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Press releases intended for social media can be tricky things. There’s been quite a lot of debate in internet marketing circles about their usefulness. Some query whether the adaptation of press releases to social media is merely a desperate attempt to keep an old marketing standby alive. Others defend these releases, often referred to as social media releases.

At a basic level, social media releases are a handy way to get your news out to your business’ social sphere, and you can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk. The important thing to remember is that social media releases are not very much like a traditional media release. It’s important to be aware of the differences:

*Traditional media releases are written for the media. Social media releases are written for the public. A social media release needs to fit in with your social media management smoothly. If it is written in a way that’s unlikely to interest your main audience, then it’s probably not a good idea.

*Traditional media releases are about you. Social media releases are about the reader. It’s a slight exaggeration to say that traditional press releases are about the company, but companies do figure large in the structure of traditional media releases. While a social media release will mention your company, the focus should be on the news you’re spreading.

*Traditional media releases are on paper. This is a major difference. Traditionally, media releases are an A4 sheet, but your SEO company can draw you up a multimedia extravaganza as part of social media services.

Online press releases are an old SEO link building tactic. Like many link building tactics, press releases are often expected to work miracles. Like all high quality link building, they require a bit of work before those miracles can happen. Here’s how.

*Don’t get trapped on paper. Traditionally, press releases were a single A4 page. Online, they are mini websites. Think about multimedia aspects to include as you write, and your press release will automatically become more dynamic. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about this.

*Link back to relevant pages. It’s tempting to use your press release to promote your home page. Just as with article marketing, however, press releases should be used to promote your other main pages, or even more minor pages. A close link in relevance between the linked page and the press release will be more effective than generally attempting to promote your company.

*Think about social posting. Press release sites aren’t your only option for dispersing your news. Consider posting in social sites, making use of your press release on your Facebook page, and so on.

Are online press releases worth it?

There is a question you have to ask before embarking on a campaign of press releases for your SEO, and that is whether the effort is worth it. From both an SEO and a marketing standpoint, it’s advisable to start sending off press releases only when you’re reasonably sure you can attract attention. If you have nothing to say, your efforts are wasted. That said, a clever, optimised press release can

Black hat search engine optimisation outfits commonly make the claim that it is easy to get positive results from a campaign. In addition, they frequently contend that SEO can deliver the goods swiftly. If a site owner wishes to achieve sustainable success they would do well to ignore such misleading statements.

The truth is that website optimisation is far from simple. It is a complex and evolving set of practices. Even the easier elements of optimisation demand careful attention and intelligent persistence. For example, sites typically need to have high quality content delivered to them on a regular basis. Sustaining content production which is aimed at a target audience is more problematic than it might seem. Other aspects of the complicated processes necessitate tinkering and the deployment of specialist skills.

Black hat SEO individuals and organisations maintain that optimization is not difficult because they want to tempt site owners into making a rash investment. Their techniques will not help boost the performance of sites in the long term. Indeed, these techniques may lead to a site being temporarily banished from the index. Such a search engine penalty would obviously have severe commercial implications.

A reputable organisation will not attempt to minimise the difficulties associated with a typical SEO campaign. This means that there may be a lot of questions which site owners wish to ask them. Checking the content they provide on their blog posts and articles is always a good way to begin research. It is possible to compare content between competing sites. At Searchengineoptimization.co.uk we provide relevant content and are always very happy to respond to further questions when contacted.

The need for online reputation management is obvious. If you can find negative results in the SERPs for your brand, your customers can find those results too. If you’re operating a small business, you might feel that reputation management is not something you need to worry about. The reality is exactly the contrary.

Small businesses need to worry more about reputation management as they lack the clout to vanish negative results from the search engines. A large corporation, for example, has the resources to invest in strategies that push negative responses out of the top ten results in the SERPs. Big businesses can afford to have their search engine optimisation agency buy up a few links for a quick solution. Small businesses rarely have access to such easy internet reputation solutions.

So what should you do? There are some organic online reputation solutions available to you.

*Pacification. The first option to try is to contact the person who is responsible for the negative feedback and try to work the problem out.

*Respond. If contacting the author directly isn’t a possibility, responding to the negative review can be an idea. Some SEO experts advise against this as the fresh content keeps the page alive in the SERPs. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk about this for more information.

*Counterattack. Another option is to get your own opinion published on the same site. This is an easy option to pursue if the negative page is on a review site and is also a good way to push the page out of the SERPs without too much SEO work.

It doesn’t take long in a search engine optimisation campaign to realise that just about everything you do on the net can have an effect on your SEO. Whether it’s commenting on someone’s blog, or just polishing up the design on your site, everything you do can push you further up the ladder. There is nowhere this is more evident than in social media.

The social media is a seething pool of interaction. Many SEO experts will advise you to use the interaction fostered in their social media optimisation to boost the efforts of your link building company, fostering relationships that result in organic linking. If required, you cam discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk. Turning social activities into links is something much easier said than done, and much harder to do if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The circle of influence

Essentially, social media interaction creates links via influence. In the real world, when a friend tells you they’re opening a business, you help them out by spreading the word about them. The process is exactly the same in social media. Every contact made as part of an SMO campaign is another strand in your organic SEO web. It might not be a direct strand, one that connects a high-quality link straight to your link profile, but it is a valuable strand nonetheless.

Social media leads to links in a roundabout way and for this reason it can be difficult to work a social media campaign into your budget. It’s better to think of social media activities as an investment in influence.

Images are such a side-issue for search engine optimisation that they often get overlooked during social media marketing. When companies start to think about adding social media services to their internet efforts, they tend to lump in some new tactics with their existing SEO or search engine marketing plans. When it comes to images, this can be a huge mistake.

Photos and other images are important for social media, and you can discuss this with us at searchengineoptimisation.co.uk. They’re a way to show your target audience that your company is real and a way to establish your personality. Companies like Coke or even Google have attracted fans because they post more than the staid, formal images traditionally used in business.

Here’s some guidance on what you should, and shouldn’t, post as part of your social media campaign:

*Candid snaps – happy times around the office, such as birthdays, ends of campaigns, or even casual Friday, shots from social events involving your company, shots sent in by your social media followers.
Don’t post: social pictures that are a little too messy. Fun is good, but keep some of your business image in mind.

*Professional snaps – professional profile pictures of your staff, but don’t make them too formal. Make sure some candid snaps of staff members are on your profiles as well and images from industry events.
Don’t post: sterile images from product catalogues, or corporate-style pictures of staff. Images that are too formal may keep your audience at arm’s length.

It takes time and effort to write up a guest post for someone’s blog. Not only do you have to select a topic that’s going to suit their audience, you have to work some of your off-site SEO into the mix. It’s usually a good idea to spend the time to make it a top-quality post as well. If you’re going to go to all that effort, you need to be sure that it’s going to hit the right spot.

When looking for blogs to publish your guest post on, consider the following;

1. Is it a blog you would read? Your first step should be to narrow down the list of thousands of blogs out there to a short list of blogs appropriate to your target audience. A good way to start is by listing blogs in your industry you already read.

2. Is its audience generous? The second thing to consider is whether the blog’s audience will want to travel back to your site. While guest blogging is good for SEO link building, direct traffic is a benefit not to be forgotten.

3. Is the link worth it? Finally, you need to consider whether the link you receive will help your organic search engine optimisation. Talk to us at searchengineoptimisation.co.uk about this.

Selecting a blog to guest post on isn’t that difficult, but many site owners get carried away by the excitement of guest posting. As long as you do your research, your post is likely to bring the benefits you want it to.

Google News can be a real boon to a search engine optimisation plan. Getting part of your content pushed up to the top of Google’s results can boost traffic astronomically. Before you take the SEO news route, however, you need to get your site accepted by Google as a news source. Here are five steps to help make that happen.

1. Make sure your blog is up to scratch. It takes more than just an SEO blog to be accepted as a Google News source. Unsurprisingly, Google looks for sites that have a news bent when selecting sources for Google News. Your blog or content pages need to have a focus on recent events if you’re targeting Google News.

2. Make sure you fit the technical requirements. Google has a number of helpful pages for site owners trying to get accepted into Google News. Most of these should have been covered by your search engine optimisation company during your SEO plan, but it’s worth cross-checking.

3. Always post unique content. It’s an SEO basic these days, but doubly so for news content.

4. Use multiple authors. Although there are a few disagreements about how to get into Google News, one piece of advice across the board is to use multiple writers. This helps boost the appearance of a news site. Talk to us at searchengineoptimisation.co.uk about increasing the number of writers for your optimisation content plan.

5. Spruce up your site. The more professional your site appears, the better your chances are.

If you’re putting quality content on your SEO blog every day, chances are you’re following the tried-and-true rules for optimising content. In other words, you’re putting keywords in all the right places, making sure you’ve got links flowing in, and generally doing everything your SEO company tells you to do. If, however, you’re trying to get content from your approved site to the top of Google News, it’s a whole different game.

Not everyone can be accepted into Google News but it doesn’t hurt to try. Talk to our experts at searchengineoptimisation.co.uk about this. Google News sites have an edge on others because of those tantalising news bites that appear at the top of many searches. If your site’s on the list, you’ve got an extra shot at catching attention.

How to catch that attention is another matter. News content is assessed not so much by quality or authority as by timeliness. If you’re on the ball, you’re in.

The news for Google’s recent Panda 2.5 update is a great example of this. Many of the more reputable search industry news sites got in early with search engine optimisation news about the update’s winners and losers. After the first rush, however, the news results came from just about everywhere – some of the sources simply regurgitating previous articles. The common denominator was thorough references to the news event.

Keep your finger on the pulse if you’re aiming to have articles from your approved site featured at the top of Google News.

Want to know the one thing that will give your social media optimisation extra power? It’s easy. Just centralise your bios. By using your site’s bio pages as a central point, you not only provide your site’s users with a handy way to connect with your social media profiles, you also lend a little more power to your profiles.

Here are three of the benefits of centralising your social media campaign through your bio pages:

1. It provides links to your profiles

Boosting your social media profile is key in social media management, and one of the ways to achieve this is to point links at your profile pages. By doing so, you can help your profile gain attention within the social site, providing a social media marketing benefit, and gain attention in the SERPs, assisting your internet reputation management. You can discuss this with us at www.SearchEngineOptimisation.co.uk.

2. It keeps information consistent

If you’re investing in social media services, you’re probably an old hand at crafting company bios. These days, you need not only the company and staff biographies featured on your ‘about us’ pages, but also profile bios for directories, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and any other social site you happen to be interested in.

3. It shows your sociability

Finally, showing your social links on your own site shows readers you’re willing to connect with them socially. Don’t forget to include links to your bios all over the net, including those for convention appearances as well as social media profiles.