Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence Digital Marketing London 2011

Stephen James Lock @stevejlock

About Me

→ First exposure to SEO in 2003.

→ Worked with a number Internet start ups.

→ Part of the SEMPO Institute in the UK.

→ Worked with some of the World’s largest brands.

→ Currently SEO Product Marketing Manager for Analytics SEO an enterprise SaaS platform.

Overview

→ SEO overview / benefits.

→ SEO / social media convergence / social ranking factors.

→ Social media, PR & SEO convergence.

→ Blogging & Microblogging: the sweet spots.

→ Professional tips and advice from the trenches.

→ The future of search.

A Tough Crowd

Source: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features

SEO Overview

Social media is becoming

increasingly important, no

longer a “nice to have”

Identifying technical

barriers for the search engine

spiders is fundamental

Online promotion of websites and generating links

accounts for a large part of Google’s

algorithm

Selecting the right keywords is often

the most important part of digital

campaigns

Source: Rand Fishkin/SEOmoz.org

Benefits of SEO as a Channel

→ Highest ROI versus any other marketing activity (Forbes).

→ Direct benefits from campaign can recur for many years.

→ Organic traffic drives generally the highest quality visitors to websites.

→ You can optimise for brand terms that are trademarked.

Benefits of SEO as a Channel

→ Users trust websites that rank well in major search engines.

→ 46% of searches relate to products and services.

→ Over 70% of visits on the web come via SEO.

→ Over 90% of Internet users research products and services online.

Source: fancydressball.co.uk

Benefits of SEO as a Channel

Source: Marketing Sherpa

The Rise of The Smartphone

Source: Flurry Analytics

The Rise of The Smartphone

Source: Flurry Analytics

SEO & social media convergence

SEOmoz Ranking Factors

Source: SEOmoz.org

SEOmoz Ranking Factors

Source: SEOmoz.org

Tiger Blood + Social Media = #winning

PR’s evolution into digital

→ Brand communications “the conversation” has shifted online.

→ Communication channels are moving away from traditional media.

→ Social media has become a fundamental part of PR.

→ Economic pressure and the rise of blogging.

Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence

Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence

Blogging & Microblogging a.k.a. The Blogosphere

Blogging & Microblogging

→ Strong current themes across PR, SEO and social media.

→ Blogger outreach benefits all marketing channels.

→ Influential bloggers are often influential across multiple social media platforms inc. Twitter.

Blogging & Microblogging

→ Blogger outreach often can be the highest value individual process in a campaign.

→ Successful campaigns increase search engine visibility significantly.

→ Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM).

Pro Tips: Advanced Search Operators

Estimated over 1.9 million targets!

*Power Tip: Link Gopher for Firefox *Power Tip: http://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

Pro Tips: Buzz & Real Time Analytics

→ Google Alerts for generic industry terms and competitor analysis.

→ Real time analytics such as Clicky & Woopra for SEO / SM.

→ Google Reader / RSS feeds.

→ Google Trends & Google Insights. “Piggyback” trends e.g. royal wedding.

Pro Tip: Influencer Mapping

→ Google Blog Search & Google Profiles.

→ Twitter Search, Followerwonk.com, SocialMention.com & Postrank.com.

→ Industry associations & leading brands.

Pro Tip: Influencer Mapping

→ Thought leaders / authors.

→ Competitors: SEOmoz, Majestic SEO, Link Diagnosis, YSE.

→ Influencer research: who do they follow? who follows them? what do they write about? successful types of content?

Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach Process

*Power Tip: some campaigns may result in few links, yet key relationships can still be built from the process.

Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach

→ Ego hooks are effective. Build relationships (most important).

→ Don’t immediately ask for links / favours.

→ Transactional offerings e.g. free products to review.

→ Business development works well.

→ Guest blog posts are a great way to build links and generate the highest quality traffic.

*Power Tip: research and content creation can be outsourced, but warning please don’t try to outsource anything mission critical!

Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach

→ Leverage Twitter / LinkedIn / blog commenting.

→ Content that works: awards / interviews / research / surveys / link bait e.g. infographics, video, humour.

→ Read target blog recent posts to personalise outreach.

→ Invest time and resources in the highest value targets – 80/20 rule.

*Power Tip: research and content creation can be outsourced.

Source: garyfouse.blogspot.com

Pro Tips: Twitter

→ Focus on engagement and retweet / cite related content that is editorially strong.

→ Syndication & automation. Tools inc. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Followerwonk, Backtweets, FriendOrFollow, SocialOomph, TwitterFeed, Paper.li, Summify, TwitterCounter & Formulists.

→ Constant testing: variables such as scheduling posts at different times and tweeting the same tweets multiple times.

→ Build relationships, then ask the most influential people to follow you! IT SOUNDS STUPID, BUT IT WORKS!

*Power Tip: retweeting influencers is a great way to build relationships. DM requests also work a treat!

Pro Tips: Paid Services

→ SEOmoz

→ SEO Majestic

→ Analytics SEO

→ Hootsuite

→ PR Web

→ Paid social media advertising:, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Delicious, LinkedIn, YouTube etc.

Pro Tips: The Future of Search

→ ICANN brand signals e.g. ipad.apple to become unbeatable for ipad.

→ Brand authentication to become more sophisticated e.g. LinkedIn.

→ XML “author” microformat and rich snippets – schema.org.

Source: scifiscoop.com

Pro Tips: The Future of Search

→ Anchor text to decrease in value, with higher scrutiny.

→ Page loading speeds.

→ Data modelling / LDA & topic relevance to combat web spam.

→ Exact match domains to be less valuable.

→ Social media signals – “SocialRank” to match or overtake links within 24 months.

Source: slurmed.com

Thanks for listening… Slides: www.slideshare.net/stevejlock Twitter: @stevejlock / @analyticsseo Please use voucher code “ASEO5499” to trial 5 sites for £99…