Based on a previous post on why PR tends to focus on placement over search, I reached out to the following national and Atlanta-based SEO experts for their advice (from left to right, top row first)

• Andy Edmonds, one of four instructors for Stomping the Search Engines
• Allison Fabella, SEO manager at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and holds regular training courses for the paper’s vital personnel including journalists, Web developers and designers, and management
• David Felfoldi, chief experience officer at Sherpa Web! Studios, a search engine optimization firm in Atlanta (He answered while on his honeymoon assuring me he only typed on his iPhone while waiting in line.)
• Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR
• Charles Lumpkin, Paid Search and SEO at Benchmark Brands
• David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR
• Jill Whalen, CEO and founder of High Rankings
• Stacy Williams, president at Prominent Placement, Inc., Strategic Search Marketing

In talking to these experts, I wanted their perspective on whether PR has successfully embraced SEO and whether they should.  Here is what they had to say.

Whalen: I don’t think too many PR people truly understand what SEO is and how PR can impact it. In fact, I think PR is so important to any successful SEO campaign that it is my recommended choice as a way of indirectly gaining links for a website (which in turn increases search engine rankings).

Felfoldi: SEO started with technology, and thus technologist were the first to embrace it. PR tends to attract individuals with journalistic backgrounds.  So it makes sense that PR has been slower to adopt SEO as an effective communication channel.

That slower adoption, however, is no longer necessary.  Online publishing tools –such as blogs — are not only inherently compliant with search engine requirements (“search-friendly”), but are actually preferred by search engines over mainstream online channels, such as the corporate website.  In fact, many web developers & marketers are embracing blog platforms as the content management systems powering the websites. Search compliance is now a core part of the tool, rather than an added feature.

Technology aside, PR relies heavily on source/brand credibility — a story in the NY Times is invaluable to spreading a message. SEO does care about source (hence google’s infamous pagerank) but that is just one of many factors that goes into search, & most often not the most important.  In search, content is king.

Finally, PR has an ethic of controlling the message. The problem is a searcher may never search for what PR is communicating. Instead of fighting SEO, PR should embrace it and ensure their message is well saturated in the search engines. Depending on the message, the first result in a search results page can be more effective than a quote on the front-page of a national periodical.

Jarboe: Some PR people are picking up SEO, but they are the exceptions to the rule.  Why aren’t they effectively embracing SEO?  Because they think it’s someone else’s job.  And SEO is someone else’s job — if you are talking about optimizing pages on a website.  But what most SEO specialists aren’t doing is optimizing press releases for news search engines like Google News or Yahoo! News.  And that’s why the opportunity that falls between the cracks.

Now, to be fair, you couldn’t optimize press releases for news search engines before September 2002, when Google News was launched (in beta).  A couple years later, I asked some of the people at Yahoo! News why they included press release distribution services in the 7,000 news sources aggregated by their news search engine.  And they said that for new product launches, a press release was often the only source for a story, because the traditional trade press had imploded.  And daily newspapers have imploded, too.  So, if PR people don’t learn to optimize their press releases for the millions of news search engine users, then it is worth asking who are they writing them for?

Lumpkin: I don’t know that I totally agree with your [my] statement. I know many PR firms that are very forward leaning. The best SEO campaigns need some of the structured relationship building that a PR firm can provide.

Williams: “I’ve been surprised that the public relations industry hasn’t embraced search engine optimization more than they have.  Don’t get me wrong – some PR “early adopters” are certainly utilizing SEO, social media, and other, newer Internet marketing vehicles.  But many folks seem to still be doing PR the same way they always have.  Perhaps SEO pushes them out of their comfort zone – perhaps it seems too technical, or too difficult.  Search engine optimization certainly can get technical and difficult, but it doesn’t have to be, especially when it’s used in conjunction with PR.

Edmonds: While it wasn’t true 5 years ago, search engine optimization is a robust discipline and dialogue between search provider and content producer.  With the increasing connection between the internet and everyday life with web 2.0 and social networking, the potential interplay between PR and SEO is greater now than ever before. “Universal search” provides real time indexing of news and it’s very easy for interested parties to locate a business given a few key words.

Meerman Scott: “The truth is that your potential customers AND reporters are searching for you right now. The days when reporters passively waited for press releases and pitches to figure out what to write are over. Now they find interesting companies to talk up. If you’re not visible in the search engines, you don’t exist — for reporters or your buyers.”

Fabella: We are at a tipping point from never heard of SEO, to heard of it but don’t know what to do, to my boss has heard of it and now to I am actively seeking to understand it.

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The  general consensus seems to support my belief that we PR professionals have a ways to go in establishing a search expertise despite our making some initial progress. It may not be completely our fault, but we may be running out of excuses given where journalism is heading, how technology has evolved and  how people get information online.  And with the advent of Twitter and the growing importance of real time results, the pressure is on to make search a core competency.    Those who fail to embrace SEO not only have the potential of being  left behind;  they are failing to represent their clients’ best interests.

In my next post, these experts discuss how PR can effectively use SEO.

Let me get back to you.

source: science.howstuffworks.com

As a recent post suggested, leveraging search is challenging enough for many of us PR professionals.  Well it just got more complicated or more interesting — depending upon your perspective.  Call it the rise of TSO – Twitter Search Optimization – as Tac Anderson calls it.

Last week, stories circulated about Twitter’s search plans. As Michael Kirkpatrick writes: Currently, Twitter searches only the text of Twitter posts.  Soon it will crawl the links included in tweets and begin to index the content of those pages.  And with Bit.ly becoming Twitter’s link shortening service, you will be able to get real-time statistics about where links are being shared and how many people are clicking on them.

In other words, we will be able to get a better handle on the hottest web pages and how they are being shared.  It will give us insight into the influence of the person who created the original short cut.   It can also tell us for example the popularity of our link by social network.  And that’s really important for PR professionals seeking actionable intelligence from the flood of tweets in the public stream. It is also important to people seeking to get and evaluate information about your company.

Influence is the name game.  Google’s search algorithm is great for determining authority by measuring the number of links between pages; more links mean more authority and presumably more relevance.

But Google’s focus is historical – looking back on the number of web pages over time.  What Twitter currently lacks in authority measurement, it makes up for in its immediacy.  Peter Fasano calls it a GPS, tracking trends as they are breaking.  And as BusinessWeek’s Robert Hof writes: “Because it takes hours or days for Google to index most Web pages, the search giant’s results generally don’t offer the same immediacy.”

Enter Social Search

The role of social networks adds another dimension to the search story,  Steve Rubel believes it is a “major revolution” in how we qualify sources.  He writes, “There are two major forces at work here: our growing hunger for real-time information and the coming convergence of search and social networking.”

Call it social search which according to Wikipedia considers the interactions or contributions of users.  Social search does not rely on a computer’s ability to analyze a we page; it leverages our network of trusted individuals.  That could mean shared bookmarks like Delicious. It could mean out-sourcing our questions to our friends, usually by broadcasting them on Twitter or Facebook. We are more likely click on a link when it is endorsed by source from within our social network.  Because a social search engine is constantly getting feedback, its results are potentially more current or in the context of changing information.

What does the evolution of search mean for PR?

We now have more variables to add to the search equation.   It is not only about key word density, tagging and RSS.  Those help others find us.  But that is only the beginning.

As part of our PR search strategies, we need to evaluate what others are saying about us.  We need to consider authority, time frames and context when listening to online conversations.

Authority – What is our standard for authority – inbound links, retweets, followers, friends, our social network or all of the above? Whatever our measurement, authority helps PR evaluate search results and prioritize which influencers we wish to engage.

Time frames – In evaluating sources we can focus our search results on immediacy or the legitimacy of trends over time.   Each plays a role in crisis communications.  The former is an early warning system before a crisis spikes or an opportunity is lost to a competitor.  The latter gives us feedback on our response, and the progress we have made in containing a crisis or exploiting an advantage.

Influence – As PR professionals, it is not enough to post information in the hopes of being found.  We now have the power to become a trusted source and get others to share our company’s information within their social networks.

All are a bit overwhelming, but all are opportunities to seize thought leadership and manage online reputation.

Let me get back to you.