The Buyer Group PR + SEO News

Deerfield Beach, FL – July 21, 2008 – The Buyer Group asks: What does online PR mean to a business? Answer? More than just an optimized press release. Can Google index your site? Is your online news optimized for today’s journalists and bloggers?  Does your Web site have good and useful content that is relevant to a user’s search?

In a continuing effort to better serve new and existing clients, The Buyer Group introduces SEO/PR reviews to help clients benchmark their search engine visibility and online public relations rankings.

“The relationship between public relations and search engine strategies is a close one,” said Lisa Buyer, president of The Buyer Group, a leading interactive PR and branding agency offering SEO/PR services. “Every page added to your Web site is a PR opportunity for the search engines. Companies looking to refine or define their position on the Internet should first do an analysis of the quality of online visibility and online public relations exposure.”

The Buyer Group’s SEO/PR reviews consist of six major components and clients are given a score out of 100 possible points. Sections such as “Meta Tag Review” and “Architectural Review” help clients see where they can improve on Web site elements such as site indexing and page labels, which will increase the odds of search engine retrieval. Page content is also reviewed, with an emphasis on key word placement.

“The integration of Search Engine Optimization and online PR efforts is an exciting and important evolution in our industry,” said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and President of the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association (SFIMA). “When agencies can combine services with the proper expertise the resulting product has to be successful.”

The SEO/PR report considers linking strategies and online PR elements such as newsroom organization, blogs, and social networks that impact online branding and reputation management. The report offers a quality score and recommendations on how to improve the score within a 60 to 90 day period.

“The Buyer Group’s SEO/PR Review Process was incredibly enlightening to us as a sales and marketing team. They showed us many fast, cost efficient opportunities to increase our website traffic. Their suggestions made sense, were able to be quickly implemented and created remarkable efficiencies in our digital marketing program. We’re so grateful to The Buyer Group for being a strategic partner on our development projects,” said Gretchen Howell, Vice President of Marketing and Analysis of GamePlan Resort Solutions.

The Buyer Group is a member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), SFIMA, Agency Management Roundtable (AMR), and is recognized as a Google Advertising Professional Company.  For more information about The Buyer Group and its interactive public relations and branding services visit http://www.thebuyergroup.com or call Lisa Buyer at 954.354.1411.

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By Lisa Buyer

The best way to foster a bad reputation is avoid confrontation, give no explanation and…oh… let’s not forget don’t pay your bills.

A good example of this is a story covered in a Virginia daily newspaper about the“prominent” real estate developer, Sandler at Greater Marathon Bay, LLC who hired The Buyer Group to handle the public relations for Marlin Bay Yacht Club. This March, the “reputable” real estate developer decided that real estate was no longer a good market and Steve Sandler of L.M. Sandler & Sons Inc shut down the project.  This decision – part of the lesson in Bad PR 101 – left contractors and subcontractors with unpaid bills for completed work totaling over $3.6 million.  According to court documents, Sandler at Greater Marathon Bay racked up 35 liens filed against them since March 2008.

Business 101: Companies should not spend when they can’t afford to lose.

PR 101: Negative online reputations spreads quickly.

Deerfield Beach, FL – July 15, 2008 – Florida Interactive PR agency President and CEO, Lisa Buyer has joined the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association (SFIMA), South Florida’s largest forum for online marketing and PR professionals. As founder of the interactive public relations and branding agency The Buyer Group, Lisa brings her search engine savvy expertise to the group as well as her knowledge, experience and resources gained as the co-founder of three previous corporate communications agencies.

Joe Laratro, President of SFIMA, says, “We welcome The Buyer Group to SFIMA. It is essential for the continued success of our organization to gain more influential members in the digital marketing space to compliment our other vendors and client side marketers.”

SFIMA hosts monthly events designed to encourage networking and communication among professionals from South Florida’s most progressive companies. Additionally, annual social events are held to help members to build client bases.

Topics discussed at SFIMA meetings include:
•    Email marketing
•    Ad exchanges
•    Web 2.0 trends and stats
•    Paid search
•    Online video marketing

“This is an exciting time to be in the world of online media,” said Lisa Buyer. “I look forward to the knowledge exchange opportunities and meeting other professionals interested in this ever-expanding field of interactive marketing.”

For more information on Lisa’s experiences with SFIMA, visit The Buyer Group’s online pr blog.

Connect with The Buyer Group
Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lisabuyer
Find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=64535777
Connect me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/lisabuyer

Word of Mouth PR Replaces Old School Ads

According to The Buyer Group’s online pr team, the old adage of spending money to make money isn’t necessarily true. How is this possible you ask? Well, the New York Times has the answer, and they’re called Yelpers. (Yel * Perz: n. def: an individual who uses www.yelp.com to create product and service reviews, to spread the word about quality businesses.)

In a recent article, NY Times business writer Dan Frost profiles several business owners who have increased their profits and decreased their ad spending simply by utilizing Yelp and other social media sites.  The Buyer Group can attest to the increase in online visibility that our clients receive with the simple addition of social media networking to their business model.

When participating in Yelp, business owners can also join in on the conversation by responding to user reviews and encouraging patrons to review them on Yelp in their physical business locations.

Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research contributes to the article with this important fact: 83 percent of consumers trust the opinion of their peers when making product and service choices. Yelp allows consumers to reign supreme over advertisements, as they should.

To read the article in full about how Yelp can be a valuable interactive public relations tool click here.