SEO is a hot trend in PRstore Nation these days. This week alone, I’ve fielded three SEO-related calls from PRstore franchise owners working on search engine optimization plans for clients. So imagine their surprise when I tell them SEO is the least of their worries.
Let me explain…
Many SEO “experts” focus just on getting your site to the top of Google. That’s not a bad goal. But what about the next nine results? Or the next 20? What do those sites say about your company?
Your customers, business partners, investors, the media and others will judge you by what’s said about you in the rest of the links. If you focus just on your Website’s ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs), your PR is only 10% effective at best.
Getting positive results into the top 10 takes a blend of PR and online strategy. Here are some tips:
PR. Good ol’-fashioned Public Relations is Tool #1 in protecting your company’s online reputation. Is a blogger criticizing you and ranking high? What have you done to reach out to the blogger? This is an opportunity to ask about the reasons for his displeasure and offer to remedy the situation. With any luck, a high-ranking negative blog could turn into a high-ranking endorsement of your company.
Press Releases. I hated press releases when I was a journalist. I still think they’re useless if you want someone to write a story about you. But when you send a press release out on the newswire, it gets published — usually verbatim — on dozens or sites on the Web. Inevitably, one of those sites will rise to the top of the search results for your company name.
Social Media. Most social media sites use the ‘nofollow’ attribute — a snippet of HTML code — to prevent you from boosting your site’s search ranking by linking to it from your profile. But that doesn’t mean a YouTube or Flickr profile is useless. On the contrary, a profile on those sites is one more page you control. With some simple SEO techniques, you can get those sites to rank high in the search results. The significance? Each high-ranking site you control pushes bad news off of Google’s first page.
Advertising. Let’s face it: Most of us only click on a handful of links with each Google search we do. If you’re running pay-per-click ads on Google, I may click on your ad first. Then I’ll click on the top result — ideally, your Website. I may click one or two more links. By running an ad, you might just satisfy my need for info before I get to that bad review sitting at result #6.
Blog. I can’t say it enough: Get a blog. A website is great, but a Website is just an online brochure. If I see a blog in the top results on Google, I’m gonna click on it. And with a meaty, dynamic body of information, a blog is likely to hold my attention. If you’ve got a great blog, I probably won’t even go back to the Google results. The trick is getting me to see your blog. If you optimize your Website but neglect your blog, I’ll probably go back to the Google results — and maybe this time I do see result #6.