Recently more than ever it has become more important that we as SEO’s have a broader knowledge of other marketing disciplines, and how to incorporate them into and overall marketing/search strategy. Two of the key synergies with SEO recently have been social and public relations and we have been lucky enough to get hold of Nichola Stott and Claire Thompson from SEO PR Training to answer some of your SEO/PR/Social related questions.
To ask a question simply leave a comment below and I will pass them onto the ladies at SEO PR Training and post the answers in a separate post.
I have included short bio’s of the panel below so you get some sort of idea of the questions they will be able to field, but don’t be afraid to ask anything at all.
Panel Bio’s
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Nichola Stott
Nichola Stott is a director and co-founder of theMediaFlow, a leading UK SEO, (search) and social media agency, specialising in devising creative online marketing strategies, with a scientific data-driven approach. Founded in May 2009, theMediaFlow has fast established an excellent reputation in this highly competitive space, with regular contributions to industry media, including Search Engine Watch, State of Search, econsultancy and SEO Chicks.
She was previously Head of UK Commercial Search Partnerships at Yahoo! a global Internet brand and one of the worlds’ largest online destinations; and during that time managed commercial search business and implementation on sites such as AutoTrader, MoneySupermarket, Orange, The Guardian, ITV and many more.
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Claire Thompson
Claire Thompson is the managing director of Waves PR, a company offering PR services to digital startups, technology and telecoms companies, and a founding director of SEO PR Training.
She founded and ran the UK’s first ethical PR consultancy, and retains a strong interest in good practise and continuous learning, which has resulted in the thupr meetup group – an informal forum for people to play with the digital tools that help PR.
It was through a thupr event that she first worked with Nichola Stott, an event intended to help grow PR people’s understanding of SEO.
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Question: how do you find good topics to write press releases about, especially in inherently 'boring' industries? We're often really struggling to find good newsworthy topics to write a solid press release for.
http://www.searchbloggers.co.uk/seo-pr-training-q…
How do the small business owners regain their lost ranking with effect of Google Panda update?
http://www.searchbloggers.co.uk/seo-pr-training-q…
How do the small business owners regain their lost ranking due to the affect of Google Panda update?
I'm working with a client that uses a PR agency that appends URLs a bit like this: http://clientsite.com/prtracking for 'tracking purposes' and includes them in their press releases.
I've asked them to stop – but they won't – can you come up with a workable solution for both parties?
Can you put this in context for us (anonymising, of course)? Is it in the main body of text or in the boilerplate (notes to editors?)
Hi Claire, just sent you a message…
For sites that carry lots of content but do not have particular keywords and phrases to target (for instance news sites), are they do's and dont's for building a 'base' which will just help in general?
Is there a good resource to find the best press release sites to submit to? Do you have a specific strategy for each industry? Which are the ones to go with / avoid each the time?
Alex, before we answer this: what do you mean by a press release site?
prweb etc etc. Are these "lame" attempts of PR getting mixed up with linkbuilding?
Hi everyone! Just to say thank you all for your really interesting questions. Claire has already answered the first from Barry Adams above in this post: http://www.searchbloggers.co.uk/seo-pr-training-q…
We will get to each question in turn over the coming week.
From a training perspective what challenges do you face when training someone who already knows PR (but not from an SEO point of view?). I'd imagine it presents a lot of challenges to get them away from old habbits if they are used to just working with print.