News Search Engine Optimization
News search engines offer companies a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics through press releases and other public relations information.
News search engines offer companies a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics through press releases and other public relations information.
News search engines offer companies a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics through press releases and other public relations information.
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 5-8, 2005, Chicago, IL.
According to Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder of SEO-PR, CNN was the top news site a year ago, followed by MSNBC, then Yahoo. “Today, Yahoo is #1, getting more traffic than the other two,” he said. “AOL is #4, while Google News is #14. News is one of the categories where Google is actually a trailer, not a leader. Still, Google is an A-list to target.”
Why are search engine marketers spending money in search engine advertising and optimization, including news search optimization? According to SEMPO, the main reason is to increase brand awareness. “A lot of people think that search engine marketing (SEM) is only about generating leads, which is important right after driving traffic to your site and right before selling things online,” Jarboe continued. “But branding is really a process. If you really want to be successful in this new category of news search, understand that ranking is just a first step. Ranking well for a two-month old press release will not matter as much because news search depends on timeliness.”
After timeliness, Jarboe recommends the fundamentals, including search-friendly copywriting and keyword research. “Most companies do not even know to do simple things to the content such as including a keyword in their main headline,” he said. “Without it, chances of getting a highly-ranked press release are pretty slim. Also, the press release must be written has to be in compelling, persuasive English. Always write for human beings.”
Search-friendly copywriting does not always mean directly using the words and phrases that your target audience types into search queries. Sometimes, putting a word in a headline that is not a search term can generate better results. For example, the keyword phrase “cheap airfare” is a common query. “The CEO of Southwest Airlines did not like the word ‘cheap’ associated with the company,” Jarboe said. “Even though ‘$29 airfare’ is not a search term, the press releases were found on news search engines for ‘cheap airfare’ – searchers can translate ‘$29 airfare’ really fast.”
In addition, Jarboe recommended creating unique links in press releases that lead visitors to unique landing pages, which his firm did for Southwest. “In the first month, over the company made over $42K,” he said. “But after the first month, the press releases were being found in the regular search engine results, and sales went up to $80K.”
Other news search engine strategies that companies can incorporate are Web analytics specifically for news search engines. “We track all the way down to how many leads were generated, how much of that converted to sales, what kind of revenue, cost of optimization, ROI, and so forth,” said Jarboe.
Blog posts often appear in news search engine results, though some search engines (such as Yahoo News and Moreover) separate news and blog content. “A lot of the blog content we were pushing was not just showing up in news search, but RSS search and regular search as well,” said Nan Dawkins, Partner at Redboots Consulting. “Blogs are a great way to reach journalists because firms need combined impact in various places.”
Dawkins offered the following tips for optimizing blogs and press releases for news search:
One of the basic tenets of public relations is that third-party endorsements carry more weight than information that comes directly from a company. With search engine advertising, companies are going to promote their products and services in a positive light, and site visitors expect this. ”
“When people see something from an unbiased media outlet, it definitely carries more weight,” said Sally Falkow, President of Expansion Plus. “The whole premise of public relations is building trust and credibility.”
PR has a very specific application in terms of search. “A lot of search engines are placing tremendous importance on trust,” Falkow explained. “So if company Web sites can get links from a trusted news sources, it could be very important for brand value and for search.”
“Companies can do both traditional and online PR,” she continued, “but they would be best off having articles appear in a trusted media source that is already appearing in the news search engines, such as Yahoo News. When people click on a news search link that leads to your company’s press release, visitors will be going to a trusted news source, and the company will receive that third-party endorsement.”
Falkow offered the following public relations tips for news search:
With RSS feeds, content can get picked up in a lot of news aggregators. “Then content can be picked up in a variety of news sources,” she said. “Eventually, content will get back into the news engines and right back to reporters.”
Shari Thurow is the Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc. and the author of the book Search Engine Visibility.