In website design and web marketing there are two terms everyone talks about: SEO and pay-per-click. Here are two PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare about SEO.

• The first is titled: SEO and PR for Digital Public Relations.
• The second is titled: SEO Copywriting: Submitting SEO Press Releases

Your press releases should be optimized for your keywords, just like your web content (whether that is on website page or blogging platforms). There are free wire services like PRlog.org but th epaid wire services get better traction on the most often viewed sites like MSN and Yahoo.

This isn’t a quick fix. This is a slow way to build a reputation using a combination of tools: website, blog, newsroom, PR, and others. Combined it makes you look like an expert — and easy to find.  [thanks to PRsarahevans for pointing them out]

PR stands for 2 things: Public Relations and Press Releases. The main reasons to utilize press releases is for traffic building and branding. (Here are 5 reasons for SEO). To do that, the article has to be News Worthy. Anyone can put together a blurb of marketing bluff centered on 3 keywords, but what is your marketing strategy? Is it to generate traffic for the sake of traffic? Or is it to have potential prospects find you and contact you? If it is the latter, then the content is the most important.

In Website Magazine, Milind Mody of eBrandz, writes an article that is actually 4 posts:

1. Top 5 Reasons to Write a PR (organic traffic, link building, reputation mgmt, bloggers, traffic)
2. PR Basics
3. 7 Tips for Writing a PR (UVP, avoid bull, optimize for search, online PR archive, decide your objective)
4. PR Distribution Services (PR Newswire, Business wire, Marketwire, PRWeb, OpenPR, PRLog)

The article is a good starting point for newbies. There are at least 30 Reasons to write a press release.

I blog for a trade journal; a trade association; my clients and here about sales & marketing. (Soon I’ll be blogging for another industry media group; the industry being telecommunications). Last night at the AMA Tampa Bay New Media Night, I sat with 11 people to discuss blogging. We were led by Deana Goldasich from Magnetic. The only bloggers at the table did NOT work for corporate. My eyes were opened to how difficult open communication is for corporate. Lawyers, PR, executives — all have to review and approve.

Blogging is about having a conversation about your industry, marketplace, customers, products and services. It needs to be Authentic.

It does not need to be 2-way. Most of my conversations happen off the blog in email or phone calls. (Rarely do people want to “go on record”).

Marketing is about Story-telling. Blogs and New Media are just another way to tell the story to a different audience.

Deana’s suggestion was a book, The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil. I went searching for the top corporate blogs and found this list for 2007, 2006, and 2005. (I could not find the top 10 list on Technorati, but then I did not spend much time looking either, since Google is my best friend ever!)

I found a couple of resources for the PR and Corporate people:

1. Top 10 Risks for Corporate Blogs
2. New ROI of blogging report from Forrester

We ended the night discussing whether blogging was over. My opinion is that companies that do not reach out to their community / customers / marketplace will have to compete on price alone. Consumers want to hear authentic stories about how their purchase is helping the world or makes them smarter or high-class (plainly, the purchase needs to be justified). Traditional Media doesn’t work as well in our changing and fragmented culture, so New Media will have to be incorporated.