Back in 2002, when I was graduating as a Journalist in Brazil, I had never heard of the acronym SEO, let alone ever being taught about how to apply Journalism in Search Engine Optimization. I don’t know if in Europe it was different, but in 2002 we were just burying the last typewriters in my country. I just wonder if the new generation of journalists leaving university are less oblivious about SEO than I was when graduated.
I work as SEO for an Online English School doing Link Building for their Brazilian website. They have an outsourced agency in Brazil with a team of journalists working with them as Public Relations. Recently, when I rang the agency to ask for the news releases and articles they have about our company, I realised perhaps journalists are still oblivious. The PR representative who spoke to me confirmed. “Yes, we have plenty of articles”, and after my next question she replied “Optimised for websites…? Keywords…? Hummm, no, we don’t do it here”.
So it seems the case that the company is sending articles to the media without being optimised with our keywords and thus we might be losing some good opportunities when they get published online. The articles she sent to me are, in my opinion, unattractive to Journalists. Lastly, how can she write interesting, fresh content about the company when she is so far from where the news happens, here in London?
So here are some ideas that could be implemented in the companies to get the website linked more often and by better websites and blogs, using PR jobs.
For Public Relations people working with or as SEO:
Find the news in your company
Google doesn’t like press-releases. Nor do I and I am pretty sure you don’t either. Articles advertising the company full of adjectives, like “the best” or “the biggest” are very unlikely to be published in respected websites. So, what to write about?
The big challenge is to find what is new. It could be something like a new CEO or a big manager being hired, for example. A note about the new company acquisition or an interview with this person could be interesting for career and work related websites. Is your company launching a new blog and getting into social media? In this case it could be news for technology and SEO websites. Online and offline media live for news, they will be thankful if you offer them some fresh, interesting content.
Create News
No news in the company? Well then you must create some, and no I am not telling you to make things up! You could promote events or surveys between customers and employees. You can also research into who is buying more of the company’s product: men or women, teenagers or adults? Any change in audience and sales? You will then have some statistics to get together and will be able to analyse possible patterns from them. The media world loves to know about market tendency.
Optimise your articles
Before writing an article you must have a list of the keywords. Try to insert, nicely and naturally, as many of them as possible – mainly adding them in the title and in the first paragraphs, but don’t overdo it. Check some tips about it here. Your job is not only about promoting the brand, but also promoting the company’s website for a Search Engine. To get a link in a good website is your goal.
For CEOs:
Give the PR people information and authority
Allow PR people to have access to information. In big companies it is not so easy. In the company I work at, the big decisions are taken in London. We also have marketing departments in Shanghai and Brazil. The PR person I spoke with works for an outsourced agency in Brazil and the information she gets has been filtered many times before it arrives to her. It’s up to them to decide what is news, so they should be amongst the first people to know.
Create an intranet
Give voice to all the employees in the company. One way would be the use of an intranet or Google Wave where people can share varied information about the market, the company, general news, weather, happy hours and so on. Everyone should be encouraged to participate. PR people could have a good source of news coming from employees and it would be a good way of improving your endomarketing.
Have a Media Section in your site
Add a Media Section in the company’s website. Feed it every day with press releases, videos, testimonials and articles – everything optimised with the keywords. It will be positive for the SEO and it could be a source for media journalists looking for news. Check this article about it.
Create a blog and get the PR people to participate
Create a company’s blog with interesting content for the public and get the experts to post there. In case of a design company, for example, the designers would be responsible for the posts with tips and ideas for the customers. Use the style seen in SEOMOZ blog, where each post has the picture and name of the author. Your employees will thus build their images as professionals and your website will get traffic.
A PR’s job here could be to contribute with posts about the company and the market, moderate comments and correct misspellings or grammatical problems from other employees. They could also promote the blog on bookmarking websites like Digg and Delicious.
CEO, SEO and PR people should work together for optimised news releases (CEOs can even do social media!). Team work is not only good for the sake of the company, but also the best way to get the website in a better ranking.
PS: From the first paragraph you can see that English is not my first language, so give a discount and be kind when you comment my first post ever in SEOMOZ. Obrigada!
