Link Your Site Before You Launch It

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How to generate traffic

Sometimes it is difficult to explain to pr clients how to get more traffic to a company’s web site in these short blogs. The reason is that it takes more than just a few keywords or phrases embedded into the HTML codes. It requires a plan to get fully indexed and recognized by search engines (SEO).

For those of you who understand the behind-the-scenes, and for those who have a fair knowledge of web marketing, then this is for you.

Before launching your new web site, or your updated site, you need to make sure the following has been completed.

  • First, make sure your domain name is registered, or renewed
  • Review your home page and the other key pages, these could be up to 5 or 6 different pages
  • Make links to your page with other high ranking pages that are already indexed. This will give your site immediate recognition by the search engines
  • Develop a PR campaign with releases on your site. These can be releases that have been distributed to the media
  • START A BLOG SITE! Not that I haven’t said this a few times before, but a blog site with your company web site will build high rankings with search bots as they crawl the different sites and your links
  • Make sure you write articles that are relevant about your company, the products or services you offer. Write articles about topics that you can later submit to other Ezines

One last item for this blog. Get links from other indexed sites to your company site. That completes the cycle.

If you need help with web marketing, give us a call.

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Write Press Releases With Links

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Build your image with SEO’s

Writing a press release is one part of building visibility with the media. Now you need to use the power of the Internet. Make the press release relevant to your site.

To do this, you need to add links that are relevant to your site and to the names of companies or people that are mentioned in the press release.

Although there is a mix of opinions about using links with press releases, it will add a lot of power to your visibility. How? Because the more relevant links you have, the better your position will be when people type keywords to find a product or company that offers what you do.

Don’t go wild and place a dozen links in the body of the text. This will be both annoying to the reader and it is a red flag to SEO’s, because they (the search engine spiders) think you are trying to fool them with relevant links.

Keep the text simple, yet informative, just like any press release or story you want published. Make it a point to include keywords that are in your web site. Again, be careful to not make the article or press release sound like a sales pitch. That will just get you lower on everyone’s list.

Read my blog about “Public Relations Needs Web Marketing”. It provides a few tips on how the two, publicity and web marketing, work best when you make it a team effort.

As you write releases in this manner more often, you will begin to see the value and power it has.

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Public Relations Needs Web Marketing

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Get more traffic using these tools

No matter what your clients or pr agency says, you cannot have a successful pr campaign if your web site isn’t visible to the search engines.

So what does all this mean? By working with your pr staff, or your publicity agency, and the marketing people and the web IT department, you will see positive results.

Now let’s talk briefly about your web marketing. Maybe you do not have a web marketing or IT department, or your web designer doesn’t do marketing for web sites. No matter what your situation is, start building links to your web site. First, let me remind you that the site needs to be optimized for any site to gain credibility and ranking. If you are not sure how to optimize the site, contact me and I will give you a FREE analysis of your site’s optimization.

In previous blogs, I have addressed the two types of links. They are:

  • ONE WAY links. This is when you ask someone to have him or her place a link to your site on his or her site.
  • RECIPROCAL links. These are the type of links that you exchange with another relevant web site. Basically, you are linking to each other’s site.

Remember that it is always best to link to a high-ranking web site. And it is more critical to link to a site that is relevant to your industry. If not, then you are defeating the process and the search engines will penalize your site.

Some other web marketing tips:

1- Do Not link to too many sites too fast. For example, Google wants to see a slow progression of links built

2- Try to get about 5 or 6 new links per day

3- Make sure your keywords are relevant and placed into the text (body) of your message and into your title pages

If you want to learn more, contact me.

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looking For A Good PR Angle?

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Look inside the company for possible new articles

It is the job of the publicity professional to find that special slant, or angle to get an article visibility in the media. Without going into controversial issues, you can find lots of potential publicity articles by looking at your own company closer than normal.

Most of the media will accept these as possible articles, but it only takes one publisher to run the article to make this a successful campaign. It will also keep the company name visible to editors, writers and other media, so when you send other releases, you will be a familiar name to them.

There’s and article titled "What’s Your Backstory?" that hits my point home. For years I have tried to get clients to think outside of the publicity box. This isn’t always easy, because new ideas tend to scare pr clients into thinking, "who wants to read that?". But that isn’t always true. A publicity expert can transform a good story into an interesting article, without adding false or misleading information.

An example the article gave was for a doctor. Here is a short list of topics for a doctor:

  • What experience led the doctor to enter the medicine field?
  • What was or is the most difficult case ever faced
  • Humorous situations the doctor encountered
  • Try an angle on interns, the doctor mentored

I am sure you see how digging deeper into a company can uncover other publicity angles. When your publicity agency begins to develop the pr campaign, the best public relations service you can do is to provide something in the "backstory" or a human interest on a specific executive. Try it, you can only gain more exposure with the press by doing this.

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Make Your Web Site Visitor Friendly

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Some call it Microcontent

What good is having a strong publicity campaign if your web site is poorly designed, or difficult to navigate.

Even a good publicity professional can do only so much to generate traffic to a pr clients web site. It is then up to your business web site to make customers feel good about the product or service.

What makes your site better than your competitor’s?
Several things. It can be the graphics, the text, the images, and the ease of navigation, among other things.

For this lesson, I want to discuss the content of the site. One writer, Ann Wylie, has an article that explains the "Microcontent" of a web site. Basically she divides the topic into several sections:

  • What is Microcontent and what it includes

  • Why it is important

Ann gives some good advice on what to do, and not do when building the content. When you use these tips, it will be helpful to your existing customers, potential customers, and above all, the media will praise it. Editors and writers will find things easily. This will bring a positive view because the good content will be easily understood.

In the article, advice includes these areas that are needed for Microcontent, such as:

  • Page Titles
  • Navigation Bars
  • Headlines
  • Subheads
  • Highlighted Text
  • and many other sections

A good example of why illustrates when you do a “search, find and save” and it is now in your bookmark. Then when you want to go back a few days or weeks later, the bookmark reads “Welcome to XYZ Corporation”, or “Untitled Page”. I’m sure you experienced this and clicked several bookmarks before finding the site you were looking for. And if you are like me, you can’t find it quickly, and decide to do another search.

So think about making your site more pleasing to visitors. It is good publicity for you and your company.

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Want To Talk?

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Are Chat Rooms good for publicity?

We all know about these little rooms called "chats". Unlike blogging and blog sites, chats were here years before and seem to still be going strong.

Not sure what power the chats have over other forms of communication, but publicity is not in-tune with this media. I am not saying that pr clients, or publicity firms need to get into chat rooms. What needs to be done? A study of these chats in your specific market.

For example, if you are selling Hair products, you might want to know what people are saying about the use or non-use of hair products. Yes, this is marketing, but it relates to publicity as well. How? Glad you asked.

Professional PR agencies can use this information to direct the activity of a campaign. If you find that most hair products are used at a specific time of day, you might market the product when the consumer is NOT using the product to make sure your message is reaching the audience. And you might learn how they are using products. Publicity can then be directed to the places they frequent most to learn about hair products, or you might discover a way to reach these potential consumers when studying these chats. Be careful to not be a sales person in a chat room. Otherwise you might get flagged as a company, not a person in the chat room.

This example can apply to any product just by visiting chat rooms that relate to your market. If you want to know where is a good place to find these different chat rooms, try this link. You’ll be surprised at how many different topics there are. You can also do a search on Google, or any of the search engines as well.

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Build a Brand

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Branding is now more important than ever

Before you say anything, like "Oh no, not another branding article"…let me explain.

The term Branding is getting more recognition than ever. No matter whom you speak to (in business), or what publications you read, the term BRANDING pops up. That isn’t the reason why I am again talking about branding, it’s because today this is definitely something you need to do to stay competitive.

BUILDING A BRAND is not just slapping your logo on a bunch of envelopes, or on brochures. A real branding program starts within a company.

From the CEO, to the company president to the person answering the phone. It includes your tag line, or slogan; it is how customers, clients and consumers perceive you. When conducting internal business meetings to sending internal messages, they all should reflect the branding image.

All industries are getting more competitive and to stand out you need to build a solid brand image. This is not something that will happen overnight. That’s another good reason to start now, if you haven’t already implemented a program. Be sure your pr agency or pr client understands how to create a branding program.

Branding should be part of all your publicity activities and in all your advertising materials and ad print campaign. Press kits to the media should quickly identify the brand you are developing, as well as any correspondence with the media, such as editors, writers and publishers. You should immediately implement a signature for your emails using your company’s branded image. It is time to make this be an on-going part of your daily business activity. In the long run, it will give your company the competitive edge.

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Marketing a Business with Publicity

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Staying ahead of the competition

It is an on-going struggle to keep a business profitable. For that reason alone, you need to make sure you have a plan that includes all the marketing tools and publicity programs available. Whether you are a publicity agency, a pr client, or a marketing company, you need to implement some of these suggestions:

  • Keep in touch with clients. Sounds simple. How many times this year have you contacted a client just to see how things are? One suggestion is to draft a letter that can be sent to all customers. Ask if your company can be of further service, or if they have any questions about a recent order you sent to them. This can be generic, but the intro and the addressee should be personalized.
  • Flyers or Postcards. Another excellent way to stay in touch. Use flyers or postcards to let your prospects and existing clients know about any new products or services you are offering. Unlike a letter that is more formal, these get read faster and can generate more immediate responses.
  • Internet marketing. Use email to keep them informed. You can convert a postcard or create a flyer that can be sent as an email. Don’t forget about your web site. Make sure it is informative. What, you don’t have a site! And if you do, when was the last time it was updated? Keeping content fresh is important in today’s web marketing.

These are just a few ideas that should help you get back on track. Communication is important. This is another reason why a publicity campaign should be part of your overall media mix.

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More on Multi-Tasking

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Publicity is Everywhere Series

I’ve mentioned Multi-Tasking earlier, but now I am going to tell you that unless pr clients and their public relations agencies are aware of the craze, you might fall behind in your market.

Let’s review the latest area of multi-tasking. Ever watch a teen at a computer? If not, this is a typical teen. They are very much into the "Social Networking" scene. Just like we refer to the peer-to-peer, which is the technology that you receive an email from a business colleague or friend asking to join a "network", teens are into social networking. For example, many business people are probably involved in networks such as Plaxo, Soflow, or Linkin.

Teens have the ability to multitask while at the computer. They can be answering and speaking to someone in a "chat", while downloading music, and talking on their cell phone. This is nothing unusual to them.

Now that you know this, as a pr client, or as a marketing publicity company, you should focus on this networking of teens. Make sure that social networking is part of your business-marketing plan. Obliviously, your company, or product needs to be something that would appeal to teens. This still works with adults, when you discover their networking patterns.

Since 1995, social networks have grown from the original site of Classmates.com to a wide array of sites that add up to over 200 social networks today. Even Google launched one in 2004 called orkut. And recently in March, Yahoo made the move of its own network called Yahoo 360. So don’t think this is going to fade out next year. Just like blogging was thought to be a short-lived fad, it has grown into a major marketing tool for businesses.

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Branding Through Search Engines

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Build your image with SEO’s


Traditional branding is something a company, a pr client or advertising agency will do that may include a corporate identity program, collateral materials, and possibly purchasing media.
The media can be print (newspapers, magazines) or broadcast such as radio or TV.

Branding is the building of a name, a product or the overall company’s image. It is the consistent use of the brand in all the different areas of communication. As clients and customers become familiar with the brand, it makes them become loyal to that brand. Therefore, it takes time to build this loyalty among customers and clients.

With Search Branding, we see a new era of marketing and how we use the branding tools. Clients and potential customers now use search engines to seek the information about a product. When you optimize your site correctly, and have a solid web marketing campaign, that should include a good blog site, you will begin to establish a branded image. The buy-cycle is different on search engines than traditional branding, because people now can collect the information they want to make a buying decision sooner. That means you need to get your company listed in several areas so the potential customer feels good about your brand when making the decision to buy.

When people see your brand two, three and four times when searching, they become familiar with the brand making them more loyal to it. So as you can see, by using search engines as Google, Ask.com, Yahoo and many of the other specialty engines, it can make your brand a winner.

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