Search Engine Optimization and Social Media are no longer distinct channels. They are forever intertwined, each affecting the other in terms of how digital information is discovered, consumed and shared. The subsequent impact on reach and engagement means the integration of these channels is as relevant for Public Relations as it is for Marketing.
I was asked by Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search Marketing at Digitas to give a presentation on holistic SEO at ad:tech San Francisco where I caught up with another amazingly smart friend, Susan Bratton. She recorded an interview with me on the Social & SEO for Public Relations topic for her popular DishyMix podcast and shared the transcript with me to repost.
Be sure to sign up for SES San Francisco mid August to see Susan give the opening keynote. In the meantime, read on for our discussion about SEO and Social Media or listen to to full interview on DishyMix:
At the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, TopRank’s CEO Lee Odden presented on how companies can drive more web site traffic through news optimization. NVI Solutions caught up with him to talk more about the intersection of Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Online Public Relations in this video interview:
The audio on this interview is pretty low, so you’ll need to turn it up a bit. The one downside to a Flipcam
At the WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, TopRank’s CEO Lee Odden presented several times including a standing room only session on the intersection of search marketing and social media. Moderated by ex Googler Vanessa Fox, the panel included Odden, Tony Adam, Bill Hartzer and David Wallace.
Mike McDonald of WebProNews and his trusty videographer Travis, caught up with Odden after the session for the following interview. In it they discuss examples of how social media can be used to advance search engine visibility goals and how SEO can be used to grow social networks.
TopRank will be conducting a 2-day social media and SEO workshop in New York Dec 1-2 in conjunction with the national Direct Marketing Association. The following week, TopRank will be presenting on a panel at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago on how companies can optimize their blogs for better search engine traffic.
Where does real-time marketing fit within an online advertising and social media marketing mix? Below is a video interview with Mike McDonald of WebProNews at Search Engine Strategies San Jose that starts to answer that question. The interview took place just before TopRank CEO Lee Odden moderated a ClickZ panel focusing on the same topic that included: Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati; Steve Grove, Vice President at YouTube, Martin Green, COO at Meebo and Ricardo Guerrero, founder of Stwittergy.
There’s a lot to be said about the topic of marketing real-time including the fact that in many ways, marketers have been marketing “in the now” through search and other types of online advertising for years. What’s new are efforts to leverage insight from connections between social media networks to deliver relevant ads. The notion of leveraging the social graph for delivering relevant ads was highlighted recently in an excellent article by David Berkowitz in Media Post: “The Social Graph Ad Targeting Buyer’s Guide“.
TopRank CEO Lee Odden Interviewed by Jiyan Wei of Vocus on WebmasterRadio.FM "Cover Story"
Public relations is enjoying both an evolution and a renaissance.
While traditional media outlets have been steadily shrinking, sources of online news and information have been exponentially growing.
Digital public relations, which has developed from this interesting paradigm, is an inclusive blend of both traditional push PR tactics and pull marketing tactics inherent with search engine optimization. In a very real sense, digital public relations can serve both a PR objective of securing coverage, and a marketing objective of achieving inquiries and sales.
Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank® Online Marketing, was recently interviewed by Jiyan Wei of PRWeb for the Webmaster Radio program, “Cover Story” on Push and Pull Public Relations.
In the interview, Odden described how businesses can leverage digital public relations to both build exposure with online and offline journalists as well as generate inquiries from directly from end consumers.
When viewed strategically, social media is at its heart “opportunistic marketing”.
At last month’s SXSW Interactive conference, a component of the legendary music, film and interactive festival dedicated to the coolest new media technologies, Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank® Online Marketing, detailed the benefits of strategic social medial in a podcast with Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media. You can listen to or read full transcribed interview with Susan here.
In the interview, Odden coupled his strategic social media recommendation to Bratton’s listeners with a warning to avoid jumping directly into social media tactics.
“[Many businesses] will read in an article or hear at a conference, oh, Facebook’s a hot thing, Twitter’s hot, so, hey – somebody go set up Facebook and Twitter accounts,” states Odden. “Unfortunately, this siloed and segmented approach doesn’t tie into the overall brand objective.”
Lee Odden and Chris Brogan Discuss Social Media for Business at PubCon South
Webmasterwworld PubCon conferences are among the longest-running educational and networking events dedicated to search engine marketing.
PubCon South, which was held this month in Austin, Texas, featured sessions focused heavily on social media best practices, including numerous sessions on Twitter. Social media topics were equally mixed with cutting edge insight on pay per click, search engine optimization and public relations.
Deeply ingrained in the social media marketing mix was TopRank® Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden who presented on three panels, two of which centered on social media related topics.
The last session of the day featured a keynote panel, or “Super Session” moderated by conference organizer Brett Tabke and including Chris Brogan, Lee Odden, Wayne Sutton and Reem Abeidoh. Odden joined Chris Brogan to offer further detail on how to leverage social media tactics to achieve business objectives. Watch Lee and Chris’s video interview with WebProNews here.
Website Magazine recently published an interview with TopRank CEO Lee Odden on blogging, microblogging and the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose:
TopRank, a Minneapolis, Minnesota search marketing agency is truly one of the best when it comes to natural SEO, social media marketing and new media PR. Website Magazine contributor Dante Monteverde quizzed TopRank’s CEO Lee Odden recently (a sample is below) on the keys to driving blog readership, the efficacy of micro-blogging, and what attendees of SES San Jose can expect from his session titled “SEO Through Blogs & Feeds.”
Why should a website start a blog? Would you justify starting a blog for purely SEO reasons?
“As for adding a blog to a web site in the commonly understood definition, it really depends on a number of factors: Does the company have something useful/meaningful to say? Are there staff within the company that actively read industry blogs? Can resources be dedicated to the blog on an ongoing basis? (IT, writing and editorial, monitoring, marketing, PR). A company should not bother with a blog if they answer no.”
In the lead up to the SES Toronto conference, TopRank’s CEO Lee Odden was interviewed by Canadian blogger and “new media maverick” Rahaf Harfoush on search engine optimization, social media trends and Twitter.
The social media space is becoming quite saturated as companies begin to introduce social networking platforms and corporate blogs. How does the increase of activity in this space affect someone’s online strategy?
“At first glance, the array of options can be very intimidating to a company that wants to get into the social media space as a way to grow brand awareness and revenue.”
“The important first step is to get involved as a participant and work to understand the way social communities and blogs work from a user perspective.”
TopRank’s CEO Lee Odden was interviewed during Search Engine Strategies in London by Adriana Iordan of Avangate on how ecommerce and software companies can benefit from holistic online marketing through SEO, PR and digital asset optimization.
Adriana: From your experience, what are the biggest mistakes you come across when it comes to PR online? Lee: Thinking that optimizing and submitting a press release all by itself is enough to get covered by the media, because it’s not. There is an expression, in the US at least, doing something to only see if it works it’s like “throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks”, it’s kind of a silly thing to do.
Read the full Lee Odden interview at Avangate. TopRank provides a holistic mix of SEO, PR and social media marketing services to Fortune 500 companies.
When viewed strategically, social media is at its heart “opportunistic marketing”.
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