How Does Your News Rank on Search Engines?

I know it's a bit last minute but I'm speaking tomorrow on Online PR at a Business Wire event here in Cleveland. Pretty cool. Laura Sturaitis VP of New Media Development at Business Wire is the other presenter. I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about how the distribution services are looking to evolve. More on this post-presentation.

Who Owns the Media?

At Optiem we preach to our clients to think of themselves as CNN, companies are now their own news channel and need to be creating media accordingly. Instead of waiting to "rent" the feature article on the nightly news, shoot it yourself and put it on YouTube. Write and distribute an online press release. Support the story with an optimized case study or article validating your topic. Submit the PR/article/case study to other Web 2.0 news channels like bloggers who write on topics in related industries.

But what happens when someone picks up your media and makes it look like their own? What happens when JohnDoe.com, repurposes your content on their site for search engine value? We've seen several instances of this recently where content is pulled through and the original source is credited, but not in an SEO friendly fashion. No backlinks, no keyword rich anchor text, nothing. Just an "Original source XXX". Its even worse when you get into image hosting and bandwidth issues.

I know this is an age-old SEO dilemma, and search engine spiders are getting better at identifying these sites. But how are others handling? Sure you can submit the offending site to Google through the Digital Millenium Copywright Act but other avenues are there?

Write Articles AND Blog Postings

Yesterday Jakob Nielsen wrote an insightful article on the differences in blog content and article content. He strongly recommends B2B companies focus their resources on developing unique, well-researched article content. The argument against blogs is basically they are quick comments designed to stir-up controversy and have little long-term relevancy.

I'm not clear if Jakob is recommending articles but in a blog format, or with a blog-esque distribution strategy? If so the strategy would definitely be something we recommend to our clients. But as for writing articles full of great content and simply hosting them on your site, I don't think the client is going to see as much "bang for their buck" from this strategy.

What I feel the article fails to recognize is the need for companies to develop a strong distribution strategy for their article content. The company took the time to write these great articles, now they need to let the world know.

Bloggers tend to be active online submitting their blogs to services like Technorati, commenting on other blogs and employing a variety of tactics to let people know their content is out there. Plus the majority of these services are free, just the time it takes to identify the appropriate outlets and submit the content.

One thing we like to do for articles that are research-heavy is write and distribute online press release announcing the launch of the article. This helps start generating inbound links to the article, giving them relevancy and seeds some early online buzz. Or some clients link to their articles from their blog, marrying the two strategies.

Google Goes Sicko

Call me a cynic but I'm slightly skeptical of Lauren Turner's post about Sicko on the newly created Google Health Advertising Blog. Does anyone else find it ironic that she ignited controversy with the 4th ever post? And the post just so happens to center on negative pr and the ways Google can help health care companies combat bad press? I might be reading into things here, but this could be marketing genius if the post was intentional.

Online PR in the Wikipedia

Quick boast about one of my colleagues here in the Hatch... while recently perusing the Wikipedia definition of public relations Optiem's own online pr guy noticed the absence of any reference to the important role of public relations in search.

For those of you too lazy to click on the link, here's what we had to say:

A new kind of press release—"optimized" for the Internet

The advent of the Internet has ushered in a new kind of press release known as an optimized press release. Unlike conventional press releases of yore, written for journalists' eyes only, in hopes the editor or reporter would find the content compelling enough to turn it into print or electronic news coverage, the optimized press release is posted on an online news portal. Here the writer carefully selects keywords or keyword phrases relevant to the press release contents. If written skillfully, the press release can rank highly in searches on Google News, Yahoo or MSN News (or the many other minor news portals) for the chosen keyword phrases.

Readers of optimized press releases constitute far more than journalists. In the days before news search engines, a press release would have landed only in the hands of a news reporter or an editor who would make the decision about whether the content warranted news coverage. Although the news media is always privy to online press releases in the search engines, most readers are end-users. Optimized press releases circumvent the mainstream media which is formerly—but no longer—the gatekeeper of the news