The Buyer Group PR + SEO News

By Lisa Buyer, Dr. Alicia Stanton, Patrick Savage (President BodyLogicMD)

It’s always a good PR thing to get listed as a resource in a NY Times bestseller.

Two years ago the three of us arrived at Suzanne Somers home in Palm Springs, California for an intimate dinner party, celebrating the release of her book, “Ageless, The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones.” She graciously invited the physicians and anti-aging experts who contributed their expertise to the book. We had no doubt it would become a New York Times bestseller, and it did, just like her previous book, “The Sexy Years.”

When Suzanne Somers talks about bioidentical hormones, people listen.

No wonder morning talk shows like “The Today Show” want her to discuss her new book, “Breakthrough: Eight Steps To Wellness.” Suzanne Somers announced the release of her newest book discussing her success with bioidentical hormones.

This latest book lays out a path to anti-aging wellness and again, BodyLogicMD is listed as a resource for men and women looking for credible and trustworthy anti-aging physicians.

At BodyLogicMD, we applaud Suzanne Somers for helping create awareness about the enlightening and lifesaving information. She shares the eight steps to wellness and we hope it helps educate the general public, media and medical community about cutting-edge, proven remedies and preventative healthcare that most doctors are not talking about.

In “Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness,” Somers and twenty anti-aging physicians describe how processed chemicals in foods and mainstream pharmaceuticals are slowly

eroding our bodies and minds. Somers not only describes her personal wellness regime, but also lays out eight steps to help readers live a longer and healthier life.
Some of the eight steps described:

Balance hormones through bioidentical hormone replacement (not synthetic, cancer causing)
Avoid chemicals and detoxify your body
Take nutrition seriously
Care for your GI tract
Sleeping
Thyroid problems
Restore hearing

We recommend this book and look forward to its destiny to be another New York Times bestseller.
For more information on how you can implement the Eight Steps to Wellness into your life, Contact BodyLogicMD

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.

All Eyes Online

Best PR Strategies for More Visibility and Qualified Leads

By Lisa Buyer

What do you say when your customers ask “How come your company doesn’t come up in Google?”

Does your public relations strategy consider your buyer’s online ‘search’ habits? Are you coming up in key word searches related to your brand name, product or service? Are you participating in the online conversations and getting search engine visibility in Google News, YouTube, Yahoo News and reaching out to influential bloggers?

The answers should all be yes, without question, and if there was any hesitation in coming up with the answer, your public relations direction is very “yesterday”…impacting your bottom line tomorrow, if not today.

The public relations world is in a major transition offering more opportunity for sales and lead generation than ever.

Yesterday’s traditional PR agency focused on generating editorial coverage in the likes of print and broadcast media. Landing a story in USA Today or CNN was a measurement of success. Clipping books were the proof points. Print coverage does still have its place; the return on investment for online media coverage is the best bet.

Consider these statistics:
• A PEW/Internet and American Life study reports that the place Americans turn to most for answers is the Internet.
• Health is one of the topics that online Americans turn to the Internet for most, but also area in which searchers are most concerned about accuracy and privacy.
• Over three quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
• News search engines are the major source for online news
• Press releases have topped trade publications as the top source for online news
• 80% of home buyers begin their search online and Real estate professionals say that search engines are the most popular venue for marketing
• Nearly 70 percent of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis
• 44% of US consumers will use social networking such as LinkedIn, Facebook or My Space at least once a month in 2008.
• YouTube attracts the most online traffic and is consistently rated the favorite social media site by US Internet users, some say it will predict the election
• One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blog and about one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page
• Over half said that blogs were having a significant impact on the “tone” (61.8%) and “editorial direction” (51.1%) of news reporting
• Nearly half of all journalists report visiting a corporate website or online newsroom at least once a week.” *
• More than 85% report visiting a corporate website or online newsroom at least once a month

Most companies are adjusting and evolving based on this momentous shift in the industry and experts predict more will change in the next five years than have transpired in the past 50 years for media.

News is no longer delivered to the front porch and print ads are quickly losing the luster.

People are customizing the news they are looking for on personalized home pages with specific keywords and brand names subscribing to iGoogle or MyYahoo. They are following niche-oriented bloggers who are talking about topics and trends of interest. They are having online conversations and socializing in LinkedIn, Facebook and Twiiter. They are sharing experiences, stories, and photos, creating their own content, and acting as their own publishers.

So if PR is no longer merely the sources of content for the media and bloggers are out there publishing their take on the news, not to mention determining the news… what can you do to adjust your online PR strategy?

Companies today need to have a public relations plan that includes an Internet strategy. Without it, companies will quickly loose marketshare, exposure and opportunities to generate leads and retain business.

Online conversations are happening and businesses can choose to participate in those online conversations and take a proactive approach or they can sit on the sidelines and do nothing.

More now than ever, PR is redefined with the opportunity to communicate and interact directly with targeted audiences. Whether these audiences find their information at multimedia forums, such as YouTube and FlickR or they subscribe to a specific blog that feeds to their Google home page, online public relations is one of the most influential components of communications.

In April of ‘07 IProspect.com did a social network user behavior study which is still highly relevant today.

One finding…
"Social networking sites are influencing the purchasing decisions of a meaningful percentage of the Internet users who visit them, requiring marketers to identify the sites where the level of influence is high, and to devise ways to positively engage with the visitors of those sites (“communities”)." To download the full white paper from IProspect Click Here .

Online PR Musts
1. Optimized content - Optimized press releases and web content using SEO (search engine optimization) best practices such as strategic keyword phrases will help improve online visibility and can drive measurable traffic and sales.
2. Distribution – channels to push and distribute content include newswire services such as PRWeb, BusinessWire and PRNewswire, Flickr, Technorati, YouTube, Blogs and Search Engine News.
3. Social Media Relations – It’s matchmaking for business. Targeting and connecting to your target market is becoming easier as networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn add millions of new users each week. If you’re not on it, join it. Facebook actually has a group called Power Social Media Strategies that is a very useful resource.
4. Measure the Results – Online public relations is measurable with analytics programs that tell where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site. Analytics tools from sources such as Google Analytics, Wire service reports and blog monitoring services can tell you a wealth of information from key word related results to map overlays and visitor trends.
5. Blogs – If you don’t have your own blog, start following the bloggers who are talking about your industry, interests or trends. If you want to follow more about search engine marketing and public relations, check out some of these SEO/PR Blogs http://www.thebuyergroup.com/blog , http://www.seomoz.org/blog/ , http://www.toprankblog.com/
6. Local Search: Hone in on the local market and get better results in a more efficient manner with avenues like Google Local Search and Local.com.
7. Online Reputations: Monitoring and interacting with reviews on sites like Yelp can drive traffic to your Web site and generate sales – pay attention to online conversations.
8. Learn from the Search Rock Stars – If you feel like you need to learn more, you should attend a professional search engine marketing conference and get ahead of your competition. Best bets include Search Engine Strategies , PubCon
and most recently, the leader is Search Marketing Expo

With today’s online public relations opportunities, the key word is measurement…and the measurement is in the key word.

About Lisa Buyer
Writer, publicist, brand junkie and SEO geek, Lisa Buyer is president and CEO of The Buyer Group, an interactive public relations and branding agency specializing in search engine savvy consulting catering to real estate, health, beauty and technology companies. A University of Florida graduate, Lisa has owned a PR agency for more than 15 years and regularly attends professional search engine strategy and Internet conferences to continue to deliver best practices.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lisabuyer
Find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com
Connect me on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/lisabuyer

By Lisa Buyer

Looking for me?
 
I’ll be in Hollywood, California March 17-19 at OMMA Global Hollywood
– connecting with the world of online media, marketing and advertising gurus.
 
It’s all about Internet search, email, video, mobile, behavioral and metrics and the way the Internet is changing everything we do. I’m joining top executives from all sectors of the online world at this MediaPost semi-annual conference.
 
The Internet is reordering the way we live, love, work and communicate. And, it changes everything about the way online public relations
and reputation management mesh together into a digital strategy.
 
The conference kicks off Monday morning with keynote speakers including the Executive Vice president of CBS Interactive.
 
Here are some of the sessions I will be attending
 
Paid versus Organic Search – Where to allocate budget
Online Brand Awareness
Social Media and the Coveted Communities that Lie Beneath
Email Marketing: The Experts Answer Tough Questions
Email in 2008 – One of Your Strongest Media Vehicles
Where’s all the “Good” Content? How and Why.
 
I look forward to sharing this new knowledge with you when I return.

By Jill Swartz

I just finished an interactive PR  and social media seminar conducted by ‘SEO Joe’ aka Joe Laratro
on Blog writing for PR and SEM and I couldn’t help but feel empowered. Not having a blog in corporate America today can be compared to a retail store not having a website.
 
The most valuable bit of information I can share with The Buyer Group
blog readers, if you start a blog, stay committet. Blogs are all the buzz today and they have add a new layer of socialization to the Internet and open new channels to your prospects and clients.

Some tips on blog content

News – Since Blogs can be syndicated, content additions are easily dispersed throughout the Web. Company press releases can make great content.
Education — Google created an Adwords Blog, http://adwords.blogspot.com. They use it to further educate Adwords Advertisers on the latest innovations and uses for their product. The Inside Adwords Blog was customized to fit within the look and feel of Google’s Adwords system, even though it is hosted with Blogspot. It is updated weekly with very useful content for its readers. It is even optimized for keywords, while truly educating on new techniques.
Commentary — Insightful analysis of Industry specific news and events is welcomed
Promotion — Blogs can be a great channel to promote new products or services. This promotion can be achieved through a combination of news, education, and commentary.
 
To learn more about the How’s and Why’s of blogging, email me at jswartz@thebuyergroup.com
and I’ll send you a white paper on blogging from expert Joe SEO, Joe Laratro.
 

By Lisa Buyer

I have one thing in common with The Today Show’s
Matt Lauer, Meredith Viera, Al Roker, Ann Curry, Natalie Morales and Hoda Kotb - we all attended The South Beach Food and Wine Festival and hung out after at the super-hot, Loews Miami Beach Hotel on Ocean Drive.
 

The Today Show group is my fave for morning show TV, so it was PR destiny that we cross paths and what a better venue than the glam on South Beach?
 

Having an interactive PR and branding agency
means getting social with clients and prospects. Attending the South Beach Food and Wine Festival was one of those tough assignments and schmoozing with the Today Show hosts was a good perk for me and The Buyer Group clients.
 

You can bet this is covered on my Facebook !

By Lisa Buyer 

One of my very favorite online marketing and public relations bloggers, Lee Odden , recently posted a reader’s poll on what online marketing tactics we will use most in 2008. This was a tough choice because we were only able to choose one out of more than 30 choices. The poll is still running if you would like to cast your vote , but in the meantime…here are the results:

 
Blogging (25%)
Search engine optimization (14%)
Email marketing (12%)
Pay per click (8%)
Blogger relations (6%)
Online public relations (5%)
Viral marketing (5%)
Corporate web site (4%)
Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) (4%)
Webinars/Teleconference (3%)
 
I am in agreement with Lee, and probably most of my peers who “get” the critical shift happening in how we communicate and converse with our target audience. If you are not involved in a blog for biz, personal and/or clients, you are at an increasing disadvantage.

Ignoring strategies for search engine optimization could be costing you a bundle in lost traffic to your Web site.

By Jennifer LeClaire

If pay-per-click advertising campaigns to drive traffic to your Web
site are breaking your budget and traffic remains stagnant, SEO could
be your answer. Short for search engine optimization, SEO is the
process of updating your site in ways that get it to rank as high as
possible in search engine results. The higher you rank, the greater the
chances searchers will click through to your site. A strategic SEO
campaign can boost search traffic and lower your spending on SEO’s
cousin, search engine marketing — buying ads alongside search results.

“If you plan to generate revenue or leads from your Web site, then you
ought to make it as search engine-friendly as possible,” says Andrew
Wetzler, president of MoreVisibility.com Inc., a search engine
optimization firm in Boca Raton. “CEOs need to know it’s possible to
rank well in the search engines and consider building SEO initiatives
into the marketing plan to drive new business.”

Increasing visibility
It is important to note that search engine optimization and search
engine marketing are two different animals. SEM tends toward immediate
results. You pay a pre-defined amount for each click to a text ad that
sends traffic your way. SEO, on the other hand, does not yield
overnight results. It fosters slow and steady growth through “natural”
(or “organic”) search — the Web page results that appear after you type
your keywords into a search engine box.

SEO demands a three- to six-month campaign that includes actions
such as improving the hidden Web site code that search engines read,
using headings in your site’s Web copy, saving images and media with
top-performing search engine keywords and creating sitemaps (a page
that contains an organized list of all pages on the site). You should
also understand that search engines penalize your site (rank it lower)
for having duplicate content or having a page without content. A flash
animated opening on your home page can make it difficult for the
engines to pick up the site.

You cannot expect to know everything about SEO. Today’s best practices
may be frowned upon next year. But Pedro Sostre, president of
Miami-based Internet consulting and design firm Sostre &
Associates, offers some foundations:

“The three most important aspects of SEO are, first, creating
relevant, keyword-rich content. Second, coding Web pages that utilize
SEO best practices and, third, reviewing your SEO efforts at least
semi-annually to make sure you’re staying current with SEO changes and
trends.”

There is yet another important facet to SEO: gearing your online public
relations materials, such as press releases, to improve organic search
results. Optimizing a press release simply means using relevant keyword
phrases your audience might use to search for your products or
services. Lisa Buyer, founder and CEO of The Buyer Group, an
interactive public relations and branding agency in Deerfield Beach
that recently added SEO strategies to its services list, says few
companies have caught on to the power of optimizing online PR.

But whether you have caught on to SEO and your campaigns have failed or
you are just getting wind of it, Buyer says, the challenge is deciding
on the most profitable strategic direction. “You have to look to the
source that has a track record and that can work with all the
stakeholders,” she says.

What will this cost you?
An aggressive SEO campaign can range from $3,000 to $5,000 a month.
However, you can get results with as little as $500 to $1,000 monthly.
Your expenses will depend largely on the breadth of your internal
resources. SEO consultants can lay out strategies which you execute
in-house or they can do the work for you. The latter is the more
expensive option.

One of the biggest mistakes you could make is to hire the wrong firm to
optimize your site. Some of those promising “No. 1 placement on the
search engines — today!” may merely be over-promising. Others may be
engaging in unscrupulous activities that could harm your online ranking.

“There are lots of companies that offer SEO services that are
completely bogus. Many of them put too much emphasis on meta tags,
reciprocal links and other elements that are outdated and no longer
have strong SEO value,” Sostre says. “Anyone who promises to get you
specific positions in Google or Yahoo! is outright lying.” To get your
money’s worth, experts suggest measuring your SEO results with Web
analytics software.

Looking for me this week?

I’ll be in Las Vegas at WebmasterWorld’s Search and Internet Marketing Conference (PubCon) 
December 4-7, 2007.

 
What does this have to do with public relations and branding? Everything!
 
It’s where search engine and Internet marketing professionals gather to
share best practices in the design, development, promotion and
marketing of their businesses and brands.
 
The conference kicks off Tuesday morning with a few words from keynote speaker Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List .
 
Here are some of the workshops I will be attending front and center:
 
Social Marketing–explores major social marketing sites such as Digg , Facebook
and LinkedIn
and how to monetize them
Reputation Management and Monitoring
Content Creation – how to crank out good content
Analytics, Tracking Performance – measuring site’s performance
Local Search Optimization – the power of local targeting
Brand Management
Effective Action-based Copywriting
Responsible Web Design – explores strategies that ensure compatibility, longevity and usability
Word of Mouth Marketing – how to use it to increase Web traffic
Press and Public Relations Campaigns
 
I will also be mixing and mingling with the most influential leaders in
Internet and search engine marketing as well as attending after hour
receptions hosted by Google.
 
I look forward to sharing this new knowledge with you when I return.

Keys to search engine visibility

MoreVisibility’s president explains that content, keywords, linking
and architecture are keys to getting a website to show up near the top
of a search engine result.

Check out the full article

http://www.miamiherald.com/business/technology/story/294094.html

Posted on Mon, Nov. 05, 2007 by Bridget Carey

Andrew Wetzler

Job: President of MoreVisibility
Age: 44
Residence: Boca Raton
Hometown: Baltimore
Family: Married with three children
Education: B.A. in economics from Tulane University
Sites he has to visit every day: jambase.com and cnnsi.com

Good search engine results are vital to the success of a business. If a
company is struggling to get traffic to its site, perhaps there is a
need to seek out a firm that specializes in search engine optimization
for websites — which are natural results from a search engine — and
search engine marketing — which are the paid ad link results in a
search.

Andrew
Wetzler, president of Boca Raton-based MoreVisibility, spoke to The
Miami Herald about what businesses both large and small should keep in
mind in order to get the best possible search results for their
websites.

He explained that keys to a successful search are to
have strong content, the right keywords, other related sites that link
to your site and a site design that does not have too many ”bells and
whistles” such as Flash programming features, so that a search engine
can understand the site.

Q: What trends are you seeing now in search?

A:
One of the most interesting things that is gaining momentum is the
impact of social search on how companies market online. We do a fair
amount of writing of blogs for companies and set the blog up and put
all the pieces together properly.

The reason that that is
important is that blogs by nature are content rich and very targeted to
what the subject matter is. The more content that is posted on a
continual basis, the greater the likelihood that the site will do well
naturally with search engines.

Q: What are things about search that people tend to misunderstand?

A:
I think there is a tremendous amount of misunderstanding in terms of
the paid aspect of search. I think there are a lot of searchers that
don’t even know the difference between a paid result and a natural
result. So one of the things we try to communicate to our clients is
the importance of what we call honoring channel preference. There are
certain people out there who would never click on a paid link. There
are other people who believe if someone is willing to be there, then
they must have something good to talk about because they are willing to
pay for the traffic. And then there’s a huge body of people who I
believe don’t know the difference. I think you need to be in both
places intelligently.

Paid search today has become very
competitive in that if you’re going to bid to be at or near the top at
a particular keyword, you need to be very certain that you are
converting an appropriate number of visitors to new customers. Whether
you’re a real estate firm that’s looking for buyers or sellers or
whether you’re a hotel looking for visitors or you’re a university
looking for applications — if you’re going to do paid search you need
to really have an understanding of the different variables of a
campaign and manage them carefully.

The narrower your keywords
are, the less the competition, and typically the higher the conversion
rate. And less competition equates to a lower bid price in most
instances. And the closer you are able to get what someone is actually
searching for, the greater the likelihood is that when they show up on
your website, they are going to do what you want them to do.

Q: What sort of changes have there been in the industry in the last decade?

A:
Not only has paid search become more important but also things like
analytics, and that’s a real scary term for business owners, large or
small. It’s extremely important that you have an analytics tool in
place that can look at the traffic that’s coming into your site and see
which traffic is converting and which isn’t and modify campaigns
accordingly.

Several years ago, people could only measure by how
much traffic did I get and how much money is in the bank, how many
sales did I get. Today we can segment so much more efficiently than we
ever have before — which keywords are driving conversions, which
landing page is generating a better result, which engine converts
better.

Q: Is it possible for a small business
to improve its search results without going to a consulting firm, even
if that business isn’t tech savvy?

A: I would
say it’s a function of how much time they want to invest. There’s no
question that if someone is willing to spend the time and make the
commitment to learn Internet marketing, search marketing, they can do
it. But it’s extremely fast-moving. There are so many different
variables involved in making a program successful, both on the
optimization side, as well as on the paid search marketing side. I
would certainly say it can be done, and you can do it yourself if
you’re willing to make the commitment.

Q: What advice do you give a business that is a beginner in search engine optimization?

A:
I guess the first piece of advice is to make sure you have a website
that effectively communicates the message that you want to share with
others. Because if you don’t, very little else will work after that.
You may be successful in driving paid traffic to the website, but if it
doesn’t complement your offerings, you won’t be successful. If the site
isn’t in sync with the keywords, it won’t be successful. So having a
good website that is intelligently put together and is user friendly is
the starting point for anything that you will do.