Tips for a New Website

Tips for a New Website
It\'s not easy not easy to promote your website or get sales initially. Following the tips given in this column can at least give your Web site ..

SES NYC the value of authoritative links
Good PR (public relations, not PageRank) can influence search ranking

I spoke today at a session at Search Engine Strategies in New York City. Even though we were the second-to-last session on the last day of the show our session was very well attended.

 

 

I talked about HerRoom.com and their sports bra BounceTest videos.  The videos show women running on a treadmill wearing a sports bra so that you can see whether that make of bra does in fact reduce the movement of the breasts.

We looked for a news hook to get more coverage and build links to these videos and found that Dr. Joanna Scurr, a bio-mechanics professor in the UK, had done some research into breast movement and damage to breast tissue caused by exercising without proper support. Dr. Scurr's research had received a fair amount of attention from mainstream media - such as USAToday and MSNBC.

HerRoom hosted a podcast interview with Dr Scurr and put out a search optimized press release about this research and the Bounce Test videos.

A search on Google shows that this press release has been published on sites like Reuters and WSJ.com

Bloggers wrote about the podcast and the videos.

A month ago this page on HerRoom was not in the first 100 results. With some on page optimization and a news angle that created links to the page it is now on page two at #14.

Stay tuned - with a few more high profile authoritative links we should make it to page one. Online media relations is an undervalued SEO technique. But it does take an understanding of news and good PR skills.

How To Transfer Tapes

PR's get the theory of blogging, but need guidance on implementation
A survey done late last year reveals PR pereceptions about blogging

PR's as a general rule 'get' blogging, but a new survey shows some big gaps in knowledge of how to implement a blog successfully.

PR's do understand the benefits of blogging and are very aware that as a form of communication to stakeholders it can be very valuable:

• 94.4% agreed or strongly agreed that blogging can humanise a company.
• 93.8% disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement ‘corporate blogging is a failure if it does not improve sales or increase a company’s share price’

And they do get that there are 'rules of engagement' when blogging:

• 96.9% said that being open and honest about your company in a blog is vital if the blog is to be successful

However, although PR's clearly understand the theoretics of blogging, there is still some way to go in the implementation of this theory. A large number of PR's are still sceptical of the potential for blogging, they lack trust in their clients and are reluctant to relenquish control.

• 50% said that ghostwriters could be used to provide the content for corporate blogs
• 50% of PR's stated that employees should only be allowed to blog if there was a formal set of guidelines which they had to follow
• 50.8 % said that they would not trust their clients to blog without their direct input
• Just 3.1% said that bloggers should have no restraints on their blogging practices.

Web 2.0 is a new medium. Some of the old rules do apply, but some definitely don't. Knowing which ones to use when means learning new skills.

Social media should be a part of your PR strategy in 2008. People do want to have a conversationj with you and they want to contribute ideas and opinions. Heck, your evangelists will even do your marketing for you, if you give them the right tools.

But before you rush in and make mistakes, get social media training and blog coaching and do it right.

See Also

• Full PR and corporate blogging survey data, methodology and results
  Background literature and survey data on this study is available here

Adobe Digital Media Store - The Leading Source of PDF eBooks & eDocs! - Attention Publishers!

Split Run Testing
If you are a webpreneur, split testing is a definite recommendation. Not only it increases sales but also lets go of unnecessary graphics and copy. A ..

How to write an effective copy
Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..

Copywriting Course

More from Google CEO, Eric Schmidt