Online Reputation Management and Social Media

In last week’s post, I referred to the issue of receiving negative feedback online. This brings about the topic of online reputation management. It’s an emerging practice that combines search marketing and traditional public relations, and allows them to work together to monitor and promote a positive image for a company on the Web.

The increasing importance of online reputation management is a result of the social media boom. Checking and managing every social media outlet on a daily basis would be impossible, but there are a few tools that can help. RSS feeds, blog search engines, and search engine alerts are all good ways to keep an eye on the conversation. If negative comments are being made, don’t be afraid to join the discussion. Try and answer the questions people are asking, thank them for the information and, most importantly, let them know the company is listening. Another way to deal with negative press online is to get as much of the search landscape for your company name as possible. Owning the space can help to push any negative stuff down in the search results. This can be done by doing some pay-per-click advertising to show up in the sponsored search area, creating another Web site, making a MySpace page, or getting a Wikipedia listing.

Here are some examples of how a company has done a good and bad job with monitoring their online reputation. First the bad: Target recently received negative press on a blog for a billboard that some deemed explicit. Target responded to the blogger with an email stating they will not participate in non media outlets because traditional publications help them focus on their core guest. The blogger posted this email with even more rage. It then spread virally to numerous blogs and resulted in far more negative online PR for Target. The simple way to have avoided all of this would have been to join the blogger’s conversation in their medium and state that they were sorry that the billboard was seen as offensive, it was meant to be a snow angel. Guarantee that the issue would have stopped there and that the blogger may have even wrote a positive post about how well they handled it. Now the good: When a Google search for Target Corporation is done the entire first page is filled with positive Target brand material. Most of these positive results were actually created by Target. Very few large brands can claim that their first results page is all positive. This is a great job on their part.

Holly

Linking=Building your relevancy

So for all of you who guessed linking would be this week’s topic, you get a gold star. Link building is another essential aspect of search engine optimization (SEO). The number and relevancy of links that a site has affects how a search engine will rank it. Linking can and should be both internal and external for a site.

Internal links can be found on any page within a site and lead to different pages on that site. They show extreme relevancy, promote usability to consumers, and help lead the search engine spiders through the site. External links connect different sites or sources on the Internet to one another. The goal is getting external sites to link to the site being worked with. These links offer some of the greatest weight in where a site will rank in the search engines.

However, this does not justify recruiting links from as many sites as possible. The relevancy of the links is just as important (if not more) as the number of links. A highly relevant link would offer the physical link and also a connection to a site’s topic. This is why directories are a great place to get external links. Directories are broken down into very specific categories and can even offer geographic locations. For example, a public relations firm in Minneapolis receiving a link in a directory under public relations firms>Minnesota>Minneapolis is about as relevant as you could ask for. Another determinate of relevancy is the type of URL. Any URL that ends in an .edu or .gov has had to be verified as an educational institution or government organization. No other URL has to be verified, so this alone gives them a greater relevancy within a search engine. Links from sources like these can offer a great impact on a site and offer more “link juice” than 100 unrelated links. It is also important to remember that a link from highly respected and trafficked sites such as CNN.com can have a similar impact.

Creating a link building campaign can help to increase a site’s ranking in the search engines. Determine internal and external links that seem to fit and go to work. Be creative, but a word of warning: when contacting someone about a link, remember each contact situation is different. Be sure to understand the culture behind the site. Nothing can destroy a link building campaign faster than some negative feedback instead of a link. This results in a whole other issue which will be covered in next week’s post.

Have a good one and Happy Valentines Day!

Holly

Keyword Research: Finding the Right Terms

In the land of search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations the phrase “Content is King” is familiar and lived-by. However, in public relations the focus is on having the “Right Content,” while in SEO having the “Right Content” is fueled by having the “Right words.”

Keyword research is at the core of any SEO project. It’s a process that involves the analysis of numerous terms and phrases to determine what words the public is using to attempt to find you (and your competitors) when searching online. Doing Google or Yahoo searches for terms related to the site or topic, asking a client or friends for phrases that come to mind, and analyzing a competitor’s site for different words they are using, can all help to get a base of words to try. Then, there are keyword research tools such as the Google AdWords Keyword tool which is free and allows you to put in some of these words or phrases, hit a button, and get different terms related to the ones you typed in. This provides useful information about how many times the terms were searched and lends insight into what the “Right Words” may be. This tool is obviously not the only one. Working at an advertising agency, I have access to a variety of fee-based SEO research tools that give me different types of information about the effectiveness of each term. It is important to remember that it is always helpful to have a trained SEO eye look at the research to get the best possible output.

This is how you find the RIGHT words. One of the biggest misconceptions is that people think they already KNOW the right words. Often times, people in an industry speak much differently than the general public. One of my favorite examples of this is ad agency versus advertising agency.

In my mind I think people would search for ad agency more than advertising agency-however, this is not the case. After doing keyword research, I found that advertising agency is searched for about 4 times more than ad agency. Why would this be? The very simple reason is that people in the advertising industry call it an ad agency and the general public calls it by the more formal advertising agency. I have seen this type of thing happen in basically every industry you can think of. It is all about finding those words that the average person thinks apply to your site, not necessarily the industry jargon that is thrown around an office.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have. And just for fun, there will be bonus points to anyone who can figure out what next weeks topic is based upon the hints throughout this post.

Have a great week,
Holly

SEO 101 - Coming next week

Holly Matson answered my call to arms and will be writing a 4 part series on "SEO 101". I will be posting it for her every Tuesday beginning next week. Here is her quick intro and look forward to her pieces for the next several weeks.

Hello to all the loyal readers of MNPR and to those stopping in for the first time.

My name is Holly Matson and I will be writing a 4 part blog series for MNPR called “SEO 101.” These posts will give a little insight into some basic Search Engine Optimization practices with special
interest in how SEO can be integrated into PR.

I am a University of Minnesota: Curtis L. Carlson School of Management Alum that was a transplant from the Black Hills of South Dakota. I took to “city life” almost instantly and now proudly call Minneapolis home.

I work at Risdall Marketing Group http://www.risdall.com in New Brighton as the Online Visibility Specialist for its Search Marketing division. My position with Risdall is where I have acquired much of the SEO knowledge I will be sharing with you over the next 4 weeks.

In my free time I love to spend time with my friends, watch movies, go to the gym, read magazines, cook, and attempt to stay current on all things Social Media related (post 3 in the series will explain more about Social Media).

Stay Warm and Happy Blogging
Holly