, as it is trained on training data to produce a model, which computes relevance of queries. In this model, first, a small number of potentially relevant documents are identified using simpler retrieval models, which permit fast query evaluation, such as the Boolean model. This phase is called top-‐k document retrieval. Next, a more accurate machine-‐learned model re-‐ranks these documents based on learning from the training data. There are many more features modern web search engines use, such as query classification to help with vertical selection, geographical location to help with local searches, and so on. A few of the most influential recent algorithm updates at Google: Knowledge Graph Expansion: Last year, Google started rolling out "Knowledge Graph", a SERP-‐integrated display providing supplemental object about certain people, places, and things. Expect to see "knowledge panels" appear on more and more SERPs over time. The knowledge graph is part of Google’s larger sea-‐ change strategy to stop sending as many people to the sites Google lists in their results, and to rather provide people the information they seek directly at the top of the SERP. Panda Updates: Google’s 2011-‐2013 “Content farm penalties”. The first of these ongoing algorithm updates hit many sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results (a number that came directly from Google). Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-‐to-‐content ratios, and a number of other quality issues. Penguin Updates: Google’s 2012-‐2013 “Unnatural link penalties” or "Over-‐ optimization penalties". On April 24th, 2012, Google finally rolled out the "Webspam Update", which was soon after dubbed "Penguin." Penguin adjusted a number of spam factors, including keyword stuffing, deliberate duplicate content, and link scheming. There have since been several iterations of additional penguin updates to punish spammers and producers of thin content.” Chelsea Kitta: “Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices? Glenn Friesen: “In general, the two most important SEO factors are 1) relevant and unique content 2) one’s online reputation (links from authority, relevant, trusted sites). The most beneficial practices for SEO include: • Using relevant words on pages and articles (co-‐cited and co-‐occurring words; few “noisy” words) • •
Ensuring valid, accessible, keyword-‐rich, meaningful on-‐page code/content Developing unique, exceptional, meaningful, useful, valuable, high-‐quality content and
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• •
tools Expressing the purpose of any given page in all of the following areas: meta title, URL, content of the page, Image alt text Pages should link back to their category page, subcategory page (if applicable), and homepage. • Participate meaningfully in social media, avoid social media spamming behavior • Learn how to gather and interpret analytics • Learn from others – backlink profiles of competitors, direct and indirect; and of any other well-‐ ranking site.
Common bad practices include: • Valuing control over order • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Buying links through link brokers Keyword-‐stuffing (valueless “over-‐optimization”) Duplicate content and non-‐canonicalized content Press releases without any meaningful news Article submissions to bad neighborhoods and spammy content farms Reciprocal linking and link exchanges Creating thin content Losing one’s voice through automation Ignoring social signals and customer feedback Implementing tactics without strategy Focusing on rankings rather than conversion Ignoring design Focusing on Google only. Non-‐semantic URLs: Using session IDs and other parameters in URLs instead of meaningful words
•
Dependence and general use of on inaccessible code, including iframes, javascript and flash.”
Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N) Glenn Friesen: “Y” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future?”
Kitta 102 Glenn Friesen: “These absolutely are and will likely always be: • Content quality: uniqueness of the content, resourcefulness and information-‐richness of the content. • The link profile: keyword association through links; the trustworthiness and authoritativeness of a domain according to its measurable reputation. • Social signals: links and the stepchildren of links: tweets, retweets, shares, mentions, and perhaps most importantly to Google, +1’s. • Localization: Map data, listings, citations, reviews and local information sites feed Google’s ever more localized suite of SERPs. • Personalization: Google will continue to refine results to ever more personal, targeted individualized SERP experiences. Google continually improves as its engineers release early and iterate often. The most notable new factor Google has introduced which will grow more important in the near future is Author Rank-‐ which measures the credibility of a site or specific pieces of content depending on the link profiles of the authors of that content.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEP and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web? Glenn Friesen: “SEO evolves constantly. Algorithms change daily. SEO keeps growing bigger than just “SEO”. We can be sure certain future-‐proof behaviors will be rewarded by SE’s no matter what, though: · Be transparent and authentic · Be generous and empathetic · Produce content and a reputation that is fun and exceptional · Be agile and flexible – respond to change over following a plan · Pursue validated learning over opinions and conventions · Beware static predictions and assumptions Arguably, one need learn only the basics in either field to participate; however, to really compete, either craft demands a full-‐time focus. SEOs should collaborate with full-‐time PR professionals; and PR professionals should collaborate with full-‐time SEOs. The basics of optimizing content for client visibility? Some specifics:
Kitta 103 · The purpose of the web page should be directly stated in all of the following areas: the URL; the page title; the alt tags of images; and the content of the page (especially in semantic headers). · “Don’t build on rented land” – publish your best content on web properties you personally own (i.e. your website). · Help, not hype, your customer – help the potential customer trust you. · Write what people want to read, not what you want to write – it’s not about you. It never was. · Create content for every type of reader – branch out from your normal niche into related interests and parallel markets. People pay more attention to contrast than to the same old thing. · Include pictures – they’re worth 1,000 words (especially when properly alt tagged) · Don’t forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Once something is published, it’s important to promote it – be creative. As one last quick action item for all PR professionals, SEOs, and anyone who produces digital content: claim your authorship via Google+. ;) Recommended Reading: · Don’t Believe the Hype: Social Media’s Just a Type of PR http://www.theclinegroup.com/2012/12/04/social-‐medias-‐just-‐a-‐type-‐of-‐pr/ · The Definitive Guide To Google Authorship Markup http://searchengineland.com/the-‐definitive-‐guide-‐to-‐google-‐authorship-‐markup-‐123218 · The Death of Link Building and the Rebirth of Link Earning http://moz.com/blog/the-‐death-‐of-‐link-‐building-‐and-‐the-‐rebirth-‐of-‐link-‐earning-‐ whiteboard-‐friday”
Kitta 104 Appendix B Interview Transcripts: Ryan Miller The following interview was conducted to get expert opinions about search engine optimization. Interviewer: Chelsea Kitta Respondent: Ryan Miller is the owner and founder of SLO Design Solutions, a website design an Internet marketing services provider to local businesses on the Central Coast of California. Format: Email Interview Interview Transcriptions: Chelsea Kitta: “How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization?” Ryan Miller: “The practice of garnering more attention from Search Engines through a variety of tactics both on a website and throughout the internet with the ultimate goal of driving more relevant traffic to a website, therefore increasing the amount of conversions completed.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them?” Ryan Miller: “a. Keyword Research -‐ The foundation of all SEO is keyword research, if you go wrong there everything else that follows is an exercise in futility. b. On Site Optimization And Structure -‐ We make sure a site is using all of the elements necessary for search engines to find, index, and then rank your site. This is absolutely crucial as having the best content in the world does not matter if people can't find it, and people find content using search engines, so having a site that is easily indexed by search engines is a must.
Kitta 105 c. Content Creation / Link Building -‐ I list these two together because they really do go hand in hand. If you write relevant content, people link to you. And if you have bad content, it's really hard to get links. So a lot of what we do is helping clients to generate content that attracts links rather than just building links to sub-‐par content.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-driven and why or why not?” Ryan Miller: “Absolutely, in fact I would break this down this way. If you get a link because of a relationship you have with say an influential blogger that is a link your competition cannot replicate. Whereas a link that is easy to get is a link that easy to replicate. So more and more, relationships have become a very important part of SEO. I find this very interesting because a lot of people got into the SEO field to work with computers rather than people!” Chelsea Kitta: “Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-quality inbound links?” Ryan Miller: “Absolutely, and even though their power has been reduced somewhat recently it's safe to say that they are the most important factor in whether a website ranks well or not, everything else being held equal.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web?” Ryan Miller: “This is an interesting question, but as I said before, keyword research should be the foundation of any SEO effort. There are a variety of methods to determine what keywords to use, but one very basic way is to use the Google Adwords Keyword tool combined with common sense and a basic understanding of the demographic you wish to reach. As far as utilizing them in web content, more and more Search Engines are getting really good at determining if a piece of content is relevant, with or without you having the exact right keywords in your content. Basically, if you are writing relevant content you will be covering enough of the keywords that you don't need to make sure you actually include your specific keywords in content. The main thing here is to write content your readers can read and understand; if it makes sense to them it will make sense to a search engine.”
Kitta 106 Chelsea Kitta: “How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized?” Ryan Miller: “Crucial! As far as specific mediums and their value to search engines rankings, the two that are the most important are Google+ and Blogging. Google+ is crucial because Google has, for better or worse, integrated their social platform into their search engine and now the amount of +1's and the number of circles your content is shared with is a ranking factor. As far as optimizing for Google+ this is a whole different conversation but briefly, you want to be creating and curating. Meaning you want to be sharing and commenting on what the authorities in your industry are doing, and also creating content that compels your followers to share. Blogging is also very important as it the easiest way for businesses to produce content on an ongoing basis, which is also a huge ranking factor. Guest posting is huge also, and provides for a lot of opportunities to reach potential customers on other websites.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why?” Ryan Miller: “Not sure I entirely understand this question. I believe you are asking what parts of the ranking algorithms are most influential... Very few people can tell you this with much certainty but I believe the 3 most influential factors are: Incoming Links, Domain Trust, and social signals.” Chelsea Kitta: “Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices for SEO?” Ryan Miller: “Most detrimental I have seen is probably getting low quality links and over optimization of pages. Those two things can cause sites to be penalized or even removed from search engine all together. Most beneficial for SEO always has been and always will be creating share-‐able content.”
Kitta 107 Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N)” Ryan Miller: “Absolutely agree with both of these statements. “ Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future?” Ryan Miller: “I would say Google Author Rank is probably the biggest. Basically they are going to start ranking content based on the authority of the author that originally wrote it. In addition with authors being able to claim their content and have it provide value to them whether on their site or another's will increase sharing and collaboration in a crazy way. The details aren't completely known at this point but "Authorship" is already here -‐ basically the method for claiming the content. An example would be how you now see pictures come up with pictures of the author next to some search results. This was a huge change and will only be more and more of a factor in the SEO space in the coming years.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEO and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web?” Ryan Miller: “Public Relations and SEO have become entwined so much over the last few years and the relationship will only grow closer and closer. I would say that taking responsibility for the press release process would be one major way Public Relations professionals could help with the SEO effort. Crafting engaging press releases for clients that attract attention from news outlets is crucial and most SEO's do not have the skill set to do that. Beyond that optimizing the content kind of falls under some of the basics of SEO, stuff like using the right keywords but not using them too much, and writing engaging content that people want to share. Not sure if that is exactly what you were looking for but here is an excellent article I came across a while back that may help a bit: http://blog.prnewswire.com/2013/04/10/an-‐seo-‐experts-‐view-‐of-‐public-‐relations/”
Kitta 108 Appendix C Interview Transcripts: Anne Stahl The following interview was conducted to get expert opinions about search engine optimization. Interviewer: Chelsea Kitta Respondent: Anne Stahl is the Digital Strategy Manager at Hathway, a San Luis Obispo based digital agency focusing on search marketing, design and application development, and digital strategy. Format: Email Interview Interview Transcriptions: Chelsea Kitta: “How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization?” Anne Stahl: “Working to make a website appear and rank well in search engine queries for predefined target keywords.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them?” Anne Stahl: “First off ‘discover and define’: see how the site is currently indexed and performing and define the goal, which includes defining keywords/phrases. Secondly: update the site accordingly and go after off site improvements. Third: analyze the results and recommend the next round of improvements. Iterate.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-driven and why or why not?” Anne Stahl: “N/A” Chelsea Kitta: “Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-quality inbound links?”
Kitta 109 Anne Stahl: “This is somewhat irrelevant of a question. While in-‐bound links fall in and out of favor with regards to search engine ranking, they remain a crucial aspect of digital marketing and are consequently important for the client’s website success. The best way to get high quality inbound links, in my experience is a real person, manual, thoughtful assessment of relevant, quality sites to either exchange links with, or other-‐wise ‘earn’ a mention and link back..” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web?” Anne Stahl: “Keywords have been deemed unimportant by Google a long time ago due to the overwhelming abuse and spamming practices for keyword targeting. However, keywords are still absolutely important, in that users search by typing ‘words’ into a search engine, which they believe will find what they are looking for. Understanding what your client’s USERS are likely going to search, and optimizing your site with not only the search in mind but also the content you then provide for the user, will make your site relevant and successful.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized?” Anne Stahl: “It’s important to utilize social media -‐ but it’s more relevant to some than others. Social media is a very different medium from website or newsletters or ads etc... e.g. if your client is in the retail industry selling really cool home decor, you may want to focus on adding really awesome photos to Pinterest and Houzz, but if your client is a Physician’s office, it’s more important that your get good reviews and perhaps engage with some patients questions on facebook. There is no one fit for all.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why?” Anne Stahl: “Google is famous for changing its search logic and for being very secretive about their algorithm. To know what google wants to achieve is to have the edge over the rumors: google wants to provide users with search results that are exactly what they were looking for (you might argue that google wants to do this only, because google wants to sell ads to users, and users want good search results). Google will apply whatever technology
Kitta 110 and algorithm it can come up with to make its search results more relevant to its users. Consequently, good and true SEO professionals, will never attempt to promote a search results for ‘education’ for a site that doesn’t offer or discuss ‘education’. Google takes it a step further and also cares about the quality of the websites it returns in its search, only to some extent today, but maybe more so tomorrow. So, good SEO means, you have to create a really good website with really good content, good navigation/structure, good, accessible and compliant code, excellent images. I believe that today, Google’s algorithm is so complex, that there is no ONE thing you can do and get better ranking. And this is a good thing. The best seo tactic is to have a great website! It’s important to note is that I focus on Google because it’s the most used search engine today. Other search engines are still relevant however and it’s important not to forget about them.” Chelsea Kitta: “Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices for SEO?” Anne Stahl: “Black hat tactics would include writing content purely to get listed. There are countless more, and unfortunately it appears that some people still fall for some companies’ claims to ‘get you to page 1 in a week’. White hat or good SEO practices would include improving your client’s website with the USER in mind.” Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N)” Anne Stahl: “High-‐quality content is probably one of the most important aspects, but certainly not the only important aspect. In fact, the biggest problem with a lot of approaches for SEO is that many people believe that you can change one or two things and get ranked on page one. Of course, if you have a ‘noindex, nofollow’ robot directive on your site, then removing that is going to make a huge difference, but generally, you need to see your website an asset to your business and invest in it and continuously improve and update it. If you work with the right agency or web developer, you will get search engine ranking up, just by being a good website. In closing, the best SEO practice is to create and maintain an excellent website. Don’t focus on the latest big thing in SEO, because it will be replaced by something else soon. Understanding WHO your users are (or should be) and WHY they would want to visit your site, and optimize your site for your users, not a search engine bot! “
Kitta 111 Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future?” Anne Stahl: N/A Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEO and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web?” Anne Stahl: “To answer your final question: PR and SEO goes hand in hand. Members of both teams must work together, not just because a fully aligned strategy can amplify the success for both teams, but also because most brands want to show a branded and united approach to their customers. SEO experts can help PR understand how a search engine 'sees and understands' copy, and PR experts can help SEO folks with actual copy. Both teams should know when the other is working on a new campaign and should support that campaign. You also ought to factor in SEM and any other digital marketing (social media, email newsletters, affiliate programs etc…) If on the other hand you have a smaller client and you're not exactly dealing with a PR 'team', but you might have someone who helps out with some PR and someone else who is contracted to work a particular marketing campaign, and you yourself are only working on this client part time, then finding the balance between minimizing communication overhead while communicating enough to coordinate the effort, has to be a consideration.”
Kitta 112 Appendix D Interview Transcripts: Allison Duly The following interview was conducted to get expert opinions about search engine optimization. Interviewer: Chelsea Kitta Respondent: Allison Duly is the SEO Director at Rosetta, a global marketing agency that specializes in digital search and media strategies for brands including Office Max, Express, Lenovo and more Format: Email Interview Interview Transcriptions: Chelsea Kitta: “How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization?” Allison Duly: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines via the “natural” or “organic” search results. SEO is a continual process that builds upon solid technical execution, expansive content optimization, and site promotion via strategic link building. Performance monitoring and measurement activities are fundamental to a successful ongoing SEO program. As countless studies indicate, search engine optimization is one of the most important marketing activities a company/brand can undertake. The majority of search engine users prefer clicking on organic, or natural, search listings because they perceive them to be credible sources. Ideally, SEO services should be highly integrated and infused into design, development and broader marketing efforts to enable maximum site exposure.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them?” Allison Duly: “To ensure search engines and customers find a site, targeted search engine optimization strategies should include: •
Technical (accessibility): A solid technical foundation enables search engines to
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find, crawl and index a site. Content (relevance): Keyword-‐rich and authoritative content demonstrates that a site is an expert in their industry and a trustworthy source of information. Linking (authority): A strategic linking campaign builds authority for a site and directs users to the information they are seeking.
Over time, the right combination of the above tactics yield increased search engine rankings and a site is closer to reaching business goals of acquiring qualified customers.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-driven and why or why not?” Allison Duly: “Yes, SEO is relationship driven because an ideal program is integrated, bridging the gap between internal site efforts (business goals, development, creative, marketing), complementary online marketing channels (SEM, online display advertising, email marketing, social media) and holistic brand marketing campaigns (PR, print, mail, tv, etc.).” Chelsea Kitta: “Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-quality inbound links?” Allison Duly: “Yes, gaining inbound links is one of the most powerful ways to increase natural search engine rankings for optimized site pages. With technical considerations and optimized content in place, improving existing links and gaining new ones will help increase targeted keyword rankings in the search engines. Each link to a site can be viewed as a vote of confidence for the site. However, all “votes”/links are not equal in terms of value. Effective link building balances quantity and quality of links, taking relevance and authority into account. When evaluating a site’s link portfolio and the credibility of existing or potential inbound links, consider the following: • Relevance: The site in which the link is coming from should be topically relevant to the site it’s linking to. • Authority: This is a leading indicator for search engines to determine how much they trust a site (domain extension, domain/page authority, link portfolio). If a site is more trusted in the eyes of the search engines then it will be of more value
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to the sites it’s linking to. Quantity over Quality: While the quantity of links in a link portfolio is important, gaining a substantial number of links from irrelevant or spam sites can be very detrimental. Instead, the focus should be on gaining a solid number of quality links naturally over time. Anchor Text: The visual text to a hyperlink. Anchor text helps provide a preview of what the destination page is about. Diversity of link’s anchor text to the optimized pages is extremely important and valuable. Deep Link Percentage: This refers to the amount of links sent to the homepage versus deeper pages within a site. It is important to focus link building efforts around gaining inbound links to a diverse set of site pages. Typically, a homepage will naturally accumulate links over time, so it’s important to take advantage of opportunities to help deeper pages rank for desired keyword terms. Link Placement: Inbound links placed contextually within the body of web copy have the most value. Inbound links placed in the footer of a page or on a page with hundreds of other links have less value. Avoid Reciprocal Linking & Link Networks: Numerous mutual agreements between two sites agreeing to link to each other, or involvement in a network of sites that link to each other is a surefire way to be penalized by search engines.”
Chelsea Kitta: “How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web?” Allison Duly “Keywords are the underpinning of a SEO program. It is critical to understand demand and marry optimization efforts with how users are actually searching for a site. A data-‐driven keyword approach involving choosing relevant, competitive keywords through a variety of sources is ideal. Fundamentals of successful keyword use: • Set Focused Goals: Choose a primary theme for each page and develop the content around it. • Keyword Selection: Choose keywords that relate to the designated page theme and have enough content to support them. •
Keyword Use: Incorporate keywords into web page content multiple times while making sure the text reads naturally for users. Use a combination of exact
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keywords as well as variations. Keyword Position: Use the most important target keywords close to the top of the page and in key page elements like the page’s title and heading tags.”
Chelsea Kitta: “How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized?” Allison Duly: “Social channels are important to search engine rankings in the sense that they are another signal providing “votes” of confidence, similar to inbound links. The best social channels to be involved in really depend on the site/brand. Every audience has a different social profile and it’s important to conduct social listening and use tooling where possible to determine how current and target demographics are interacting with social channels. Each social channel has a unique optimization strategy, however integration opportunities across platforms and complementary marketing channels is always ideal.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why?” Allison Duly: “Search engines do not publish the most influential ranking algorithm factors and leave it up to industry experts to test and develop best practices. While influential ranking algorithm factors aren’t published, often times Google algorithm updates are documented by credible industry sources such as: http://www.seomoz.org/google-‐ algorithm-‐change.” Chelsea Kitta: “Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO? What are the most beneficial practices for SEO?” Allison Duly: “Unethical industry practices are classified as “black hat SEO” and in the most general sense, can be described as techniques used to intentionally manipulate search engines. If detected, sites may face penalties, or even be removed from search engine indices in severe cases. These sources provide credible viewpoints on black hat SEO practices: http://websearch.about.com/od/seononos/a/spamseo.htm http://google.about.com/od/searchengineoptimization/tp/badseo.htm
Kitta 116 http://searchengineland.com/googles-‐matt-‐cutts-‐black-‐hat-‐link-‐spammers-‐less-‐likely-‐to-‐ show-‐up-‐in-‐search-‐results-‐after-‐summer-‐159185 While beneficial practices for SEO are vast and each expert approaches the craft slightly differently, many are outlined in: The UnFair Advantage Book on Winning the Search Engine Wars.” Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N)” Allison Duly: “Yes and yes. “ Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future?” Allison Duly: • “Unique and differentiated content & optimization across all digital assets • Authentic authority building • True integration of SEO considerations with site and marketing initiatives vs. treating it as an isolated channel”
Kitta 117 Appendix E Interview Transcripts: Andy Brewer The following interview was conducted to get expert opinions about search engine optimization. Interviewer: Chelsea Kitta Respondent: Andy Brewer is the Founder of UpTrending, a Silicon Valley based web design and optimization agency with clients from the consumer, education, health, and high tech sectors, among others. Format: Skype/Phone Interview Transcriptions: Chelsea Kitta: “How would you, as an expert in your field, define and describe search engine optimization?” Andy Brewer: “That's a good question, I would say in its most basic form, it is, optimizing a site to rank well on search engines. That's the elevator pitch. It means organic listings as kind of the technical terms.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the top three most important SEO tactics and how do you implement them?” Andy Brewer: “Yeah, that's a good one. I think the most important might be understanding that every SEO project is different. I think there's a lot of SEO companies out there that try to apply a formula or try to sell package services of "we'll put keywords here, here and here, and we'll build out these pages," and I think they end up missing the point because how you would optimize for an e-‐commerce site is different from how you would optimize for a professional services site. Even how you optimize for someone in the financial sector is different from how you would optimize for someone within the healthcare sector. SO I think the first part is really understand the customer, by that I don't mean the clients. I mean understand their customer. So if they are selling shoes, understand the people who are buying shoes and what they're looking for and what they might be typing into the
Kitta 118 search engine and what they're buying decisions are like. At the end of the day, SEO is not about ranking well on search engines. Which is a little bit contradictory to the last answer because I think that's how you would define it, ranking well on search engines. But deep down what it's there for is to increase revenue or increase profits or increase users. You know there is some business objective you are trying to accomplish. So the very first thing we try to do is understand what business objective the client is trying to accomplish and again how their customers are going to interact or help them accomplish that goal on the web. You know, what is going to make a user sign up for a free trial, what's going to make them buy a shoe. So it kind of starts with that deeper understanding, that understanding of the business behind the site, before we even get into traditional SEO stuff. That would be number one. I would say number two is once you understand the business, then it's doing the keyword and competitive research. Again, what I've learned is if you are not on the right path, you are setting yourself up for failure. So you want to research where the search traffic is, which users are searching on which terms and also how competitive those terms are. Number one is understanding the business understanding the target market number 2 would be the research, the keyword research to see where the traffic volume is and then the competitive research um to see where the competition is to see if the companies are currently ranking well because their heavily optimized for those keyword phrases your researching or weather their ranking high on Google because Google is nobody better to put there and a big part of that is SEO there are a couple different tiers to your performance, if you're #1, you're obviously going to get a lot even 33 or maybe even 50% of the search traffic. if you're in the top 3 or the top 5 you're giving a subset of that , maybe 10-‐30% of the search traffic. and once you drop off to page 2 you're getting virtually 1 percent or less of the search volume. Everybody wants to rank well for you know cars or insurance or shoes you know. What we tell our clients is we're going to guide you towards keywords that we have a high degree of confidence that you can rank on the first page because again if you roll the dice and spend 2 or 3 months optimizing and the best you do is page 2 you've almost completely wasted everyone’s time and money so its finding those ones you know you can be successful for so really understand the market, do the research upfront and only then do you get into the basic sep stuff which I would consider number 3. content is important, html optimization is
Kitta 119 even more important than content because people just started spamming their content so much with keywords that Google is not really putting as much emphasis on as they used to. when you're using certain html tags like heading tags, title tags, link tags, Google will analyze the content within those so its a little bit of a hybrid approach and of course the links back to your site. That’s one of the more important ones, the more people that link to you and trust you the higher Google is going to rank you organically.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, do you consider the SEO effort to be relationships-driven and why or why not?” Andy Brewer: “The SEO effort is very relationships-‐driven. For that reason, you have direct relationships to industry leaders and again, 1 link from an industry leader not only do you get the traffic from a well respected person, but it's going to give you much more SEO value. The same thing on relationships on social networks, getting those social links back is going to help tremendously plus build those relationships that now you don't have to go and do that selling to try to sell your shoes to somebody you've never met their friend/mom/colleague is selling them for you by tweeting out your link to their followers.” Chelsea Kitta: “Are inbound links important for SEO and why? What are the best practices for garnering high-quality inbound links?” Andy Brewer: “I always tell my clients, we don't buy links. Google cracks down on that pretty seriously now, we also don't use any tricks, and we don't go to any free sites and get back links. Definitely no black hat. I wouldn't even consider it, you know free links aren't necessarily black hats, but the value isn't there for the time it takes. That's my opinion because the value you might get out of a 100 or 150 free links is probably equal to 1 decent or high quality link from a respected source in the industry. I always tell clients that sites and companies become popular for a reason because they're creating value because they now have good customers. Basically if you can go to someone who has a blog who writes about your industry/product/service you can talk to him/her about it. Bloggers are very easy to talk to I encourage them to do that. It is the most direct selling to them talking about it, if they see value in it they're write an article about it, they will tell their users about it and they will link back to the site and that’s high quality. If they do that and the bloggers aren't willing to write an article about it, then they might have a fundamental problem with the
Kitta 120 product or service at which point you might not be ready for a lot of SEO traffic and you don't want a negative first impression, so I encourage my clients to grow their links very naturally through direct contact with bloggers. We don't get into that part of it, even though it’s the most important part, for it to be effective it has to come from within the company. Reaching out and getting those links, we educate them on doing that, give them tips and tricks, tell them about the importance of it. We point them in the right direction, but let them do the actual legwork of making those personal connections that then turn into links.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are keywords? What are the best practices for determining what keywords to use and how to utilize them when producing content for the web?” Andy Brewer: “Keywords are extremely important because that's what you're targeting. If you go and research/type into Google "shoes," you're going to get 2 different sets of results. Someone who's optimizing for the singular term other companies optimize the plural term, also synonyms are something to consider, along with alternative spellings. There is a wide range and almost variation, every letter combination is a different silo. Some are related, but if you optimize for "shoes", you're already getting a good chunk of value for "shoe" as well, it's just that you're highest ranking will be for the keyword phrase that you're optimizing for. It comes down to that research of trying to work with the clients and find out how much risk tolerance they have. If we say this is a highly competitive keyword phrase, and there are 5 or 6 people heavily optimized for SEO, we can try and optimize but the best we might get is #7 on the first page, if we do really well maybe we can do 3 or 4. It's a decision that you talk about together, talk about the risk tolerance, and make that decision together as a team. There are others that are no brainers we look at the type in the keyword and look at the results and say wow there is no one here, no one optimizing for this term, lets optimize for it and capture some of this traffic. So it's always about evaluating that tradeoff. The highest value 9/10, the highest value keyword phrase is going to have the most traffic competition. Companies naturally tend to sort into that bucket because they're starting to do this research themselves but every once in a while you can find that diamond in the rough, there's a good amount of traffic and nobody is really optimizing for it yet.” Chelsea Kitta: “What's your opinion on optimizing press releases/blog posts for example?” Andy Brewer: “We get asked that a lot. We recommend that clients do it, as with any content, we don't go overboard. We tell them at the end of the day, say the SEO works,
Kitta 121 you're number 1, you're getting a lot of traffic to the site, what you have to remember is that an actual person is clicking that link and a real human being is reading that content. If the content sounds ridiculous, like you wrote it so google could read it, you're not going to gain those users' trust with SEO, often times that's the first impression. They might Google your name directly, they might have you bookmarked, and they might be clicking a link, with real traditional SEO, where they're searching for a problem or a solution and you come up, that's your first impression. Going back to the original point, you can't find one client that is going to be happy if they get 1,0000 visits a month from SEO and none of the visitors are buying anything. As much as everyone focuses on whether we got from position 3 to 2 or how much traffic we got, at the end of the day it's all about how much money we brought in to the company. You have to walk that line between marketing and SEO. If you look at magazines or something, you'll find great marketing copy because they don't have to worry about the internet or a search engine reading it, it's punchy and engaging and then online sometimes you'll find the opposite. People try to stuff keyword phrases in to content to rank high and we try to walk that line between those so it's getting the search engines attention. Where we shine and see the most value is that we make sure that once the user gets on the site, the site is optimized to convert them.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are some of your strategies to convert them once they're on the site?” Andy Brewer: “That goes into the other things we offer which is kind of why we offer them. Design is the primary converter for visitors. You can try 2 different designs and one will convert users twice as much as the other one for the same offer, the same content. It is all about aesthetic and whether or not that user feels comfortable. That's why you'll walk into an Apple store and not think twice about paying 700 dollars for an iPad. You go in and it's beautiful and elegant and it's all glass, that's what we try to coach our clients on. That's what you want your website to be. people are far more willing to give you money or time/attention than if you go into a Kmart and you're buying a low end towel or something, looking for a deal. It's there's same thing on the web, design adds so much value.” Chelsea Kitta: “Describe your knowledge of practices that are most detrimental to SEO?” Andy Brewer: “There are a lot. What happens is that there is so much money at stake that people will try all kinds of things and then they fail and they fail because Google understands their users. There are so many people searching their sites because they have quality results and if they let people game the system and get their site to the top with little
Kitta 122 tricks or what not, they'd be out of business pretty quickly. People would start searching on other sites so they crackdown very quickly on any gamesmanship like that. Once Google cracks down and begins a certain practice, that's when that practice gets labeled black hat, so anything black hat is just really silly; you should never ever do it. It increases the penalties so much. I've seen sites drop dramatically from it. Clients have come to us and said their rankings dropped 100 or 200 spots, then you look at their site and they have black hat SEO going on, it's like well that is why. It takes you a long time to earn Google's trust again, years or so with anything black hat. I would also say something that's not black hat but it's important, you know writing for search engines. Again, you're going to have a website that ranks well and converts no one. You have to be able to see that whole picture of people clicking the link, looking at your site, filling out a form, and buying something. When you have bad copy on your site, like for SEO and ignore what a normal person would be interested in or feel good about reading, I have seen that be pretty detrimental for conversions. I love conversions. At the end of the day, everything we do has to produce a result. The biggest way you can backfire the end result of conversion is writing specifically for search engine.” Chelsea Kitta: “So you always have to keep the consumers voice in mind?” Andy Brewer: “Yes, you're exactly right. So we have the client usually take the first stab at writing the content, and they will usually ask me about how to right it for SEO. I say don't even worry about that, just write it naturally how you want to and then we'll go through and within their natural flow and their natural language I'll see if we can get a keyword phrase in there or synonym or an extra paragraph of content that makes sense within their existing voice. The client always set the tone and the voice and then we try and tweak it just slightly.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are the most beneficial practices for SEO?” Andy Brewer: “The most beneficial practices would again, be about really understanding the business and the target audience. I've seen a lot of projects fail. It's also because the lead time with SEO because it takes weeks or months to get these rankings so it is like a slow moving ship. you're not flying in a helicopter. In a helicopter you can go wherever you want, left, right, up, or down, Instead, you're like sailing an aircraft carrier or something, you can't change course that easily. You can change course, but it is going to take you a awhile. You're going to lose a lot of time, and that's why if you're sailing from New York to
Kitta 123 London or something, when you leave port you want to make sure you're on the right track, and then you're going to get there the fastest and most successfully. Again, if you're not pointed in the right direction and you're going after the wrong audience and they don't understand what they want from you, no matter how fast you're going, you're going in the wrong direction.” Chelsea Kitta: “How important are social signals to search engine rankings and why? What are the best social channels to be active on (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Blogging)? How can these channels best be optimized?” Andy Brewer: “This is where SEO and social media optimization or social strategy are blurring together. It's following social media best practices of tweeting, posting, and sharing valuable content only doing it when you have something important to say. There are also companies out there that'll say we'll post 12 posts a day for you to continually stay in front of your users, that is great but if it's not 12 really interesting things, what’s going to happen is people who are the most engaged with you are going to be reading those 12 and saying "man this company is boring, not helpful." So you want to cater to your more elite audiences, your key players/influencers. People who are obsessed with you. You want them to feel like their getting good value out of you. It isn't about volume it's definitely about quality. I would also say that it's important to understand the medium that they're in. Knowing what gets socialized on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A link to a case study is not going to do well on Facebook, but post it on LinkedIn and you get some great traction. You have a goofy office party and you want people to see you're a fun company, post that on Facebook, and don’t post it on LinkedIn. It's about knowing you're audience too.” Chelsea Kitta: “What are search engines’ most influential ranking algorithms and why?” Andy Brewer: “The one that has been king for 10+ years has been inbound links, people linking to your site because it passes trust from one web property to another. Back in the day, any link was good and the more you get the better, there was no such thing as a bad link until people started abusing that. Then Google started cracking down and now their looking at quality links, from trusted sources and if you get links from little known blogs or blogs known to be linking to lots of different places, you might not get any SEO benefit or you might get negative effects if the site linking to it is negative in Google's eyes. That said, social media is becoming more and more important, I wouldn't say that it's licking those traditional links but its certainly the fastest growing area of SEO is the social media
Kitta 124 influence, you know people linking to via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, all of those we've seen really strong indicators of clients moving up in search results when there’s social media presence is boosted. Inbound links are definitely important because they pass trust along, Google published a paper on how their algorithm works, it basically uses a score called page rank, you can rank from 0-‐10 its an exponential scale. its easy to go from 0-‐1, 1-‐2, the more links you get, every step up becomes exponentially harder to get to where a 9 is. You're talking about some of the most well known or longest running web properties on the internet would be a 9/10. and there’s a handful that would be a 10/10.” Chelsea Kitta: “What is a 10/10? Andy Brewer: “I think Google is. I think its just Google.” Chelsea Kitta: “What is a 9?” Andy Brewer: “You can look up the page rank of pages. Somebody has a quick list here and their saying the White House, Google, Apple, New York Times, www consortium, and a handful of government sites. Yeah, so it’s very hard to get there. Facebook or YouTube, may be a 9 or even a 10 by now.” Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with the statements, “high quality, engaging content is king” and “high quality links over quantity” in regards to the SEO effort? (Y/N)” Andy Brewer: “The old content is key metaphor came from the idea that everything had to be an encyclopedia. Way back in the day when Wikipedia dominated every search result because they had so much content, and the idea was build tons of content and yeah that makes it great content, the more the better. However, it's more about quality. I think you will find sites that have virtually no content on them. Actually try to do a "silicon valley web design" web search. I think we're number 3 on there? If you click on that result, we have 1 sentence on our homepage. Its just Google doesn't really care about the essays anymore. So it's a great example. There is actually a lot of value in that term, its actually pretty competitive and we're able to rank there with 1 sentence because we've been around a while, because we've established links back to our site. Our website is trusted, so we put that in the title tag and we have very minimal content. It's almost like if you look at the
Kitta 125 percentage of the content, half of our content says Silicon Valley Web Design because we only have 8 words on our homepage so its almost like percentage too. So clients will say we need more content on the homepage, I'll usually tell them you really don't. You just need a good established business that people will appreciate and are willing to link back to.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, what are the suspected SEO factors that will influence search engines’ ranking algorithms the most in the near future?” Andy Brewer: “I think social signals are going to continue to become more and more important. Google is already using a lot of personalized recommendations on their search history and this might become more and more tailored. Including things like searcher geo location. I think SEO is going towards more solutions, where if you Google certain things like weather, Google is providing info about the weather. If you Google certain products, they have the Google store where you can buy products. So I think it in some ways, Google is making it easier for the user because they're getting directly to the info they want. Sometimes Google provides that content, sometimes they pull in info like if you look for paintings or something, and you will probably get a list of Google images. You can shop on Google on the right and you get images on the left. So I think it's getting away from that tradition of optimizing the content on you're website, its like the individual facets, the images on you're site, the products on your site, individual pieces of info. Google is trying to curate those and provide those to the user. The whole point of a search engine is you want info, you want it quickly and so Google rather than making you click into the site and hunt a big page for this piece of info, they're trying to return that info directly to you. I wouldn't be surprised if that is just expanded out. I see that on a lot more queries. I try to do some searching and they give me the answer right there. and I think optimizing for that is going to be pretty important in the future.” Chelsea Kitta: “Do you agree with some of the research out there that is suggesting Google+ will play a much larger role in social signals for search engine results?” Andy Brewer: “I don't agree because Google is in the business of providing the best information possible to users. I think what the will do is they definitely have a bias towards reporting content that is on their services. For example, if you want to sell a product you have to be in the Google store, the images are returned through Google images. But as far as the indicators like the deep behind the code, I think they're willing to use any input signal that is valuable to them, so I think Google+ really matters that Google owns it. I think if
Kitta 126 Google+ becomes popular and becomes a reliable source for how to return great content to users, then it will be much easier for Google to use that data because they own it. However, it has to provide great content before they would use it, they would not just use it just because they own it. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it becomes more prominent but I think that comes from user adoption rather than Google having some plans to just force people to use Google+.” Chelsea Kitta: “In your opinion, how can public relations practitioners assist with SEO and best optimize their content to increase client visibility on the web?” Andy Brewer: “It's my opinion that PR practitioners should have a "best practices level" knowledge of SEO, meaning that they understand it well enough to provide consultation to their clients about best practices. They can certainly still work with an outside SEO firm to do the keyword research, HTML/content optimization, etc., but they should be able to guide or help clients select keywords, as SEO keyword selection should be inline with core messaging and branding. PR practitioners should also in my opinion be trained or knowledgeable of how to integrate keywords into various online campaigns (press releases, social media, blog posts, etc.). PR focuses on creating a unified, consistent voice for a company. It's my opinion that they're great at doing this, and should continue to do that, but also have the company voice consistent with their SEO voice, so a company is communicating to Google in the same way it's communicating to their target market. If they can stay consistent and fully integrate SEO with their traditional online efforts, it can have a great, long-‐term impact on SEO.”