Newhouse Social Media // Curated by colleagues from the 2012 MAYmester PRL530 Social Media for Public Relations class in the Public Relations Master's Program at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.
What’s the role of public relations when it comes to search engine optimization? When PR thinks SEO, we often talk about jamming keywords into press releases, headlines or blog posts. In reality, overstuffing keywords actually damages search rankings. But, there are a whole host of other ways PR — specifically social media — and SEO can support each other.
The most important thing I learned in class was how to actual implement keyword research. The video we watched emphasized working within the hierarchy of one’s page first and then going onto the keywords that are demanded deeper into the hierarchy. This helped me understand site architecture better and more about how search engine optimization works. This is valuable to my life and career because it is important to be able to realize what the hierarchal structure is of your clients’ website and how to work with or fix that structure so that one can best optimize their keywords. As we learned in class being able to know what your clients’ customers will be searching for greatly effects whether or not your client will be the website they find and of course you want your clients page to be the first result if a customer is searching for an organization like your client. Also, one quote really stuck out to me from chapter 11 in Groundswell that said “companies need to be ready to fail often, fail quickly and most important fail cheaply” (Li & Bernoff, 229). It is interesting to relate this quote back to a possible not for profit client whose website could be failing like the private school we discussed in class. Therefore the question that still remains unanswered for me is how does one quickly create a positive hierarchy on a clients’ website that fits well with their keyword demands and really does make them more prominent on search engines?
The most important thing I learned in the reading was the marketing funnel in Groundswell. This chapter emphasized how it is important to make connections with those in the middle of the funnel and how the influence of the groundswell is strongest there. One point that really stuck out to me was how important it is to create a presence on one’s website that encourages interaction so that not only are you drawing visitors to your page farther down the marketing funnel, but that you are also facilitating a space where those visitors can influence others. This is valuable to my life or career because I am particularly interested in not for profit PR and it is crucial for not for profit organizations to be continually expanding their reach so that they are finding more and more volunteers and donors. Therefore, learning how to use social media so that those already interested in the organization pull others in is very valuable to the success of whatever organization I might be working for. In class we were learning about Search Engine Optimization and how it is better to have visitors coming to your site through another channel than just searching it on Google. Maybe I miss heard this part, but if this is correct my question then is by coming through other channels are visitors showing us that connections are being made and that visitors are being influenced and possibly moving farther down the marketing funnel?
