Making Search Even More Efficient!  Increasing Your Search Ranking Via PR and Search as a Branding M

I approached this session with a Comic Book Shop Guy attitude.  I truly expected to walk out thinking, “worst session ever,” and commenting on obscure facts that the panelists got wrong.  While the panel covered mostly familiar ground for me, I know that it was new information to a lot of people, especially in-house marketing teams.  Before the session, I had the chance to chat with someone near me who also turned out to be an Analyst for an agency, and he mentioned how surprised he was to see so many frantic note-takers at various sessions.  He was hopeful about the session we were attending, but also a bit skeptical.  I checked in with him after the session, and he agreed that it was very well done and worth attending.

Panelists Fredrick Marckini (iProspect), Alison Kane (Atlas Search), and Greg Jarboe (SEO-PR), did a very good job of presenting the material in an entertaining and engaging way., and moderator Mark Naples kept the session moving without turning the focus to himself.  Things kicked off with Marckini, who started with a Successories™ image as a slide as his opening.  Thankfully, he was only using the Succesories poster as a framework for the parody versions, DeMotivators, from Despair.com.  It’s a risky framework for a presentation, but it worked and he had everyone’s attention.  The biggest take-away that I got from his presentation was a much better way to explain why and how PR and local search impact organic search results.  His challenge of “what’s the number one result” showed that number one on Google depends on who’s reporting it.  If the paid position and news results come above the standard search results, what do you consider number one? 

Alison Kane, had the unenviable job of following Fredrick Marckini.  Her presentation was more elegant and subtle than Marckini’s, but only varied in style—not substance.  Once she found her stride, she also showed that she has the ability to mix wit with wisdom.  Her presentation had a Socratic Method theme, with slides of Socrates marble sculptures making profound statements about marketing and public relations.  Additionally, her quip about Greg Jarboe having a remarkable likeness to Socrates elicited laughter from the audience and panelist.  Ms. Kane’s presentation focused more on branding and how to utilize search with clients for whom that is a top priority.  One of her strongest examples was one with Lexus.  Go type “performance” into Google, and look at the ads on the right hand side.  That is a true branding oriented use of paid search, and one that anyone can take to their boss or client to explain why they should buy keywords that are not directly product related.

The session was rounded out with Greg Jarboe, who was lauded not only by the moderator, Mark Naples, but also his fellow panelists.  Mr. Jarboe began by asking the audience how many of us considered ourselves were “in search.”  About 2/3s of the audience raised their hands.  Then he asked how many are “in PR.”  That number was significantly reduced, but he was pleased that anyone had raised their hands.  After moving through a variety of information about how and why you should optimize your press releases, some very impressive examples of results were shown.  One in particular was for a client, who shall remain unnamed, that does press releases whenever they release a new report.  The press releases are all optimized.  The reports, which are available online, are not.  On Google News, the press release ranked higher than the actual article.  Both now are positioned to drive traffic.  We were also shown some examples of press releases being picked up and carried as full articles on a variety of sites, which of course is the hope whenever a company puts out a press release.  The take-away from this part of the session was that coverage is coverage, even if you don’t think it’s a “news site.” 
“The fact that media is mutating is someone else’s problem,” Jarboe explained.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog, Morningstar.com, or NYT.com—readers are readers and clicks are clicks.

The Q&A provided a couple of interesting topics.  The first was about Yahoo News being more popular in the US than Google News.  It was a great reminder not to focus only on Google.  Another audience member asked about wire services, and while not telling us which service to pick, Mr. Jarboe explained why he has left a longstanding partner.  He also mentioned a couple of criteria for choosing a wire service like making sure that the wire publishes to Yahoo Finance and AOL news, which both have large readerships.  I was actually able to ask a question about one of my pet issues that was not discussed during the main session.  The previous question was about squashing negative comments and search results, so I asked if they advised clients their clients to actually post on comments on blogs that make positive or negative posts about the client’s company or products.

I would like to have seen a little more discussion about more cutting edge social media techniques as part of a PR/search mix, but, based on the note-taking around me, this was already pretty cutting edge for many people.  The only way it could have been covered would have been to have one panelist specifically focus just on that one topic.  But, if another panelist had been added it would just have reduced the amount of time each had to speak. 

One last thing deserves a mention.  Fredrick Marckini had the best networking ploy of the conference that I’ve seen.  He finished his presentation by saying that anyone who would like copies of the PowerPoint or white papers that he mentioned should drop a business card with him after the presentation.  Needless to say, a rock-star worthy line formed and he had to be moved from the podium so the technicians could reset the stage.