A look at Blogging as a PR Strategy
Search engine optimization (SEO) marketing is becoming increasingly sophisticated, but people are still making very basic mistakes. The fundamentals that were true 5 years ago are still true today. Create a well structured site that is easy for search engines to crawl, add fresh, themed content on an ongoing basis and never stop attracting incoming links from relevant resources. Think of search engine optimization as a long term commitment and don't get distracted by short term tricks.
Google will continue to dominate for some time. You will be foolish to ignore it irrespective of your line of business. Google's percentage of mind share is really unmatched in the search industry. Yahoo has a loyal following and many more registered users, Ask.com has made significant improvements, particularly with blog search. The effect of Google's dominance has been the creation of a wide variety of very useful tools and services for users. I do wonder if there may come a time where Google will become too big and pervasive. Hopefully the competition can avoid that happening as the more quality search options there are, the better it is for users and the marketplace.
Blog entries may be removed from main search engine listings and only listed in blog searches. Most consumers don't know the difference between a blog and a web site. Most of my customers refer to this blog as a website. In fact, an increasing number of companies are using blog software as their web site content management system (CMS). Therefore, I think removing blog entries entirely from search results will reduce the quality of user experience to some degree. At the same time, there is a big problem with blog spam. Particularly with blogs that are automatically created by the thousands for the purpose of generating AdSense revenue. Removing those types of blogs from regular search results and only listing them in a blog search engine may improve search results quality, but it does not solve the problem of blog spam.
I like what Ask.com is doing with their new blog and feed search service. Blog search is offered as an option right along with news, local and image search. That way the searcher can use the same interface for search. Rather than trying to spider all blogs on the web, the Ask.com blog and feed search engine only includes blogs that have been subscribed to within Bloglines. That will stem quite a bit of the blog spam.
There's a lot of useful information on blogs and hopefully the search engines can find a way to package that information in a way that maintains regular search results quality. SEO / blogging seems to be a close-knit community (despite being all over the world) - how do you make sure the ideas are communicated to a wider audience, especially to non-technical business people who need to benefit from these techniques? Syndication to online publications with more of a mass market audience is one way of reaching a wide audience about SEO.
Blogging has certainly caught the attention of the media and the growth in corporate blogging seems to prove that it is rapidly being accepted as hugely important to managing online reputation. Corporate blogging is on the rise, but most executives are far from accepting it . There's a long way to go in making blogging a standard part of a corporate communication and public relations strategy. Most businesses still treat blogging as an experiment.
Tune-Up Many publications run product reviews, tests, comparisons and recommendations. Aim to get your product/services included in as many as possible. One sure way is through creating about them in a blog. Joseph Reriani - PR Consultant
This article is part of Joseph Reriani's "PR Tune-up Blog" newsletter posted to over 6,000 subscribers weekly. The newsletter was first published in 2002. For more articles and PR tune-up tips, please visit www.PrudentPressAgency.com and www.SkyNewswire.com. Joseph Reriani is a PR expert and Fellow with the Chartered Institute of Public Relations- United Kingdom. He is the President/CEO of Prudent International Inc and Executive Editor of Prudent Press Agency. He is also an Assistant Editor of SkyNewswire.com directed by Jackie Mugambi . He is a trained journalist and specializes in helping businesses, organizations, and individuals improve their public image by effectively employing the power of public relations. Mr Reriani can be reached at jreriani @ PrudentPressAgency.com. You may freely copy and re-publish this article without altering any part in the body.
No comments:
Post a Comment