Google Intros the Mother of All SMB Review Monitoring Systems

Google has announced on the Google and Your Business blog today that they have rolled out what appears to be the mother of all review monitoring systems today. The system, a new module for the updated Places for Business Dashboard, not only shows Google based reviews to dashboard owners and managers, it shows every review […]

Google’s Matt Cutts: We Dropped The 100 Links Per Page Guideline But We May Take Action If It Is Too Spammy

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why Google no longer has that 100 links per page Webmaster guideline. In fact, the guideline was dropped well before 2008 but SEOs and webmasters still think having over 100 links on a page is something that may lead to a penalty. The truth is,…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google Trusted Stores Now Integrates With AdWords, Shows StellaService Ratings In US

Today Google formally announced several updates for Google Trusted Stores, the free ratings service Google launched in 2011, just ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. AdWords Seller Ratings Integration Google Trusted Stores is now among the services that help to power seller ratings, which show…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Managing Advanced Link Building Campaigns

trelloThe link graph has always been a core part of Google’s search ranking algorithm. Even though the popularity of its importance led to the growth of web spam, Google still keeps on finding ways to make it more difficult to manipulate search rankings through unnatural linking behaviors.

Penguin updates and the unnatural link manual penalties just prove how important links are (and they’ll probably remain very vital in the future), as it is somehow addressing businesses to finally get over the old ways of gaming search.

The post Managing Advanced Link Building Campaigns appeared first on Kaiserthesage.

Covario Named 2013 Search Agency Of The Year By OMMA Third Year In A Row

OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertisting) Magazine has named Covario the 2013 search agency of the year for the third consecutive year. According to a release posted on the agency’s website, Covario was recognized for, “its ‘smarter approach’ to delivering…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

White Ribbon On Google’s Homepage Helps Raise Awareness For UN’s Campaign To End Violence Against Women

Today’s white ribbon on Google’s homepage is in support of the United Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The ribbon image links to the www.UNWomen.org End Violence Against Women webpage, offering visitors a brief overview of the…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Organize Content Development with the (Free) Editorial Calendar Plugin

I certainly wasn’t looking for an editorial calendar for WordPress because it never occurred to me that one would exist. But somehow I stumbled across the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin (free). And I’m loving this plugin as an individual blogger. But before I get into the details of this particular plugin and how I use […]

The post Organize Content Development with the (Free) Editorial Calendar Plugin appeared first on Sugarrae.

Native Advertising Represents A New Search Frontier

With both Google and the Federal Trade Commission (and possibly other groups) warning publishers and advertisers against creating consumer confusion through “native advertising”, “advertorials”, or “guest content”, a lot of big publishers are pushing their native ads into the Dark Web. The Dark Web consists of those uncrawlable regions that search engines cannot or choose not to reach. Some native advertising is creative and entertaining enough to merit its own audience. Just as TV commercials can become wildly popular with viewing audiences, online advertising can stir discussion and build up loyal followings. But how are consumers to find all this native advertising? Brand loyalty will help surface some of the content through social media connections but presently there is no general purpose search tool available that allows consumers to look for all the native advertising their favorite brands publish. You have to rely on site search at the major publisher Websites, and if they are using a Google Custom Search Engine but blocking Google through robots.txt then you won’t find the native advertising. YouTube and Pinterest have proven beyond question that people search for and share commercial advertising. What’s more, some YouTube channels republish vintage and recent TV and radio […]

SEO is now PR, but are PR agencies still not ready?

A majority of those marketers, 61%, said they do not have sufficient SEO knowledge in house, so it’s no surprise they are relying on agency expertise. But it seems that many PR agencies are still playing catch up, and are potentially underserving their clients. 

SEO as a PR service offering

This suspicion is based on what PR agencies have told us ourselves through their most powerful tool to offer SEO as a service. 

Our research partner Retortal has a huge index of websites in the UK, and crawled the sites for those with ‘PR’ in their home page title, concluding that those sites were primarily companies offering PR services.

They then crawled those sites found, looking for the term ‘SEO’ anywhere on the site, the assumption being that if they were offering SEO as a service that they’d have the sense to mention it on their website somewhere. 

A mere 26% were found to have any mention of SEO, leaving 74% that don’t. We can assume that these sites fall into two categories of PR company; those that do offer SEO services but have failed to implement basic SEO practice on their own site in mentioning it, and those that just don’t offer it at all.

If you ask me, either mistake is pretty heinous. 

Is SEO a separate PR service? 

One response to this could be, if PR and SEO are the same thing, why do PR agencies even need to offer SEO as a separate service? As a PR agency that does offer SEO as a service to clients, it’s a question we’ve come across.  

The simple response is that an agency sells expertise and time, and SEO is more of both. Especially when it involves extensive site audits, on-site changes and keyword research, the more technical bits of SEO that are less closely related to PR. 

But taking a step back, the fundamental difference is to do with objectives. The objective of SEO is ultimately to drive more quality traffic to the website. That can be a PR objective, but more ordinarily PR’s remit is further up the funnel, generating awareness of a business, brand or person, or more generally managing the public perception of them. 

Thinking of the two as services and the buying process of a potential client, offering the two as separate services is essential because buyers do not first think in terms of services, they think in terms of problems and objectives. This means – 

  • “I’d like more quality organic search traffic to my website, so I need SEO.”
  • OR “I’d like more people to be aware of my business, or to solve a particular perception problem, so I need PR.”

Perhaps in time this may change, but at the moment that is the common buying thought process, as born out by the fact that searches for ‘PR agency’ and searches for ‘SEO agency’ are continuing to converge. And while that is the case, PR agencies not offering SEO services are going to fall behind. 

EML Wildfire has launched a free downloadable guide to SEO-charging your PR activity