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PR in a Web 2.0 World: GettingFound in All the Right Places

Jamie O’DonnellCo-Founder, SEO-PR

Web Builder 2.0

How do we capitalize on the uniqueopportunities Web 2.0 presents?

• According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project,50 million people get news online on a typical day.

• Yahoo! News and Google News are in the top 10 USnews and media Web sites.

• Millions view videos or listen to podcasts daily.• According to Pew Internet & American Life Project more

than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17use online social networking sites.

• Technorati reports that 100,000 new blogs are createddaily, and 65,000 new videos are uploaded daily toYouTube.

Are you leveraging digital assetsacross all of these opportunities?

• Astute marketers and public relationsprofessionals combine these media in theirmedia relations and marketing efforts.

• They are getting more attention for their newsand creating additional traffic-driving sources fortheir websites.

• Are you leveraging the value of your digitalassets across all of these opportunities?

• If you are not, you may be missing potentialtraffic.

How do you increase your site’straffic, sales and overall ROI?

• Optimizing pressreleases for GoogleNews

• Optimizing videos forYouTube

• Optimizing RSS feedsfor Google Blog Search

• Optimizing photos forGoogle Image Search

http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/training.html

Impact of Google Universal Searchbigger than Florida Update of 2003

• “Google is undertaking themost radical change to itssearch results ever,introducing a ‘UniversalSearch’ system that willblend listings from its news,video, images, local andbook search engines amongthose it gathers fromcrawling web pages.”

Source: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land, May 16, 2007

Read David Bailey’s “An Insider’sView of Google Universal Search”

• “If users are going to rely onthe main search box fortheir vertical-search needs,it had better do a decent jobof finding those results.With our infrastructure,we’ve taken a big leapforward in this department,and in turn this hasfacilitated some interestinguser interface changes.”

Source: Google’s David Bailey, Search Engine Land, Aug. 31, 2007

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Images in Universal Search resultschange our eye scanning patterns

Source: Enquiro Research, Aug. 16, 2007

Google bought YouTube – not TheNew York Times – for $1.65 billion

Source: Susan Mernit’s Blog, Oct. 9, 2006

9.4 billion out of 13 billion searchesconducted at core search entities

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Ask.com

AOL Search

eBay

MapQuest

MySpace

Live Search

YouTube

Yahoo! Search

Google

Core search entity Expanded search entity

Source: comScore, Oct. 18, 2007

If you Googled Mitt Romney lastmonth, news results ranked #4

Source: Google, Oct. 31, 2007

If you searched for Mitt Romney onYahoo, news results were on top

Source: Yahoo! Search, Oct. 31, 2007

If you used Live Search, top newsarticles for Mitt Romney ranked #1

Source: Live Search, Oct. 31, 2007

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If you searched for Mitt Romney onYouTube, you saw negative videos

Source: YouTube, Oct. 31, 2007

If you Googled Zipcar last week,news results for Zipcar ranked #4

Source: Google, Oct. 31, 2007

If you searched Yahoo for Zipcar,you saw the typical 10 blue links

Source: Yahoo! Search, Oct. 31, 2007

If you used Live Search, top newsarticles for Zipcar were ranked #1

Source: Live Search, Oct. 31, 2007

If you searched YouTube forZipcar, you saw positive videos

Source: YouTube, Oct. 31, 2007

If you Googled Jonathan Papelbondance, then news results ranked #1

Source: Google, Oct. 31, 2007

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In Yahoo, videos of the JonathanPapelbon dance ranked #1 and #3

Source: Yahoo! Search, Oct. 31, 2007

On Live Search, top news articles#1 for Jonathan Papelbon dance

Source: Live Search, Oct. 31, 2007

Obviously, videos of the JonathanPapelbon dance found in YouTube

Source: YouTube, Oct. 31, 2007

How does universal search impactweb search engine optimization?

• “Search marketers mustunderstand that thesupremacy of web pagesearch just took a major hit.Web pages will still drawtraffic – still plenty of traffic.But vertical searchdatabases offer whatremains a largelyunexplored and ignoredfrontier. Pay attention tothem, at Google andelsewhere.”

Source: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land, May 16, 2007

How does Universal Search impact“the tactic known as SEO PR”?

• “One can’t help but noticethat if Greg Jarboe hadgone to Google anddesigned UniversalSearch himself he likelycouldn’t have designed it(better) to play into hisstrength areas in newsand PR related issues.”

Source: David Dalka, Creating Revenue and Retention, Aug. 21, 2007

Search remains #1 way journalistsobtain additional story information

Sources: Google News, July 19, Forbes, July 19, and Information Week, July 23, 2007

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Media relations should be focusedon the top Google News sources

• Press releases don’tappear in universalsearch results

• But news articles andblog posts cangenerate 20 to 40times more websitetraffic and sales leadsthan press releases

Sources: Newsknife, Oct. 3, 2007

Journalists say visuals importantand 41% say it dictates content

• 90% of journalists saythat visuals aresomewhat or veryimportant to them

• 41% say that visualscould dictate their content

• “A release e-mailed witha jpg or tif file has a muchbetter chance of making itinto our newspaper,” saidone editor

Source: Bennett & Company’s 16th Annual Media Survey, August 15, 2006

Google News has started to indexvideo as well as news and images

Source: Google News, Oct. 30, 2007

SEO-PR asked to provide some“SEO guidance” on Aug. 7, 2006

• With a compelling storyand a broadcast deal withABC News, the editors atThe Christian ScienceMonitor knew their onlinemultimedia package,“Hostage: The Jill CarrollStory,” would generate alot of visitor traffic

• But, even they weresurprised by exactly howmuch and from whom

Source: SEO-PR, Monday, Aug. 7, 2006

In early August, “Jill Carroll” hadn’tbeen search term for three months

Source: Google Trends, Sept. 7, 2006

Optimizing press release requiredadding “Jill” and “Christian Science”

Source: The Christian Science Monitor, Friday, Aug. 11, 2006

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We posted video to YouTube andadded multimedia to news release

Sources: YouTube and Business Wire, Friday, Aug. 11, 2006

Optimized press release still topranked two days after it went out

Source: Yahoo News, Aug. 13, 2006

Before universal search, GoogleOneBox results displayed news

Source: Google, Aug. 13, 2006

We pitched The Huffington Post,Boing Boing and other bloggers

Sources: The Huffington Post and Boing Boing, Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006

We pitched the human editors ofboth Yahoo! News and AOL News

Sources: Yahoo News and AOL News, Monday, Aug. 14, 2006

In first 24 hours, we generated over247 news stories about “Jill Carroll”

Source: Google News Archives, Sunday, Aug. 13 to Monday, Aug. 14, 2006

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In first 24 hours, we generated over1,014 blog posts about “Jill Carroll”

Source: Google Blog Search Archives, Sunday, Aug. 13 to Monday, Aug. 14, 2006

We helped generate record trafficto Christian Science Monitor site

• More than 450,000 unique visitors flooded siteon Monday, Aug. 14– During first 2 days of series, number of new visitors to

site rose to more than 7 times daily average in July– Nearly 90% of visitors came from US, with Canadians

and the British also showing strong interest• Page views broke through 1 million mark on

Monday, Aug. 14– Soared to nearly 1.6 million page views on Tuesday– This represented massive increase from site’s July

average of 121,247 page views per day

Source: WebSideStory, Aug. 17, 2006

42.8 times more traffic from searchengines and blogs than ABC News

CNN.comBookmarks or directly

referred URLsYahooGoogleAOLHuffington PostBoing BoingMSNABC News

Source: WebSideStory, Aug. 13 through 28, 2006

Market Motive will be offering atutorial on universal search soon

http://www.marketmotive.com/

Newsforce offers an “automated”press release optimization system

http://www.newsforce.com/

You could contact some SEO PRexperts to help with big launches

• SEO-PR has beennamed to Who’s Who inSEO Experts by LarryChase’s Web Digest forMarketers

• SEO-PR has won theGolden Ruler Award fromthe Institute for PublicRelations for “using newmedia and newtechniques to tie publicrelations to sales”

http://www.seo-pr.com/