Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

Recently, I’ve been asked to help out a few friends do some PR on the side. Just some basic stuff, but it amazes me how much PR professionals could benefit from just a little search marketing training. Hence, I’ve put together 5 things every PR professional should know in order to better serve their clients, as well as get them a little more search savvy.

1. Use “quotes” or exact phrasing in your queries
   Now this one is pretty basic and I think most PR professionals already know this one.  If you’re trying to find where your press release was quoted, listed, or mentioned, you need to use quotes around your phrase. So if your press release is “Tommy won the big race at Sunday’s fair”, then you would use that phrase exactly, as I’ve shown here.
2. Use the “link:” syntax in your queries.
   Now most search engines support this syntax, however, I’ve found Yahoo to always have the best results for this. The “link:” syntax tells you what sites are linking to your press release. I think this syntax is actually more important than the one above, as it will show you all sites that are linking to your press release, regardless of whether they quote your press release, reuse part of the content, or just put in a random link. In any case, it shows you which sites have “staying power” and which ones are just fly-by-night press release zombies who simply regurgitate whatever the PR wires give them. You can learn more about the “link:” and see an example here.
3. Use the “related:” syntax in your queries.
   So you’ve identified publication ABC as the leader in your space.  Well, now what do you do? What publication should you pursue next? Well, unless you are a in a very specific niche, most likely there are other online publications you can pursue. The “related:” syntax operator shows you sites search engines have deemed related or relevant to the site you are currently looking at. So if we use the Chicago Tribune as an example, you may also want to contact the Chicago Sun Times, CNN, the Washington Post, USA Today, and so on and so forth. Granted, the Chicago Tribune is a pretty easy one to relate, but Google usually does a pretty good job. Looking at my related sites to www.jeffwoelker.com, Google pulls back several of my personal friends, colleagues, and social media and search organizations.
4. Learn the basic keyword tools
   You don’t necessarily have to know the in’s and out’s of the Google algorithm, but even monthly and annual traffic volumes are the basics you can get out of tools like the Google Keyword tool. Whehter you are writing an article on truck transmissions or potato chips you can still optimize your press release to have the most prevalent keywords in your industry in it.
5. Learn to use web analytics
   Often, PR is a set and forget kind of tactic where you negotiate with publishers, hand off the relevant materials, and hope they publish your information. Once or if they do, you report back to the client as to how things went, but most of the reporting is from an outside perspective. A great component to add on to that would be to get into the weeds of the web analytics, whether it’s Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends, or another platform, reporting not just that you were able to get the press release or coverage you wanted, but it also drove X number of people to the website, and ultimately drove Y percent of sales or conversions. Those are hard numbers a client can’t argue with and is a vital part of keeping PR relevant as marketers continue to move more and more to online, measurement, and analytics. If you want to learn more about web analytics, check out the Web Analytics Association Site, Google’s own Analytics primer, or Avinash Kaushik’s blog. He’s the analytics evangelist at Google.

So those are my 5 tips. Have any others you want to share with me or your fellow PR professionals, drop them off in the comments.

Image courtesy of dullhunk