Paul Dyer, Senior Account Executive, Marketwire
Paul Dyer is an expert in SEO and other advanced Web technologies. As Marketwire’s new-media specialist, Dyer brings a breadth of technical knowledge and field experience in social media, search engine optimization, web design, and Web 2.0 product development. He is a frequent speaker on SEO and public relations for social media, having recently presented at Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, PRSA Los Angeles, a national PRSA teleseminar, the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, the PR Online Convergence Conference, and as part of a professional development series for several top-100 PR firms.
Marketwire is a full-service partner to IR, PR, and MarCom professionals seeking premier distribu- tion, media management, multimedia, and monitoring solutions. Marketwire’s corporate philosophy focuses on infusing its business with the following core attributes: precision, adaptability, innovation, and simplicity. The company delivers its clients’ news to the world’s media and financial communities.
Marketwire also offers innovative products and services-including social media, search engine optimization, dashboard mobile financial, news dashboard coverage reports, exclusive access to networks such as the Canadian Press Wire Network, Easy IR and Easy PR workflow solutions.
Jerri: How are social media changing the way organizations reach their customers on the Web?
Dyer: In the Web 1.0 world, organizations built a web page that had information about themselves, their purpose, their product, or whatever information they wanted to convey to their customers. For the savvier organizations, there was a halfway point between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in which search engine optimization of the organization’s main web page took priority for reaching their customers online. Now in Web 2.0, with social media, organizations have a plethora of online forums where they can reach their customers. Places like YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Digg, and Facebook are carry- ing the flag for social media, but niche communities and social sites are popping up almost daily. These sites are dramatically changing online communications from being primarily “pull” communi- cations (trying to pull your customers through the search engines) to a push/pull combination that previously never existed. Organizations can now push their message through these communities, as well as pull their customers who are conducting keyword and tag-based searches. In the search engines, organizations are also finding these social media sites do half the SEO work for them. Sites like YouTube and MySpace have such high volume of traffic and backward links, they can achieve strong search rankings-normally much stronger than small or startup companies with little resources. All companies have to do is target their content in these communities for the key- words they want a search engine presence for.
Jerri: And how will that shift in communication affect SEO?
Dyer: Traditional SEO focuses on driving search engine traffic to a corporate page. With social media, SEO can apply to any number of other sites, but the purpose is to build not just a web site, but a web PRESENCE. This is accomplished by syndicating content in a plethora of web destinations-blogs, social networks, social bookmarks, image and video galleries, and more. By syndicating keyword-rich content in these destinations, organizations can cast a much wider net with their message and maybe even spark that ever-illusive dialogue with their key audiences.
Jerri: What aspects of SEO should small and medium-sized businesses focus on most closely at this time?
Dyer: First things first-small companies need to be strategic about the keywords they go after. With SEO and online advertising budgets creeping ever higher, few small companies have the resources to compete for keywords that have monthly search volume in the millions. Instead, small companies should focus their efforts on a few highly specific search terms for which users will definitely be interested in their company’s content. At that point, organic SEO for these key terms becomes critical, and SEO releases are a great first line of attack. SEO releases have been available for several years now, but still remain one of the strongest ways for small companies to receive valuable and highly ranked links from pages on which they control the content.
Jerri: What upcoming SEO technologies and strategies should these organizations begin to focus on?
Dyer: There are a number of up-and-coming technologies, but I will focus specifically on SEO releases, as that is where my real expertise lies. A properly conceived SEO release can be a powerful tool for driving traffic to your site and increasing your site’s search ranking. The best strategy is to craft a release for every key term that is central to your business. This release should be written specifically for that key term and include it in positions of prominence like the headline, meta tags, and first paragraph. It should also use the term in a high keyword density-2 percent or higher. This term can then be hyperlinked to a key-term-specific landing page on the company’s web site. For instance, linking Product A as a key term to the landing page for Product A. Doing this alone will increase the backward links and the keyword relevance of your site for this term. To take the campaign to the next level, companies can then distribute a second release that is targeted for the very same key term. For this release, in addition to linking the term to a specific landing page, it can also be linked to the original press release at the distributor’s web site (on Marketwire.com for instance). Doing so will drive the original press release up the search rankings for that term as well as your company site and allow you to hold down more than one position in the search engines.
Jerri: What’s the most frequently missed aspect of SEO for social media?
Dyer: The most frequently missed aspect is strategy. Many companies are dipping their toe into the social-media pool, but few are doing so strategically. Instead, companies are doing what I like to call “Throwing Hail Mary’s.” They are posting videos into YouTube, building MySpace pages, uploading image galleries to Flickr, and getting involved in the blogosphere, but they are doing so blindly and without any continuity. Success in social media and the way to achieve strong search results comes through regularly updating content and creating a web of information. If you have keyword-rich content in social sites, you will achieve strong search results by networking (link- ing) that content together. There has to be a strategic and continuous connection between all of your company’s social efforts.
Jerri: What’s the most important aspect of SEO for social media?
Dyer: The most important aspect of SEO for social media is syndication. This means making sure all of the regularly updated content on your corporate site as well as the social sites you participate in is available via RSS and linked together to form an online network that encompasses your organi- zation’s total web presence. Not only will this build readership and relationships in these communi- ties, the RSS feeds will have a positive impact on the search rankings of all your various locations with content.
Jerri: Do you have any specific message for readers about social media and how they will affect SEO now and in the future?
Dyer: The most important thing for people to realize is that social media represent a fundamental shift in the way people meet, communicate, and interact. It is not a passing trend or a “here today, gone tomorrow” fad. Like e-mail and the mobile phone before it, social media is a new conduit through which people communicate.
