The Blog Watcher writes...

The blogosphere is where it's at you know. In every issue we recommend a recent PR-themed blog to check out and comment on. This time some tips on search engine optimisation for PR people.

From The Travel PR blog: The Travel PR’s guide to SEO

This is a great blog on search engine optimisation – or improving the chances of your client being stumbled across by search engine users. It proposes setting up online press rooms for your clients, and then using SEO to ensure stories are seen by journalists and consumers alike.
”[Your press rooms are] are aiming for three audiences: the media and the public and your client.

There are far more journalists out there researching stories than you will ever have in your little black book, so make sure they can find your client’s latest news.

As for the consumer, we are talking about public relations here and there is a strong case for going direct to the person buying your client’s holidays.

Is that beyond the brief? Outwith the contract? Perhaps. Call it a little extra something – something which might keep you employed and prevent the client switching their PR budget over to a search company or digital agency instead.

Let’s get practical here with some quick top level SEO tips for a travel PR agency wanting to create an online media room for its clients’ news.

1. Set up a WordPress blog. It is cheap and easy but needn’t look cheap and easy. Then link it to the navigation on your corporate site.

2. Write short useful news posts about your client’s new hotel, destination, cruise ship, daily life. Avoid the stilted, verbal straight jacket of the formal release. Let’s have a bit of genuine enthusiasm and puff-free excitement. If it doesn’t excite you, don’t bore us with it.

3. Link out, generously – obviously to your client (first link) but also to other useful resources. Pay attention to the link text and don’t overdo it

4. Write an informative eye-ctaching headline for humans, a concise tag line for search engines, and a useful address slug [the URL of each individual page] for good navigation.

5. Use your PR skills to compose a decent meta description. The kind that people will click on if Google decides to show it within the search results. Google says it doesn’t bother with meta keywords anymore but I still think you can throw seven or eight into the mix.

6. Link to your online media room in every communication you despatch, including your business cards.

7. Leave relevant, useful, friendly, helpful comments whenever you come across an appropriate online conversation, including Twitter, with your link.

8. Set up Google analytics to help measure traffic, so you can respond to trends such as what is popular, and how people find you. When something works, do it again.

Anything else? Yes, lots, that is just a start. But it is an important start and something which can be done right now.

You may not be able to waggle a Google-approved search professional certificate under the noses of your clients but at least you can tell them you optimise their releases and ensure their news is more widely read online. And in an age of struggling newspaper figures, that can only be a good thing for a PR business”.

Read the full blog (and lots of other articles for people in travel PR) here.

Posted Wednesday November 18 2009