Digital Communications is challenging search engine optimisation
January 18, 2008 by Chris Norton
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There was an interesting article (paywall) which appeared in the last edition of PR Week which underlined a number of points I have been making in pitches to new clients recently. The main one is that search engine optimisation (SEO) has changed and is continuing to change and although buying into link farms and using SEO specific companies still works to a certain extent there is now a new kid on the block for getting high rankings on Google and that is using digital communications effectively.
In fact, the head of Google’s webspam team Matt Cutts issues a warning within the piece: ‘Buying or selling links that bypass (Google’s) PageRank (system) violates our webmaster guidelines. If a webmaster buys or sells links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings, we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index.’
Gaylene Ravenscroft, head of digital at Hill & Knowlton adds her point about the importance of social media: ‘Bloggers are becoming so crucial they underline PR’s importance as an integral part of the communications mix,’ she says.
The article itself makes some more interesting points - which I will let you digest yourself. However, it highlights a campaign by Volkswagen Commercial which it claims was successful. The campaign included targeting bloggers with press releases and essentially spamming them. This is not how we would advise our clients to go about their communications.
Social media companies and specialist public relations agencies should be advising their clients to engage in the social element, not in press release spamming, as the blogging community can often find this intrusive and you could do your brand/company more damage than good.
Simon Collister another public relations blogger has also written an interesting post on this article with his views - basically damning the use of spam as a communications tactic. I mean who really likes receiving spam these days anyway - I certainly don’t and I blog.
The article rounds off by making the final point: "So, if any traditional PR agency is dragging its feet on digital PR it may soon find its clients are not only considering other PR agencies for their digital work but also extending the remit for search agencies beyond web optimisation and into digital PR. Once Google toughens up, companies will be begging PR agencies to help."
Cross posted on: Norton’s Notes
It’s an interesting article Chris, but you’ve got to be careful conflating SEO/Spam.
Some PR companies are just of guilty of the spam see Chris Anderson from Wired recent altercations for example.
There’s a huge distinction between SEO & Spam and why a few firms might still build link farms or buy links they’re usually easily spotted.
While some of the online PR companies like yours seem to get the net not all do.
In fact some PR companies should be worried about SEO’s stealing PR work rather than the other way round!
Thanks Kelvin - I agree with your point. I suppose there are good SEO and PR companies but there are also bad ones too in both industries.
In fact, unfortunately there are still lots of public relations consultancies that don’t understand how digital communiactions works. So if there is a good SEO company that does and they can create good editorial content for their client - I can certainly see them stealing clients until the public relations companies all start catching up.
I completely agree with you Chris, I just get a wee bit defensive when people mis-understand search marketing.
A good SEO agency will take advantage of the work being done by a PR and use that to garner links, they work best when they compliment each other.
Very valid points - I think too many PR firms have started talking about SEO as a service for clients simply to give the impression they are digitally competent.
Interesting point on the VW reference - given that the PR industry is still struggling to get it’s head around evaluating online coverage - let alone blog coverage - I’d certainly be wary of sending press releases to bloggers. It’s hard to show benefit to the client of blog coverage alongside traditional AVE values for print or broadcast coverage, but it’s easy for a client to overestimate the impact of a negative blog post.
I blogged the other day about a further development - paying for word of mouth marketing. The human equivalent of SEO perhaps?!
http://quest-pr.blogspot.com/2008/01/cabbies-drive-marketing-to-new-heights.html
[...] Digital Communications is Challenging Search Engine Optimisation - Chris Norton [...]
Hi Nick - thanks for your comments, interesting post. You are right it is difficult and expensive to evaluate online coverage effectively. At Wolfstar we run bespoke blog monitoring programmes for our clients which include detailed monitoring of online conversations on topics which are relevant to our client’s business. We then provide each client with a report which helps to illustrate their share of voice in the blogosphere but it is still very difficult for any agency to actually give an accurate cash equivalent of blog coverage. I am sure this will become clearer in the next twelve months though.
Word of Mouth Marketing is fantastic and can work really well for certain brands. I see this growing hugely in the next few years. We actually work for WOM-UK, which is the association for this practise in our country, similar to WOMMA in the US, so we are already actively spreading the word on the benefits using this in a communications programme.
Kelvin - agree entirely that there is a role for savvy SEO and savvy PR companies to work together. Problem is there are far too many bad apples in both the SEO and PR barrel.
Nick - we’ve got to be very careful how we talk about measurement and evaluation. I don’t understand your comment that “It’s hard to show benefit to the client of blog coverage alongside traditional AVE values for print or broadcast coverage”. Why would we want to?
AVEs are totally discredited and only used by people who don’t understand public relations. Unfortunately this includes some clients, but it is our responsibility as consultants to provide expert counsel to clients - including educating them that AVEs are an incredibly immature way of NOT evaluating public relations.
We absoutely should not be attempting to invent an online evaluation system that is as broken as AVEs.
Stuart - apologies for the delay in replying, holidays to iceland and flu have somewhat stolen my month.
I think AVE’s do still have a role to play - unfortunate as that may be. While in an ideal role clients would appreciate the importance of quality PR, for some the first question will always be how much do you cost and what do I get in return?
An interesting challenge you pose is how to approach dual media reporting, in the sense that quantifying even the reach of online or traditional media is much harder.
I’d be interested to hear how you evaluate your online coverage, particularly blog and social media based.
Hi Nick - thanks for your comments. Stuart is actually in London today attending a WOM event - I am sure he won’t mind if I reply in his absence.
Stuart was invited to attend an industry event in London a couple of days ago and he posted his thoughts on social media evaluation on Tuesday. You can view them here: http://www.wolfstarconsultancy.com/2008/02/19/measuring-social-media-is-easy-evaluating-it-is-difficult/
I hope that helps.
Chris
@Nick - wow! Holidays in Iceland, I am jealous. On AVEs, I’ve been in PR for 20 years and have never used them as an evaluation tool. Even when I first entered the industry they were already discredited, so I don’t think you can say they “still have a role to play”.
I’m not saying that Wolfstar will never use them (we haven’t yet, but I personally have in the past), because there are clients who want to see them because they’ve had them in the past. If we really have to we will provide them to a client, but only while educating them why AVEs don’t work.
AVEs aren’t even an effective method for evaluating media relations activity, let alone a full public relations programme.