Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Liberate Media make it on to the SEO BIGLIST
August 26th, 2008
The guys at Liberate Media always strive to give are community of readers something back in the form of honest and thought provoking commentary, the latest social media news and lots of others features from our writers Wendy McAuliffe, Lloyd Gofton, Tim Greenhalgh and Andy Merchant.
So it was nice to see somebody had recognised are hard work, in the form of the - BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 082508
This is what Lee Odden from the online marketing blog had to say:
Liberate Media Blog - This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.
As part of the list we get a big shiny badge to add to our site:
Thanks for reading the blog so far, we hope you enjoy it.
Watch this space for more exiting posts.
Dragons Den talks search engine optimisation (SEO)
July 29th, 2008
As a big fan of TV’s Drangons Den I tuned in to last nights weekly episode as usual, half way through the show a guy pitched for a company called Diamond Geezer, an online retailer of Diamonds. What happened next was a first for Dragons Den. Peter Jones wanted to know all about Diamond Geezers Google rankings and key words.
View the video to see how the conversation unfolded:
Just goes to show how (SEO) keywords and page ranking are now becoming an important mix of companies online strategy’s.
Will PRs and journalists own natural search?
July 23rd, 2008
You might say, “who cares?”, but for me this is a refreshing new angle on the ‘who owns online PR?’ discussion that has been going on within the social media industry for a while. Of course I’m going to like suggestions that PRs might be in line to own SEO, but setting my vested interests aside, this line of thought helps explain why it is crucial that journalists and PRs understand the long-term trends that are happening in natural search.
Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker made his own rather crude observations on the subject on Monday, in his overly optimised article, “Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it.” He doesn’t say anything new - online headlines have always been important for driving traffic and natural links, and the only difference is that journalists are waking up to the impact optimised copy can have on their authority and popularity rankings - but the article drives home the SEO control that journalists have at their fingertips, should they choose to use it intelligently.
Similarly, Leon Bailey Green has today contributed a post to the E-Consultancy blog entitled: “Is the role of the SEO dead and should PRs own natural search?“, where he argues “off-site optimisation, link building or link baiting, should actually be in the domain of PR professionals”. He concludes “so if a web developer can build a search engine friendly website, a content writer knows how to write search engine friendly copy and an online PR guru can get blogs/websites/forums to link to that content, where does that leave an SEO?”
Regardless of who might own SEO in the future, or whether anyone will, it’s becoming more and more important for PRs and journalists to have a basic understanding of how relevancy, authority and quality of content will increasingly be the metrics used by search engines to rank sites. In addition, social networks are in some cases beginning to displace search, by creating trusted networks of relevant recommendations - which will make the role that PR plays even more important.
The tactics of PR and journalism don’t necessarily need to change, but individuals working in these sectors will have to be very good at what they do.
Natural search can appear very scientific, and I personally am on a mission to understand the techniques as well as I can…but ultimately, PR as an industry needs to focus on the quality of its output. There’s no place for fakers!
Who holds the key to the future of online PR?
May 15th, 2008
There’s been a raging debate in the Liberate Media office over the last few days, the reasons for which will become clear soon. As a result, i thought i would share some thinking on one of the issues: Has the PR industry lost ownership of online PR?
In my opinion yes…but PR is regaining lost ground.
So why? Well i think it relates to a slow uptake of the basics of online PR, and i don’t mean by the few, i mean by the many…the PR industry as a whole. Going back a few years, when online PR was all about keywords and online distribution, the PR industry was slow to react. SEOs took the lead and as the experts in this field it made sense that they would. However, as online PR techniques became more mainstream and with the introduction of the social media press release, the PR industry, or certain factions at least, has finally got its act together.
However, the argument has moved on in this time, communicating via the social web demands more than just technical knowledge, it requires strategic thinking and an understanding of the fundamentals of open communications. This is where i feel the PR industry must step up.
Strategic thinking and a basic understanding of the fundamentals of communications should be where the PR industry is unmatched. No other marketing discipline has the background or the qualifications to match up. Furthermore, many of the key thinkers in the social media sector have PR or comms backgrounds, and social media and online PR should go hand-in-hand.
So why the delay? Why is the relevancy of online PR still being questioned? Why is knowledge still so low (as an industry)? Don’t get me wrong the trailblazers are doing a fine job, producing amazing work and sharing insightful thinking, but what about the masses? Is online PR still just seen as a nerdy thing for the tech team? Maybe.
Will we see a breakout group of PRs, SEOs and social media experts lead the sector away from PR - is it already happening? I think so.
PR professionals that are still under the illusion that they can survive without clearly understanding the online landscape, and even those that still see online as just a channel to reach a specific audience are going to have a rude awakening in the near future.