1. Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence
Digital Marketing London 2011
Stephen James Lock
@stevejlock

2. About Me
→ First exposure to SEO in 2003.
→ Worked with a number Internet start ups.
→ Part of the SEMPO Institute in the UK.
→ Worked with some of the World’s largest brands.
→ Currently SEO Product Marketing Manager for
Analytics SEO an enterprise SaaS platform.

3. Overview
→ SEO overview / benefits.
→ SEO / social media convergence / social ranking factors.
→ Social media, PR & SEO convergence.
→ Blogging & Microblogging: the sweet spots.
→ Professional tips and advice from the trenches.
→ The future of search.

4. A Tough Crowd
Source: KPA/Zuma/Rex Features

5. SEO Overview
Social media is
becoming
increasingly
important, no
longer a “nice to
have” Online promotion
of websites and
generating links
Selecting the right accounts for a large
keywords is often part of Google’s
the most important algorithm
part of digital
campaigns
Identifying
technical
barriers for the
search engine
spiders is
fundamental
Source: Rand Fishkin/SEOmoz.org

6. Benefits of SEO as a Channel
→ Highest ROI versus any other marketing activity (Forbes).
→ Direct benefits from campaign can recur for many years.
→ Organic traffic drives generally the highest quality visitors to
websites.
→ You can optimise for brand terms that are trademarked.

7. Benefits of SEO as a Channel
→ Users trust websites that rank well in major
search engines.
→ 46% of searches relate to products and
services.
→ Over 70% of visits on the web come via SEO.
→ Over 90% of Internet users research products
and services online.
Source: fancydressball.co.uk

8. Benefits of SEO as a Channel
Source: Marketing Sherpa

9. The Rise of The Smartphone
Source: Flurry Analytics

10. The Rise of The Smartphone
Source: Flurry Analytics

11. SEO & social media convergence

12. SEOmoz Ranking Factors
Source: SEOmoz.org

13. SEOmoz Ranking Factors
Source: SEOmoz.org

14. Tiger Blood + Social Media = #winning

15. PR’s evolution into digital
→ Brand communications “the conversation” has shifted online.
→ Communication channels are moving away from traditional media.
→ Social media has become a fundamental part of PR.
→ Economic pressure and the rise of blogging.

16. Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence

17. Social Media, PR & SEO Convergence
Blogging &
Microblogging a.k.a.
The Blogosphere

18. Blogging & Microblogging
→ Strong current themes across PR, SEO and social media.
→ Blogger outreach benefits all marketing channels.
→ Influential bloggers are often influential across multiple social media
platforms inc. Twitter.

19. Blogging & Microblogging
→ Blogger outreach often can be the highest value individual process in
a campaign.
→ Successful campaigns increase search engine visibility significantly.
→ Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM).

20. Pro Tips: Advanced Search Operators
Estimated
over 1.9
million
targets!
*Power Tip: Link Gopher for Firefox
*Power Tip: http://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html

21. Pro Tips: Buzz & Real Time Analytics
→ Google Alerts for generic industry terms and competitor analysis.
→ Real time analytics such as Clicky & Woopra for SEO / SM.
→ Google Reader / RSS feeds.
→ Google Trends & Google Insights. “Piggyback” trends e.g. royal
wedding.

22. Pro Tip: Influencer Mapping
→ Google Blog Search & Google Profiles.
→ Twitter Search, Followerwonk.com, SocialMention.com &
Postrank.com.
→ Industry associations & leading brands.

23. Pro Tip: Influencer Mapping
→ Thought leaders / authors.
→ Competitors: SEOmoz, Majestic SEO, Link Diagnosis, YSE.
→ Influencer research: who do they follow? who follows them? what
do they write about? successful types of content?

24. Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach Process
*Power Tip: some campaigns may result in few links, yet key
relationships can still be built from the process.

25. Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach
→ Ego hooks are effective. Build relationships (most important).
→ Don’t immediately ask for links / favours.
→ Transactional offerings e.g. free products to review.
→ Business development works well.
→ Guest blog posts are a great way to build links and generate the
highest quality traffic.
*Power Tip: research and content creation can be outsourced, but
warning please don’t try to outsource anything mission critical!

26. Pro Tips: Blogger Outreach
→ Leverage Twitter / LinkedIn / blog
commenting.
→ Content that works: awards / interviews /
research / surveys / link bait e.g.
infographics, video, humour.
→ Read target blog recent posts to personalise
outreach.
→ Invest time and resources in the highest
value targets – 80/20 rule.
*Power Tip: research and content creation can be outsourced.
Source: garyfouse.blogspot.com

27. Pro Tips: Twitter
→ Focus on engagement and retweet / cite related content that is
editorially strong.
→ Syndication & automation. Tools inc. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite,
Followerwonk, Backtweets, FriendOrFollow, SocialOomph,
TwitterFeed, Paper.li, Summify, TwitterCounter & Formulists.
→ Constant testing: variables such as scheduling posts at different
times and tweeting the same tweets multiple times.
→ Build relationships, then ask the most influential people to follow
you! IT SOUNDS STUPID, BUT IT WORKS!
*Power Tip: retweeting influencers is a great way to build
relationships. DM requests also work a treat!

28. Pro Tips: Paid Services
→ SEOmoz
→ SEO Majestic
→ Analytics SEO
→ Hootsuite
→ PR Web
→ Paid social media advertising:,
Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon,
Delicious, LinkedIn, YouTube etc.

29. Pro Tips: The Future of Search
→ ICANN brand signals e.g. ipad.apple to become unbeatable for ipad.
→ Brand authentication to become more sophisticated e.g. LinkedIn.
→ XML “author” microformat and rich snippets – schema.org.
Source: scifiscoop.com

30. Pro Tips: The Future of Search
→ Anchor text to decrease in value, with
higher scrutiny.
→ Page loading speeds.
→ Data modelling / LDA & topic relevance to
combat web spam.
→ Exact match domains to be less valuable.
→ Social media signals – “SocialRank” to
match or overtake links within 24 months.
Source: slurmed.com

31. Thanks for listening…
Slides: www.slideshare.net/stevejlock
Twitter: @stevejlock / @analyticsseo
Please use voucher code “ASEO5499” to trial 5 sites for £99…