BIG News = Facebook buys Friendfeed

BIG News = The Yahoo Microsoft Deal

Not so big news = Google Caffeine Update

Feeling unloved in the blogosphere & tech press, we see Google push the early launch of their search update. Codenamed “caffeine” the update sees the introduction of a sandbox search engine for developers & power users to test & provide feedback.

“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.“

This kind of stuff is usually included in the regular updates we see from Google.. normally without any public notification engagement or pr…

twitter fail whale mug available from zazzle

conicidence or not.. my laptop went brighter as twitter went offline.. then dimmed again 5 mins later when everybody put the kettle on..

So i wonder what everybody does when twitter goes down?

• do some work?
• read the newspaper?
• read a few blogs?
• have a nap?

nah.. just moan about the downtime & write a useless post about twitter being down

(update: 4pm ish twitter still down & their status blog now reports that Twitter is suffering a DoS attack)

rioferdinand.com

The video was allowed back on the site the day after the caffufle & the trailer is now ranked number 5 on the viral video chart. Disney claim the leaked release could hurt ticket sales….

lol – yeah right… whatever!

I know a few SEO’s & media monkeys who fall into the 5 loud mouths section

Image from Mkandlez flickr / Inspired by the excellent 10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter post here

“An experienced seo is like an online marketing swiss army knife, not just a web coder & link monkey!  Use him wisely…”

Having worked as a freelance SEO for a number of PR agencies (good & bad) the convergence & synergy of skills for online pr have never been more apparent or important as they are now…

Over the next few months I’ll be blogging about the skill set your average experienced seo has & what he can bring to the online pr table… First in the series is the good old Press Release.

Let’s face it…the traditional online press release is usually;

• A very boring piece of news with five or so paragraphs of jargon nobody understands
• Months out of date because of poor distribution channels
• Poor ROI for the client, with no text link back to a landing page, poor calls to action with little or no brand equity earned.

Review your last press release:  was it optimised?

• Did it have relevant keywords?
• Did it have links back to the website?
• Was it newsworthy & engaging?
• Did I monitor the distribution?
• Did it reach my audience?
• Was it worth the effort & money?

Typically your average SEO guy will have been using article distribution for link building & web marketing for many years… they understand key factors for ranking the article, where to get the most link juice from & the most effective places to distribute it.

SEO Press Release Tips

1. Headlines not only have to be catchy, they need to have the relevant keywords. Keyword tools & Google search trends will help you understand what phrases your audience is using. Remember use the language that your audience is likely to understand (stay away from the jargon) “also don’t forget the twitter factor! 140 chars or less will make the tweet sweet
2. A link from the article is an absolute must of course… however make sure you use the right keywords in the text link & also make sure it links to the most relevant page (homepage is not always the right place)
3. Engage your reader. Ten paragraphs of boring news isn’t going to get read or linked to! Your press release should be an optimised marketing landing page with clear calls to action. Tell a story, the first 250 words are so important, like a web page; your audience will make a “stay & read” decision within the first few seconds of landing on your page. NB: The bloggers & social channels will only link to newsworthy articles.
4. Use the right channels for distributing your press release, old news is no news, your press release needs to be in front of your audience as soon as possible. PRWeb is great, but don’t forget about the social networks & blogs…

I’m not sure about my next topic.. I suspect it will be something about social networking… Anyway, if by chance you’ve come across my blog & got this far.. thanks for reading