Be an SEO owner, not a PPC sharecropper
The difference between SEO and PPC is really a matter of how much you want to pay rent to Google for your own marketing. You can pay Google’s pay-per-click rates and on nothing when the campaign is done; or you can invest in smart Search Engine Optimization and own the fruit of your labor.
Simon Shandler made this case in spades, recently. This strategy makes even more sense for SEO PR for companies other than IBM, Apple, and Microsoft. If you aren’t a merger and acquisition player and not in the market to get bought by Google, then you really need to reconsider whether your PR budget should be spent entirely on “big-time media love.” Instead, invest a quarter or a third of that budget in an ongoing campaign of press release optimization to take advantage of long-tail exposure and results over time.
“Bottomline, if you have invested a lot into your website, and you’re in the game for the long-run, then SEO is where your advertising dollars are best spent.”
SEO PR | podcast interview
I got to do a podcast with Silicon Valley marketer, Lisa Orrell, about the role of SEO in Internet Public Relations. Remember, even if it’s a year old podcast, it’s good to repurpose content—of any kind— white papers, powerpoint presentations, press releases you wrote for the company four years ago!
50 topics for business blogs
I often help clients get their feet wet in the ocean of business blogging and Internet public relations strategies by asking them to simply start by submitting a short piece to my hyper-local blog, Halfway To Concord, which serves Contra Costa County in the East Bay of Northern California. Some of these businesses have a local focus, so this is a great way for me to hone my Local Search SEO skills. Still, these short articles on estate planning tips, customer service, newsletter tips, all produce some exciting search results.
Yet, I have some customers that ask, “Well, what could I possibly write about?” Good question. Next time you or a client has writers’ block send them over to the list of 50 topics for business bloggers that SEOptimise has put together and your clients will have plenty of fodder to work on. This tool can be a great way for you to introduce the power of SEO to their business blogs.
SEO boosts National Punctuation Day
A rigorous SEO PR campaign helped boost National Punctuation Day (September 24) to national recognition this year with mentions in USA Today, Newsday, Atlanta Constitution, LA Times, Seattle Post, Chicago Sun Times, Columbus Dispatch, Boston Globe, Canada Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and Milwaukee Journal—not to mention over a hundred more daily papers and over 8,000 web mentions. The press release hit the sweet spot between focused keywords enmeshed within a compelling narrative that included no punctuation whatever in the lead paragraph. The SEO combined with a target mailing and expert followup by PR guy and numerous client interviews put a punctuation mark at the end of a successful campaign this year!
SEO tip: repurpose content to build your web presence
Lee Odden posts some rules of thumb concerning how to repurpose content to build your web presence. I encourage many of my local clients to start here using a hyper-local blog I run, to see the impact even one article on “estate planning for same-sex couples in California” can generate hundreds of page views and SERP rankings to push more eyeballs to your site after you’ve already sent that same article appearing in the newsletter you mailed out last month.
Repurpose everything you can. I have clients repurpose old newsletter articles into blog posts. Another client posts small sections from his book on alternative energy strategies for business on his new blog; even short video clips from company presentations can be reused in press releases in an effective and cost affordable way.
Presentations can be made into short video clips with new comments, voice over and music. PRWEB is a great place to republish chunks of material you already own with some SEO-savvy rewriting and setup to take advantage the search optimization that service provides.
Repurpose the content you already own to build your web presence today.