SearchRank Newsletter Issue # 5 – September 2004

I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend. I took off Friday and didn’t get back in the office until today so I have been playing “catch up”, thus the reason for a delayed newsletter. My family and I spent a few days in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Normally I wouldn’t even think about visiting Lake Havasu on a holiday weekend as it attracts so many people and as you might expect, can become extremely crowded. However, my son Andrew had a football game there on Friday night. He plays starting defensive tackle on the varsity football team. Therefore we decided to stay overnight rather than make the three hour drive back the same evening. It was a very exciting game indeed as it even went into overtime. Andrew was a key player in this game and I am very proud of him (bragging a bit). Unfortunately, we lost by just a few points. We almost had them.

Anyway, enough about me. I’ve got an exciting issue for you today. I first want to announce a new way to attract traffic to your web site as well as gain some good, long standing external links and then I have great article written by Scottie Claiborne, a friend of mine, that I moderate with on High Rankings Forum. So enough with the introduction… let’s get on to the good stuff!

In this issue…

• OPTIMIZING PRESS RELEASES
• FEATURE ARTICLE – UNDERSTANDING THE SEO INDUSTRY
• SEARCH ENGINE HEADLINES
• CLOSING COMMENTS

OPTIMIZING PRESS RELEASES

I am excited to announce a new partnership we have formed with PR Web and SEO-PR in which we will now be able to offer an optimized press release distribution service. This service is designed to take your press releases and ensure they are optimized to target keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business and then distribute them through the PR Web network which includes distribution in Google and Yahoo News as well as many other media outlets. This new service will provide another way to gain traffic through vertical markets in addition to search engine referrals.

Our press release optimization and distribution will consist of the following elements:

• Optimization of news releases for top rankings
• Building of links from archived news releases to important web pages on your site
• Distribution of your news releases to Yahoo and Google News
• Promote news releases through PRWeblog, XML, OPML, ATOM, RSS and NewsML formats
• Distribution of your news releases to over 65,000 media outlets via opt in email
• Advanced tracking of your news releases and the traffic they generate

Google News and Yahoo News by themselves receive an audience of 25 million unique visitors a month, making optimized press releases potentially very lucrative. As a case in point, one press release that was recently optimized for Southwest Airlines by SEO-PR generated just over $80,000 in advance ticket sales.

We are one of 25 SEO/SEM firms that PR Web and SEO-PR have chosen to partner with. I will be adding more information about this soon in the Services section of the SearchRank web site. We will be offering this service for $450 per optimized release but if you want to take advantage of this before we officially add the service through our site, I can offer it to you for $400! Just email me before the end of this month and I will make sure that you receive the discount.

FEATURE ARTICLE – UNDERSTANDING THE SEO INDUSTRY

Introduction – I am honored to have Scottie Claiborne as the contributor of this month’s feature article. It was written awhile ago but really paints a perfect picture of what SEO is and its role in Internet marketing. I originally met Scottie through Jill Whalen’s High Rankings Forum of which Scottie is one of the administrators. She actually has done most if not all of the custom programming behind that forum which is the best of its kind. Besides helping to keep that forum running, she moderates as well. Her company, Right Click Web Services, specializes in usability, search engine optimization, and Internet marketing. So with no further ado, here’s Scottie.

Understanding The SEO Industry by Scottie Claiborne

One of the challenges facing any new industry is creating a demand for and an awareness of the industry in the mind of the consumer. Since many Website owners have only a general idea of what search engine optimization (SEO) is and how it works, I’ve come up with an analogy from another industry that makes it easier to understand.

Search Engine Marketers = Ad Agencies
Search engine marketers dealing with paid listings are very similar to ad agencies in offline media. They work with the message and the creative to get people to take action: to buy, subscribe or register. They have budgets and are able to monitor results and tweak campaigns to get the maximum return for their clients.

It’s pretty easy to see the parallels between SEMs and ad agencies, but a little harder to understand the role of search engine optimizers, as they relate to the “free” search listings.

Search Engine Optimizers = Public Relations Firms
A search engine optimizer is actually very similar to a public relations firm in the offline world. Public relations firms try to get their clients mentioned in news stories and featured in print and broadcast media, i.e., they obtain “free” publicity. An SEO consultant attempts to get their client’s site listed highly in the “editorial” or “free” listings of the search engines. As with offline media, the editorial content (or listings) often carries more credibility with consumers.

Just as a public relations firm carefully writes press releases and formats them in a way that is favorable to the news media, a search engine optimizer adjusts the code and wording in a site to present it in the way that the search engines prefer to read it. A good SEO (just like a good PR firm) will create content that is interesting and useful, making it much more likely to be ranked well (or be newsworthy).

PR firms often act as image consultants as well, working with the company and its executives to make sure they present the best possible impression when meeting with the press. They make sure their message is consistent and in keeping with their brand, to help firmly cement the company’s image in the mind of the customer. A professional SEO often does the same thing for a site, making design or usability recommendations to ensure that once people arrive they will easily be able to find what they need.

Not All Search Engine Optimizers Are the Same
There are different kinds of SEOs, just as there are different kinds of PR firms. Some PR firms merely churn out press releases on a regular schedule. They spend their time faxing and following up on items that may or may not be newsworthy. They make very little attempt to be creative or find truly newsworthy events within the company — they simply send a regular stream of minor happenings out via press releases. They may even try to sneak releases past screening personnel or exaggerate the truth in order to get a mention in the media. Ineffective PR firms waste your money; an unethical one can even hurt your company’s image.

The parallel in the SEO industry is those SEOs that use deceptive practices to place their clients’ sites in the engines. One such tactic would be the use of software to churn out keyword-stuffed pages instead of attempting to improve the site itself. Another tactic would be showing search engines different content than a human visitor would see. These are strategies that work in the short term. But just as a newspaper editor will eventually start throwing out all of the low-value press releases from a company that has proved they don’t provide good content, a search engine will eventually do the same to pages using deceptive techniques and which don’t provide any value to site visitors. Eventually, those SEOs will find that their clients’ sites are penalized or banned.

Neither public relations nor search engine optimization are forms of black magic; anyone can learn what needs to be done to get a company noticed. There are PR companies who see the media as something to be manipulated, just as there are SEO companies who see the search engines that way. However, you’ll find that it’s much more productive when an SEO actually works with the search engines, rather than against them.

Scottie Claiborne is the owner of Right Click Web Services, a firm specializing in usability, search engine optimization, and internet marketing.

SEARCH ENGINE HEADLINES

Here are some of the latest headlines related to the search engine industry.

Overture Shifting To Default Broad Match
Within the next few weeks, Overture will make a major switch to matching terms on a broad basis, rather than the traditional exact match default it has followed since the company’s launch.

How Effective Is Your Keyword Research? {URL no longer available]
Keyword analysis can be performed on three levels: keyword research tools, web analytics software, and site search engines. Data-mining all three levels provides site owners with the full perspective of how target audiences
find the information on their Web sites.

Paid Search Growth May Slow
Advertisers will more than double spending on paid search to $5.5 billion in 2009 from $2.6 billion this year, but the annual growth rate will decelerate to 11 percent in 2009 from 65 percent in 2003, according to a report by Jupiter Research, due to be released on Monday.

CLOSING COMMENTS

That is all for today. I hope you had the opportunity to vote in the preliminaries today. I just got back from voting a little while ago. I’ll be glad after the November elections come and go as I am kind of getting sick of seeing all the political ads. I don’t watch too much television but even the little I see are filled with political ads galore!

Therefore on that subject, I would like to leave you with something that I came across yesterday that left me rolling on the floor laughing. It is a parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land” starring George W. Bush and John Kerry and can be found at Jib Jab. It pokes some fun at both of them so no matter which side of the fence you are on, it is sure to give you a laugh.

Until next time, have a great September!