Despite company marketing and public relations budgets being in a state of ambiguity, many public relations organizations are focusing on social media, trying to figure out “do’s and don’ts” to improve online reach. At the same time, search engine optimization (SEO) of news content is fast becoming an established part of the mix for many public relations programs.

On their own, SEO and social media channels offer attractive opportunities for reaching industry influentials as well as end-consumers through push and pull public relations. Together, SEO and social media combine to create a competitive edge that can boost online public relations results.

Why is this so? Changes in the way the media and end-consumers discover, consume and share content illustrate the intersection of opportunity for both the search and social Web. Today’s increasingly social media savvy content consumer not only expects to find what they’re looking for on search engines, but to interact with the results. Those interactions take many forms including: commenting, voting and sharing. As a result, social media can affect search engine visibility in numerous ways, creating new promotion opportunities for public and media relations efforts.

The following post about search engine optimization for public relations (SEO for PR) was written by Chris Pilbeam of Vocus based on an interview with TopRank Online Marketing CEO, Lee Odden.

SEO helps a search engine to do its job more effectively.

Search engines aren’t perfect – that’s why people in SEO are flourishing. People who write web copy often only consider one audience: customers, or analysts; maybe journalists. You should consider the extra audience of search engines.

SEO boils down to three elements: keyword research, site interactivity, and links.

1) Keyword research reveals the permutations and variations of the terms people are searching for. Start with the notion of what’s important and pop that into a keyword research tool. It comes back with multiple versions, ordered by popularity, so you can make smart choices about the words you use in your titles and press releases and articles.

2) The technical aspect of how a search engine interacts with your site is, in most cases, a job for your IT department.

The following is a guest post by Jiyan Wei, director of product management for PRWeb leader in online news distribution and online publicity. For more tips on using press releases, follow @PRWeb on Twitter or like them on Facebook.

Operating a small business can be daunting enough without having to compete against the already established companies in your industry. However, with online PR, you can quickly gain a firm footing and begin to assert your company’s presence. Despite their size, small businesses have several advantages over their larger sized counterparts:

• Small Businesses are much more nimble
• Online PR is best if done incrementally, doesn’t require large resources up front
• Creativity levels the playing field
• Online PR is still a relatively new field
• Success can come quickly, if you’re sharp

OpenCa.mp DFW is a conference focused on WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! and .NET development. There are a few sessions touching on blogs and social media and surprisingly, one on public relations. Paula Berg was with Southwest Airlines for 10 years building their social media effort to 8 people and becoming a very legitimate and significant source of revenue for the airline.

Her presentation at OpenCa.mp started with an admission of being somewhat hungover, we are at a tech conference after all, and a rate of speech that was more like East Coast than South West. She was engaging and entertaining.

A lot of companies are doing “Third world social media”. They’re doing things tactically and not integrating into their overall business.

1. About jaw dropping reports:  Sure, servies like Radian6 can create nice looking reports, but what does it mean?

It’s not all about the numbers. What is the data trying to tell us? What are we tring to prove or accomplish. What should we be doing differently. Who cares about this insight?

2. Launch an all out PR assault – tell everyone about your social media program

3. Make executives love it. Dazzle them. Scare them. Do what you have to do.

“People who write web copy often write for a particular audience: customers, or analysts, or journalists. But there’s an extra audience you should always consider: search engines.”

Lee Odden is a man with a message: write to your audience. Of course, PR pros knew that already. If we’re pitching to a tech publication, we talk tech; if we’re pitching to a newspaper, we’re topical. However, we’re still ignoring the audience of the search engine – and it’s one of the most influential publics we have. Search engines don’t buy our products and they don’t write the news – but they influence everyone who does. No one knows this better than Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing. His business is built on optimizing brands’ online performance, and he believes that ‘Optimized PR’ – the practice of integrating the opportunities offered by search engine optimization and social media into your PR – is the future.

Photo Credit: Andy Beal

On Thursday, January 28th 1PM EST TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden and Bulldog Reporter will be offering a high impact webinar for Public Relations and Communications professionals on using search engine optimization to increase online visibility and placements. Details are below, but you can register here:

Optimized Public Relations: 10 Easy SEO Tactics PR Can Use to Increase Digital and Traditional Media Pickup in 2010 Bulldog Reporter’s PR University Presents a New Webcast Tutorial Thursday, January 28, 2010

PR pros looking for the latest SEO tools and know-how to build brand and buzz should attend this new webcast tutorial from Bulldog Reporter’s PR University titled: “Optimized Public Relations: 10 SEO Tactics PR Can Use to Increase Digital and Traditional Media Pickup in 2010.” :

This PR University webcast takes place on Thursday, January 28, at 1PM EST (noon CST, 11AM MST, 10AM PST).

In just 90 minutes, this PR University webcast tutorial will give PR professionals the tools and step-by-step instruction they need to positively impact their company or brand’s perception, positioning and coverage. They will learn how to find their keyword sweet spot, how to use those words and phrases to boost the number of people who visit their site and how to write optimized copy to drive greater results and return on investment.

The PR industry is in a state of flux with increasing emphasis on the digital and social side of communications.   In the context of digital PR, social media and search engine optimization can work together to compound results.  As PR efforts continue to emphasize content publishing, digital and social communications, the opportunity to keyword optimize content for search is low hanging fruit.

Forward thinking companies would do well to assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Is the current digital PR effort leveraging improved visibility through search engines? Do current PR and Marketing staff or vendors possess the digital PR tools they need to offer competitive consulting in a “PR 2.0” world? Consider the following questions to assess the SEO and social media readiness of your digital PR assets:

1. Is social media participation conducted without attention to SEO?
   According to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, social media adoption outranks organic SEO. Yet more than 82% of Internet users surveyed in “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers” (published by Tom Smith, one of the researchers of the Digital Readiness Report) stated search engines are the tools most frequently used to source information about products, brands and services. That disconnect reinforces the need for search engine optimization as a key digital marketing and PR tactic.

PR budgets have been affected just as much as marketing and Public Relations departments in every industry are trying to figure out the  mechanics of how to improve PR effectiveness through social media. At the same time, optimizing news content for search engines is fast becoming an established part of the mix for many PR programs.

On their own, SEO and social media channels offer attractive opportunities for reaching industry influentials as well as end consumers through push and pull PR. Together, SEO and social media combine to create a competitive edge that can boost online PR results.

Why is this so? Changes in the way the media and end consumers discover, consume and share content illustrate the intersection of opportunity for search and the social web. Today’s increasingly social savvy content consumer not only expects to find what they’re looking for on search engines, but to interact with the results. Those interactions take many forms including: commenting, voting and sharing. As a result, social media can affect search engine visibility in numerous ways, creating new promotion opportunities for public and media relations efforts.

Measuring the return on investment from online marketing and PR efforts is essential as an indication of success as well as a feedback mechanism to guide subsequent efforts.

Determining the effectiveness of SEO for Public Relations starts with clearly identified objectives. Matching the purpose for the effort with specific metrics is essential.  For example, if improving brand visibility is a goal, then documenting brand mentions in connection with news & PR content at regular intervals can demonstrate the effect of content promotion and link building.

Online PR metrics and tools often include:

• News wire service metrics (see screen capture below)
• Web analytics for landing pages and web site
• Google and Yahoo alerts
• Monitor blog search engines (via RSS)
• Press release landing page conversion tracking
• Social media monitoring
• Inbound links
• Pickups on blogs
• Pickups on other web sites & online publications
• News and Standard Search Engine Rankings
• Conversions: Less likely sales, more likely white paper downloads, webinar signups, newsletter subscriptions, demos, etc

This post is a preview to the presentation that TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden will be giving at the upcoming Media Relations Summit, New York, NY May 17-19 on Search Engine Optimization Tips for Media Relations.

Many public relations practitioners have warmed in recent years to the power of search engine optimization for growing the impact of pull based PR efforts.

Journalists, bloggers and industry influentials use search engines to find subject matter experts, research companies, locate past media coverage and track topical trends. In fact, a recent survey on journalists’ use of search by TopRank reports that 91% of those journalists, reporters and editors surveyed use search engines to do their jobs.

Traditionally, search engine optimization efforts have been managed by corporate marketing departments – either in-house or through an outside agency. However, will all the opportunities to create value in the form of increased online brand visibility, reputation management and internet based media coverage, public relations deserves a seat at the corporate SEO table.