SEO and PR combined together can be very powerful.  PR is a very good way to get legitimate “white hat” links of real authority. Once you have optimized your website and made sure all aspects of your website are SEO friendly, the most important part of optimization happens off the page.  This is where you start link building and get external sites back to yours. That plays a crucial role in telling search engines how important your site really is. Public Relations (as well as other related tactics and effective methods of promoting your business like issuing press release), when used in tandem with your targeted keywords in mind, can produce spectacular results in helping your website achieve its objectives. SEO Tips for Public Relations We are sharing with you key SEO tips for your press releases to embrace when fine tuning for maximum SEO impact: Headline: Your most important keyword must appear within the first 65 characters of your headline. Remember- and the closer to the beginning of the headline, the better.   Search engines do really place weight on the prominence of keywords in your PR content – key phrases that appear higher on the page are assumed by Google to be what that press release is really ‘about.’  Don’t wait for the boilerplate to utilize your keywords. Lead: Repeat your important keyword in the first paragraph, and link it using anchor text to a relevant page on your web site (preferably a specific page related to that word, not the homepage.) Body: Write naturally, and feel free to use synonyms (e.g. “SEO” and “search engine optimization” and “optimizing for search engines”). The advice from Google has always been to use synonyms/abbreviations and search engines understand them. It definitely improves the readability of your text and your readers will appreciate them. Don’t stuff your press release with keywords. Focus your document on just one or two keywords, and insert just one or two hyperlinks.   Trying to cram too many keywords and links into one document is not visually attractive for your readers and is not SEO friendly.   Less is more in this case. Anchor Text: Anchor texts (aka hyperlinking a keyword to a specific URL) are like a channel directing readers straight back to your web site. This achieves one very important goal:  it has enormous potential to increase overall SEO for your website. If you have any comments of questions, share them with us in the comments below!

After a month off at dog training, Minnie has returned having learnt more tricks and ways of convincing the Mediarun staff to share their lunch with her. It has been rather a busy new year, setting the tone for what we all expect to be a land-shifting 2012. Here are the biggest stories of the week, and what you should expect over the next year.

Facebook Integrates Apps onto the Timeline

Social media giants, Facebook, have announced the integration of apps onto the timeline on Facebook user profiles. This announcement was made at a special press event in San Francisco California. Now, if a user wants to, say search for an item on eBay, instead of leaving Facebook or opening up a different tab, they can access the eBay app. They can also let other people know what they are looking for. Currently there are over 60 apps available ranging in categories from shopping and entertainment, to cooking and travel. Facebook have invited developers to create apps, all of which would increase the time users spend on Facebook. Minnie’s Verdict Like a lot of Facebook’s previous changes and updates (including implementation of the timeline itself), this seems to be a direct competitive move against Google+. Facebook are now giving users more reasons to stay on the domain and share more information. Google+ has proven that people want to share more, including what they search for and read. By introducing these apps on the timeline, Google+ has one less perk to differentiate from Facebook.

ComScore findings – Apps up on Browsers

At the very end of last year, comScore released their mobile subscriber market share report for November. Despite being a report exclusive for the US market, which has proven to be different to trends in the UK and Europe, there are similarities this side of the Atlantic which usually follow suit weeks after. The report shows that Android remains dominant in the US market, but more interestingly is shows that mobile users utilise apps more than they use browers (just!). Have a look at the table below. Minnie’s verdict It is safe to say that using your mobile for more than just phone-calls is not a new concept anymore, yet the usage of extra apps and utilities continues to increase. The number of apps available continues to increase, meaning that there are more practical services dedicated to smartphones. Once users find usage in an App they are more likely to reuse it then use a browser, so we should see this behaviour continue, however one cannot underestimate the importance of mobile pages; 44.4% is still a phenomenally high number.

What is likely to happen to 2012

It seems like everyone has made some form of prediction for what 2012 should hold for digital-marketing. Having scrolled through a lot, we found what we think to be the best and most accurate (not including the Earth catastrophically imploding!) Having searched around and asked about the office we have outlined the key points of what you should expect from the coming year. Attribution It was common in 2011 that online marketers with generous budgets experienced growing pains in adopting new social media platforms. It is a shame when you see the exact same messages posted out across several platforms, simply because they are an extra channel. By now, marketers should understand how social media sites differ and how they should be utilised into an overall marketing strategy. More Advertising via Google As the cost per click rates rise, and as Facebook and Google’s other main competitors become increasingly innovative with their advertising, Google will undoubtedly have to come up with new ways of drawing ad spend. We expect to see more options and products to advertise with as well as changing and experiments with their current search advertising. Seeing how advertising opens up on Google+ will also be worth watching. Social Indications will become ever more relevant This trend, born in 2011, will continue to become more of a pressing matter for SEOs and SEMs. The Google “+1”, Facebook “likes”, Tweets etc. will grow in relevance and advertisers should invest heavily in promoting these. Mobile There is no doubt about it, desktop traffic is to be overtaken by mobile traffic in 2012. Online marketers will be looking to spend more on developing mobile sites and indeed advertising on them.  We should expect to see the introduction of application design on mobiles as well, with the help of HTML5. Minnies Verdict 2012 is set to be an exciting year, seeing fierce competition and ever-more innovative developments in Social Media and Search Engine Marketing. We should see the practices move closer together as each skills complements the other. In 2011 we witnessed the death of long-tail keywords as a clear indication that personalised search and social indicators are to be more prominent this year.