The MarCom Strategist: A Free B2B Marketing E-Newsletter

January, 2008
Published by Dianna Huff
Volume 8, Number 01

Welcome!

A few months ago I had the opportunity to write a white paper about online media rooms. Doing the research for it opened my eyes to a whole host of new ideas.

The more I read, the more connections I saw between search engine optimization, public relations, and marketing -- which in the past have been somewhat disparate disciplines. So this month I give you Part I of a two-part article: why it's important to optimize an online media room for search engines.

Regards,
Dianna's signature
Dianna Huff

Optimized Media Rooms: More Traffic, More Inquiries, More Press

By Dianna Huff

Also known as "press rooms" or "news rooms," online corporate media rooms hold a wealth of information -- everything from bios of the C-suite and financial information to b-roll and archived press releases.

Before you dismiss media rooms as the purview of corporate PR departments catering to journalists, consider this: According to David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR,

. . . all kinds of people visit your media room, not just journalists. . . . Your buyers are snooping around our organization by visiting your media pages on your Website. Your current customers, partners, investors, suppliers, and employees all visit those pages, too. (Emphasis mine.)

Scott goes on to say that based on the research he's done, when "people want to know what's current about an organization, they go to the online media room."

Yet a quick analysis of the top 25 Fortune 500 media rooms shows that very few media rooms are optimized for search engines.

Why optimize a media room?

Thanks to Google's Universal Search, its search engine results pages now include content from all sources, including HTML, PDF and dynamic files, RSS, images, audio, video, blog posts, and maps.

This means competition is even greater for the top listings in Google -- and that your company stands a greater chance of unfavorable content appearing at the top of the page -- even above your own Website listing.

Type "Apple News Room" into Google, for example, and the number one listing is for Cisco's news room!

Google returns results from Cisco

(In fact, Apple doesn't appear on the first page of the Google SERP for the key phrases "Apple News Room" or "Apple Media Room." The phrase "Apple Press Room" results in a link to an Apple iPod press release as the #1 listing -- but not the Apple Press Room itself.)

Optimizing your media room, and all of the content in it, is a huge step toward ensuring that your content -- versus content from another company a disgruntled employee or customer -- ranks high in the search engines.

It also ensures that buyers, journalists and other people can easily find your content when searching.

Tips for optimizing your media room

1. Use the right keywords -- How do people find your site? Do they type in the name of your CEO? Do they use your company name, names of products, or both? To determine which keywords people use, consult your Web analytics program and/or a keyword search tool such as Keyword Discovery or Word Tracker.

2. Include lots of "text" -- Although search engines can index PDFs without any problem, it's better if you format your press releases and other content as HTML pages. This gives you more pages of content, which search engines like, and it makes the content more accessible to users (some people do not like PDFs).

3. Don't leave your Title tags to chance -- Instead of letting your CMS (content management system) automatically fill in your Title tags or even worse, leaving them to read "Untitled," really work to write Title tags that incorporate your keywords and compel searchers to click on your listing in the SERPs.

4. Keep content up to date -- Ensure all financial data, executive bios, and other corporate information is current and accurate. Not only does it look bad to have financial information posted to your site from three years ago, it also increases your risk of a journalist posting inaccurate data in a news article.

5. Have lots of content -- Media rooms shouldn't only include archived press releases. According to Scott, you'll also want to include audio feeds (i.e. podcasts), video links, executive photos, charts, and product photos. Consultants and service professionals will want to include the books they've written, presentations or speeches they've given, publications for which they write, and any awards they've won.

Make it easy for journalists, buyers, investors, job seekers, suppliers to find the information they need by optimizing your media room. Next issue I'll cover how to optimize specific types of content, including podcasts and images.

What's New with DH Communications?

In addition to winning her third MarCom Creative Gold Award for Dr. Helaine Smith's Website, Dianna Huff has also completed the following projects:

White paper lead generation campaign for Riverace Corporation
Case studies for AchieveGlobal
White paper for The Fuel Team
Direct mail letters for Alinco Computers, Inc.
Email auto-responder campaign for The Atlantic at Marina Bay
Monthly e-newsletter for ForeclosuresMass
E-newsletter for Sequent Learning Networks
Ongoing marketing and PR for Dr. Helaine Smith
Ongoing marketing and PR for Smart Products, Inc.
Press releases for Dan Janal and Mac McMcIntosh

To learn more about my services, take a look at my B2B marketing communications copywriting and SEO services to see how you can put my award-winning expertise to work for you or call 603-382-8093.