Shedding Light on Black PR

February 20th, 2013 | Shonali Burke |

 

 

 

Terri Johnson tipped me off to a fascinating story yesterday. It’s an exposé of China’s “black PR industry.”
I had no idea such a thing existed, but here is how Charlie Custer, who summarized it for Tech in Asia, explains it:

“Black PR firms provide client companies with both post deletion services to help them escape negative news stories, and some also provide placement for soft ads and hit pieces attacking competitors. The top black PR firms can offer these services even for stories posted to China’s most popular news portals.”

Image: Arjen Toet via Flickr, CC 2.0
The bit about placing soft ads and hit pieces won’t shock or surprise you, since we’ve seen that happen here in the U.S. as well, disgusting as the practice is. And reputation management is often a large part of what we, as PR professionals, do; for some, it’s what they specialize in and focus on.

In fact, even those who don’t think they do it, probably do. For example, content marketing is as much about reputation as anything else; after all, we (organizations, or clients, or simply human beings) want people to think well of us, and to come to us for the right reasons… right?
Scrubbing the Internet
There are also numerous companies that offer to “scrub” your reputation for you (for varying amounts of money), or teach you how to do it yourself; though at least in the U.S., most people know enough to not overtly promote “black hat SEO” tactics to do so. In fact, companies like BrandYourself tell you point blank what they won’t do.
The approach I’ve seen (so far) from such firms primarily involves getting higher rankings for “relevant” and desired links, by tweaking keywords, generating useful content, etc… mostly in an above-board manner. This, again, is not a surprise. (I’ve never used BY, btw, I just found them when I was researching companies that offer this kind of service… case in point.)
But here is where I started to narrow my eyes as I read the article:

among other things, these “black PR” firms offer to delete negative articles and post “hit” pieces to China’s most popular news portals.

Not (just) search engines. Not pitch stories. Actually delete from, and post to, news portals.
The dirty saga in a nutshell


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How to Do a Better Search Engine Optimization Than the Rest

By Seomul Evans

The problem with search engine optimization is that almost all publishers and business owners online are trying it. This should not come as a surprise since search engine optimization SEO is considered as the key in doing well in the eyes of search engines. What this means is that in order to get ahead of the competition, then you must do your SEO much better. This is the only way for you to get ahead with the rest that also take search engine optimization seriously. Here are some suggestions on how you can out-do your competitors:

1. One important thing to do is to research the keywords well. And when you have identified the keywords for use in the content pages and the site, then its best that you should use the keywords on the right places. The right places include insertions of the keywords on the title tags, the Meta tags and the Alt for images. The links should be properly formatted as well. When using the keywords on the content, it should be kept in mind that there is a science as well in using the keywords. Don't overdo the use of the keywords. Based on the experiences of experienced publishers, the keyword density for content should not exceed 2 percent. Even in terms of keyword placement, there is a rule in doing this. To many, it is best to put the keyword on the title, the first sentence, the second paragraph and on the last sentence.

2. Next up to the identification of keywords is the creation of great and helpful content. Users and readers should learn a thing or two about the content that you will provide. The better the content on the site, the higher the chances of being valued well by search engines. Also the contents that are posted on the site should be regularly updated, whether the update is daily or weekly it doesn't actually matter. And speaking of the articles, it is a good move to have a title that speaks about the actual content.

The content that can be posted on the site can be written by you or you can re-post content that has been used somewhere else. But when you do this, make sure that you republish the content with consent. If you are not good at writing articles, then you can let others write the content for you. The investment for this is minimal but the returns can be huge.

3. Try creating a Google site map which can be used by the search engine. There is a tool online that can guide you in the creation of the site map.

4. Another good move is to publish the articles to article directories and other article submission websites. Now, this article should have links that will point back to your website. This is a good move since search engines like to look at the inward pointing links to the site. The higher the page ranking of the site that points to your site, the better.

5. And finally, it's best if you can read the suggestions offered by Google. The search engine giant has drafted its Webmaster Guidelines, detailing the best practices that should be adopted by anyone wishing to get noticed by Google.

By doing all these recommended search engine optimization actions, you can be sure that your efforts will generate returns better than what the rest is gaining.

About the Author: Seomul Evans is a SEO services consultant for Dallas based Search Engine Optimization Company specializing in organic SEO.

Source: www.isnare.com Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=851431&ca=Internet