Transcript

Brett Tabke: This is Brett Tabke. We are glad to be back again today with, joining us now is Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR. Co-founder of SEO-PR. Well known PR firm in the search marketing field. Thanks for taking the time to be with us.

Greg Jarboe: Thank you Brett.

Brett Tabke: So, let's jump into it. What's hot in PR these days related to SEO?

Greg Jarboe: Well the biggest change to hit public relations and SEO is the advent of universal search. It was important before to get found in Yahoo news and Google news and AOL news, but now all of a sudden depending on the nature of the story, particularly if it is a hot one, uh, it gets pulled right over and can rank very high in Google, and we have seen that with a variety of companies. We have seen that with a variety of products, and we are beginning to see that even with a variety of what we call business celebrities. So, uh we saw top of the fold images and news coverage around the iPod launch. We saw top of the fold images and news coverage around Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal. We have seen it with a number of companies who have gone through that rip saw season in the stock market. Anybody who announced a funny quarter back in August, suddenly the news was there, and they weren't just having a funny quarter over on Google news, suddenly that same kind of thing was on top of the fold in the news results, and if you scroll down, and some people do, what you were beginning to find was blog results at the bottom of a Google result, video from YouTube and Metacafe, and image results. If you want to, I'm not sure if this will still work today, but it was certainly working very well in August. If you do a search for Hillary Clinton. You will find generally news results at the top of the page. You will find a YouTube result in the middle of the page. You will find image results and blog results at the bottom of the page, and I'll tell you what those photos are not flattering.

Brett Tabke: What can we do as site owners and webmasters; What do we need to adjust? Obviously we can't just play organic anymore. You got to play organic. You have got to play images. You got to play in video. You got to be in blogs. Podcasts. I mean here with are with videos on the sites everywhere. Is that the nature of the future?

Greg Jarboe: Wel, yes and unfortunately the future arrived before a lot of us were ready for it, but there it is. The era of the ten blue links is over, and so if all you are doing is optimizing pages, that's nice and it still may be five or six of the ten results that are on the results page, but increasingly if you haven't optimized your images, that is the first place to start. If you haven't created some video and put it on either YouTube or Metacafe, that's the next thing you need to do,and interestingly enough for news, even if you have been optimizing your press releases, its even more important now to include an image with your news because a lot of times, what is really making that news stand out in that news result is not just that a blue link came over saying, news results here, if there is an image and the latest news results. I'll tell you what, even if it comes up number four in the results, you look at three blue links, and suddenly this image, and there is the headline, and it catches your eye. And Gord Hotchkiss has just done some new eye tracking research, and basically what his latest eye tracking research shows is that the eye now starts just to the sort of upper right of the photo, and then maybe they will navigate up, maybe they will navigate down, but the first thing they look at is the headline next to that image, and so suddenly news is the hot spot on the page.

Brett Tabke: Yeah, we actually talked to Gord earlier in the week about the eye tracking study that's uh, coming up.

Greg Jarboe: It's really good. I'll tell you what. Every chance I get at any industry conference. If I'm not speaking against him, which is always a challenge. I sneak into his sessions because he is one step ahead of a lot of us in the industry in his research.

Brett Tabke: Social marketing, or social media optimization really came about this last six to nine months. We had been hearing it around the fringes before that, but with the advent, explosing of Facebook in the last year, and Digg, the Digg clones, and the Technorati's has really put it on the forefront as a plausible alternative to search engine traffic in some ways.

Greg Jarboe: It is and it isn't. Let's put it this way. I think that social media is here to stay, and I think it is a force to be reckoned with, and I think that people should be coming up with a strategy for it, but it has to be a different strategy. It's less about keywords. It is even less about what we'll call news and information. It is actually more about entertainment. If you actually look at what gets dugg on Digg, um it is the offbeat. Now, offbeat can generate a lot of traffic, but what you need to do is put yourself in what I call a link bait mode, and say okay for this story I am looking to be a little off center. In fact you have mastered this. It's not just the five best speaking tips for PubCon, it is when hungover. Um, and that is absolutely the right strategy. So, you put yourself in a slightly different mindset, and it can work, but if you come at it the same old way more often than not, it may backfire on you.

[pause]

Greg Jarboe: I really think that if an SEO or a webmaster wants to get their head around where is this all headed and cause I just can't be in react mode, my best advice is go to Ask 3D. Look what they are doing, and all of a sudden you have got a section over here for images. You got a section over here for shopping results, etc., etc., and again the days of I have optimized my web pages I'm done are like, yeah that was nice and I remember Alta Vista. It was a search engine once too, you know. So it is time for all of us to basically go back and understand that we all need to do more than one thing. Now, um the hard part of all of that is a lot of us have developed skill sets or built departments or built agencies around a core set of skills, and all of a sudden now you need someone who knows video. And it is like they may not already be in-house, so one of the things we see right now is sort of a scramble to try and pull in the people that have those specialties,and you know whether you are putting together a swat team or a group of folks, you have to sort of tackle this because not every individual SEO has all of those multiple skill sets.

Brett Tabke: Right. Well, I hate to say it but we are just about out of time, uh, can we have you back again sometime.

Greg Jarboe: be happy to.

Brett Tabke: We going to see you down in Vegas.

Greg Jarboe: Of course, Vegas? Of course.

Brett Tabke: Thanks for being with us Greg Jarboe. Appreciate you taking the time.