PATRON SAINT PRODUCTIONS, INC. ~ CHAT TRANSCRIPT ~ Patron Saint Productions, Inc. Online Publicity Chat Series Topic: Session #2: Web Site Registration and Search Engine Optimization Guests: Steve O'Keefe, author of "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity" Date: January 22, 2004 Welcome, Marc. We'll be starting in just a minute. Hi, Steve. Hi, Valda. Thanks for keeping the transcript last week. Let's wait to start until a couple more folks show up. In the meantime, I'd be happy to talk about any issues you have. Welcome, Rachel. Welcome Michael. Hi, Steve, thanks. Anyone have trouble with the technology last week? No. I'm going to throw out a little tip for folks using URLs in e-mail, etc. Always preface your URL's with the "http://" prefix. Otherwise, they might not be appearing as hyperlinks in the viewer's software program. For example, if you highlight my name in the box on the right of your screen you'll notice my URL at the bottom of your screen -- it's a hotlink. When I highlight Rachel's name, her URL is not hot in my software because it lacks the http:// prefix. Is that true for anyone else? You might think just the www. is enough in your e-mail -- because it works in your software, but for many software programs, you need the full URL to get a hotlink. Welcome LD, cc, and Sondra. We're going to start right now. Welcome to the Online Public Relations Chat. I'm your instructor and agitator, author of "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity." Today we are talking about Search Engine Optimization and Web Site Registration. Please feel free to ask questions, whether or not your concerns are limited to the topic. We're all here to learn and to help. To ask a question, type it into the box at the bottom of your screen. Let me start with a question of my own: Who do you want at your web site? The knee-jerk reaction is, "everyone." But that's not usually the case. If you want as much traffic as possible on your web site then install pictures of naked people, because that is the number-one source of traffic. Most companies don't want pictures of naked people on their web sites. They want a *certain kind* of traffic. Once you make that distinction, you're well on your way to defining your target audience. Let me take this a step further. Traffic is bad. They want traffic that makes them $$$, sells product to targeted markets, provides information, promotes a cause... We all know that when we're driving, but it applies to online traffic as well. More traffic at your web site means more customer service inquiries, more money spent on better servers and software, more tech-support headaches, more demands for fresh content. Traffic, by itself, is not a good thing. But targeted traffic is very important. How do you get that kind of traffic? How do you target those markets? Stephen, good point about traffic that makes money, and good question about how to get it. Let me make a content point first. The web is often better used to serve existing customers rather than to attract new customers. However, if your site does a good job serving existing accounts, it will likely also be attractive to new accounts. Can you use it to penetrate new markets, too? Stephen, in many cases, companies put too much emphasis on sales rather than service through their sites. For example, in book publishing, a business I know well, many publishers target consumers (readers) when they should be targeting the trade (book dealers, wholesalers). If you don't have a purchase order form on your site so that existing customers who have established relationships with you and often have accounts with a line of credit cannot make wholesale orders through your site, then you are ignoring the needs of your largest customers as you go after small, retail customers. That makes sense. More of a "pull" than a "push"? What if you're selling a service, not a product? Serve your existing accounts well, and use that to attract new accounts. The same is true for services, Sondra. Can your clients track the progress of their jobs through your web site? No. Right now my site is more like an online brochure. Sondra, exactly. Think of the folks you talk with on the phone every day. How can their needs be better handled through your web site? Kinda like an Extranet for the clients where they can get materials online, post requests, check progress and schedules... I've found that I provide an "institutional memory" for many of my clients. They can access a section of my site that contains *every document* from *every campaign* I've ever done for them, for years. Their own filing systems are not so good. New employees come onto the archive to see what's been done in the past. I'm talking about thousands of documents. Very cool... Allows you to focus on building the campaign rather than on mundane administration. Stephen, exactly right: checking stock, shipping progress, etc. Okay, let me move onto traffic-building techniques. First, take a look at your META tags. You know what those are, right? How significant are the META tags to the search engine optimization and indexing by spiders? They are the hidden language on your web pages that tells search engines and others about your site. There are three main META tags of importance, and they are: 1. Description. 2. Title. 3. Keywords. When today's session is done, and if you get a chance, go to my home page and use the "Show source" command in your web browser. All modern web browsers allow you to see the source code for a page. Can this chat be saved and printed out instead of having to take notes on what's being said? Sondra, click into the chat space, select ALL copy and paste into a blank document and save. We're keeping transcripts, and hope to clean them up and have them available soon. Welcome guruman, we're talking about META tags right now. Okay, let me continue on the tags. Make the DESCRIPTION tag read well in English, but pack as many keywords as you can into it. I would not go over 250 characters in a Description tag. Also try to use keywords in your title tag. These tags are not only important to your search engine rank (as Stephen mentioned), they are also key to what the search engine says about your site. When you search on Google, it returns a two- line description for each matching link. Guess where it finds that two-line description? In your Description Meta Tag. When you get a chance, try these exercises: * Look at my META tags. * Look at your META tags. * Look at the META tags of competitors. * Look at what description Google returns for your site or competitor sites. Do you need different META tags for each page in your site? Stephen, You don't NEED different META tags for different pages -- I use the same one for convenience on my site -- but you might WANT to tweak them, especially if some products and services are very different. But they make a difference if there are substantial changes in content on your site, right? META tags is one element. We will discuss others today, and other next week, when we talk about linkage. Linkage is the number-one factor in rank, beyond paying for position. How do sites selling similar or even identical services or products get ranked if they use similar keywords and META tags, etc.? Sondra, the ranking of a site involves a very complex formula. What is your opinion on using a high volume of words, vs. a smaller number that may create a less diluted effect? Do you want a rifle approach or a shotgun? Stephen, I think your approach needs to match the importance of this tool. Search engine rank isn't everything. If I had more time, I would argue that it is not important for most companies. But I think it's worth a modest effort to develop one good set of META tags and update them once a year. Why do you need to update them? Sondra, you may need to update the links to keep up with the changing nature of your own business, your competitors, and META tag standards. Let's talk a little more about search engine rank. They look at the tags on your site. They look at the content on your site to make sure it matches the tags. They look at how many people link to your site, and they look at how many people who are looking for, say, "shoes" chose your site to go to first. In other words, Google looks at how popular your site is with others (inbound links) and how popular your site is among searchers using Google. SO, one thing search engines look for is *the absence of trickery*! What do you mean by "trickery"? IF you cram your title tag with 200 words, you will be penalized. IF your description tag is longer than "War and Peace," you will be penalized. IF the content of your site does not match the content of your tags, you will be penalized. You might hear about all sorts of nifty tricks that will improve your search engine rank. Be careful, they could come back to haunt you. So, just be prudent, make your tags reasonable and accurate, while using as many of your core keywords as possible. And focus on other techniques, such as linkage (next week) to improve your traffic and results. With so many sites out there, and so many new ones coming online, how often does rank change? Daily, hourly? Sondra, it's different for every search engine. Rank changes all the time. For most sites, it is NOT important where you are in the directories, as long as you are there somewhere. Okay, now for a few content tips. Make sure keywords on your site are not embedded in graphics. Search engines don't read graphics. So if your site has buttons that say: Articles, Resources, Products, Services, Help, the search engine doesn't see the words because they are graphics. So, if you have "word links" that say: Internet publicity resources, Internet publicity articles, Internet publicity services, then you're getting keyword repetition, which is good for search engines. But don't ruin the usability of your site for customers just to attract more prospects from search engines. To follow up with Sondra's question, how often are the rankings changed with, say, Google? Michael, I really don't know how often Google rankings change. I know they claim to crawl the entire web every 24 hours. But I thought, on average, users only scroll down through 30 entries or so. You want to be on the first page or two of search results, don't you? But I don't believe that's really possible. Sondra, If I search for "Stephen" I'm going to get a zillion matches. If I search for "Stephen Crane" with quote marks, I'd probably get our fellow chatter in the first page of results. Or the famous author! And my famous relative. If I search for "Stephen Crane" or "Crane Creek" I'm guessing he'd come up first. It's important to be in there, so that people who are specifically looking for YOU can find YOU. But rank is just not that important to most web sites. Let me talk about some other things that are MORE important than search engine rank, in my opinion. Your stationery. That's right. Having the URL on your business cards, letterhead, mailing labels, invoices, fax header, etc. Put your web site URL on your stationery. Remember, the most important audience you serve is existing accounts. Steve, you are so right! These folks will look to these handy documents. Don't forget the e-mail signature, too! What if someone is not searching by name because he or she doesn't know your name, but is searching for event planners, let's say. Aren't many, many entries going to come up? And what makes someone wade through all of them? Sondra, you're going to have to give me a little rope here so I can hang myself. Huh? Hopefully, at the end of today, or next week, or my book, you'll see what I'm getting at. OK. When I want to go to the phone company's web site, I know the URL, or I guess it, or I have paperwork on my bill that tells me where to go. I never type "Amazon" into a search engine. I just go to Amazon when I need it. The focus on search engine rank is completely disproportionate to its value to the bottom line. Media coverage is another extremely important way to build site traffic. Get your company mentioned, hopefully favorably, in media that are important to your target audience, and you will get traffic. Links from other sites are extremely important. Save your SEO dollars and put some effort into getting other sites to link to you. Those links bring a higher quality, more focused prospects to your site than the search engines. Then there's advertising and promotion: getting your URL into ads, flyers, brochures, postcards, etc. There is an implicit endorsement in linkage. If one company is good and it links to another then that company is good, too. Okay, let me run through a couple of different style directories before we wrap for the day. In the Templates section of my web site, there is a two-year old Registration Sites List in HTML. Click on it, and you'll have hotlinks into the registration sections of the top search engines, catalogs, and directories. Also in the Templates section, you'll find a Registration Form. Fill in the blanks BEFORE you embark on a registration campaign. You will have site descriptions of varying lengths, keywords, and other critical info at your fingertips, which you can use over and over again. These forms are FREE to download and use. There is more to traffic than search engine rank, and there are many places you need to be besides Yahoo and Google. Look for special interest catalogs. For example, Sondra, I know there are many directories of event planners online. You want to be in the directories and catalogs that focus on your industry. These are a growing source of traffic for many sites because a lot of people are tired of wading through a million matches at Google. Special interest directory sites are hot! Doesn't Yahoo charge to register? Yahoo charges $299 a year now. These specialized search engines are often more targeted, and preferable to the large ones. That's correct, Michael. The special interest directories are very important positioning tools. Also, there are phone-book style directories online such as InfoSpace, and wholesaler trade directories, and import-export directories. These sites often only list your address, phone number, and contact person, but it adds up. Finally, if you get a chance, type in the letters "LFB" at Google and see what you get. Top of the list will be my client, Laissez Faire Books. What's important, though, is a two-line description under the link. It is, in my opinion, perfect. Taken right from the Description META tag on the web site. It starts with the 800 number. People who want to bypass the web altogether can just pick up the phone and dial, right from Google, no fuss, no bother. Then it has its positioning lines. And look at the entries further down. Most of them have unintelligible descriptions because they aren't making use of their META tags. Do the simple things. Take care of your tags. Make your site useful to existing accounts, and you will find that big things take care of themselves. When listing in "special interest directories," notice how the different names are listed. It may be that they are in alphabetical order. List yourself accordingly. Marc, good point on special-interest directories. Every directory is slightly different. Look for competitors -- how are they positioned? The Registration Form on my site will arm you with good material you can use to customize your listings on any site. Next week, join us for a chat about Linkage Campaigns. It will help extend and expand what we've talked about today. Thank you all for attending. Please do let me know if you experience tech problems -- I'll try to fix them. __________________________________________________ ABOUT THE GUEST STEVE O'KEEFE is the author of the outdated classic, "Publicity on the Internet" (Wiley, 1997), and the updated new book, "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity" (Wiley, 2002) -- based on over 1000 online campaigns. Steve pioneered many online marketing techniques which are now considered standard practice. Steve's writing has appeared in over 100 publications including The Wall Street Journal, Harper's, Internet World, PR News, Outside, Small Press, Salon, Curio, NetWorth, and HotWired. Steve is a member of the adjunct faculty at Tulane University where he teaches online public relations. He is Executive Director of Patron Saint Productions, Inc., a publishing consultancy specializing in online marketing strategy, campaigns, and training. __________________________________________________ ABOUT THE BOOK Complete Guide to Internet Publicity: Creating and Launching Successful Online Campaigns by Steve O'Keefe Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (2002, ISBN 0-471-10580-5, 436 pages, softcover, $34.95) Available in most bookstores online and off. "Nobody knows more about making a splash on the Internet than Steve O'Keefe. And no book reveals better how to do it than this one." -- Fraser P. Seitel, Author of "The Principles of Public Relations" "Steve O'Keefe's book is, by far, the most comprehensive Internet publicity book available. It's a tool that any business owner or publicist needs to read to conduct an effective online PR campaign." -- Lorilyn Bailey, CEO, NewsBuzz.com "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity" is the bedrock reference book for designing and implementing online publicity campaigns. The book takes a "how-to" approach, with detailed instructions for planning the campaigns, creating the materials needed, launching the campaigns, dealing with any problems, and measuring the results. The instructions are highlighted with anecdotes culled from hundreds of campaigns conducted by the author and other Internet publicity professionals. Chapters include: 1. The Power of Internet Publicity 2. E-Mail News Releases 3. Online News Rooms 4. Discussion Group Postings 5. Newsletters and Direct Marketing 6. Chat Tours 7. Online Seminars and Workshops 8. Web Site Registration and Linkage 9. Contests and Other Fancy Promotions 10. Syndicating Your Promotions 11. Building an Online Publicity Operation "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity" is a goldmine for those people responsible for online publicity operations, whether as managers, professionals, instructors or students, including such professions as marketing, advertising, web site design & construction, e-commerce, direct marketing, and customer service. The book and companion web site both include templates for all the campaign materials described, and time-saving resources to help locate target audiences online. This book is essential to anyone charged with promoting a product, service, company, person, or web site. Order your copy today. __________________________________________________ Copyright ©2004 by Patron Saint Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Please request permission before duplicating or distributing this document. For reprint permission, send mailto:permissions@patronsaintpr.com. Thank you.