One of the most interesting aspects of web presence optimization (WPO) is how frequently bloggers and journalists write about the concept without actually using the term. They use terms like “search and social,” “inbound marketing,” “social media optimization,” “online reputation management,” “internet marketing” and others, with general agreement that the art and science of getting found on the web today require much more than just SEO–but no consensus on what to call it.

Rand Fishkin recently devoted 1,700 words to the topic of conversations about the industry’s nomenclature and inspired nearly 170 comments, all with no mention of WPO. Krista LaRiviere (see below), a co-founder of gShift Labs, is one of the few bloggers who have embraced the term.

Oh well, whatever you call the discipline of maximizing a company’s online visibility in a world where search is much more than Google-Yahoo-Bing and where web presence is much more than a corporate website, here are 18 of the best blog posts and articles from the past year on how to do it well.

Web Presence Optimization (WPO) Guides and Insights

The New Breed of B2B Buyer by Chaotic Flow

Joel York argues that “A new breed of B2B buyer has arisen, a species that is more connected, more impatient, more elusive, more impulsive, and more informed than its pre-millennium ancestors,” and that marketers need to understand how the B2B buying cycle has changed and adapt to the “new B2B buyer rules of engagement” across several traits including impatience (by making content easy to find in a self-service manner).

Inbound Marketing: Unlock the content from your emails and social marketing by MarketingSherpa Blog

Observing that email marketing efforts often produce “a mountain of content, but little of it gets used for marketing,” Adam T. Sutton shares tips from Chris Baggott on turning email content into optimizable content, such as publishing customer service answer emails as blog posts: “Sales and service teams write thousands of emails to answer customers’ questions…The answers to these questions are extremely specific to each customer’s situation. If published, they’re potentially valuable for long-tail (low volume, highly qualified) search traffic. What is the best parka for sub-zero temperatures? That sounds like a Google search to me.”

We’re Looking In The Wrong Place For Our Attribution Models by MediaPost Search Insider

Gord Hotchkiss explores John Yi’s concept of Pinball Marketing: “The new game of marketing is much more like pinball. The intersections between a buyer’s decision path and a product’s marketing presence are many, and each can send the buyer off in a different direction. Some of those intersection points are within the marketer’s control — and some aren’t.” WPO is about increasing the number of those intersection points and having as many of them as possible within the marketer’s influence, if not actual control.

Likelihood to Click by The Daily Numbers

David Erickson reports on recent research showing that “48% (of searchers) are likely to click if a brand shows up multiple times within a set of search results.” That figure seems low, but even if accurate, it makes a strong case for WPO activities designed to get a brand to show up multiple times, high in the search results, for core key phrases.

What Wins In Google Universal Search? Videos, Images & Google! by Search Engine Land

Barry Schwartz reveals that in Google Universal Search results, “videos are by far the most found results in Google, with image content a distant second,” while maps, blogs and news also rank highly—another reason companies need to utilize a diverse set of tactics in order to maximize their exposure near the top of search results.

Get Found: Stop Doing SEO, Start Doing WPO by iMedia Connection
***** 5 STARS

Krista LaRiviere of web presence optimization software firm gShift Labs quotes a client who told her that “once his marketing team started focusing on the company’s entire web presence (not just the website), organic search traffic increased, leads increased and business increased. His team noticed a significant difference within a three-month time period,” then provides a helpful six-step process for getting started with WPO.

6 SEO Jedi Tactics to Try Before Turning to the Dark Side by Search Engine Watch

The brilliant and always entertaining Angie Schottmuller uses a Star Wars analogy to argue for the benefits of white hat over black hat SEO, but several of her six “SEO Jedi” tactics apply to WPO, including universal search optimization (“Leverage the diversity of Google universal search results mixed with videos, images, shopping, books, maps (local), and news…video and image formats dominate Google mixed results, yet few sites actually apply SEO to these assets…Surround on-page images or videos with relevant textual content to help search engines better understand the asset and in-turn boost the relevance of the page as well”), clever link bait, and social media optimization.

How to cure your SEO blindness by iMedia Connection

Alan Bush writes that “The SEO process is multi-faceted and detailed, requiring coordination between client and agency, as well as among many departments such as marketing, IT, and more”—which is true, although the model he presents here is closer to WPO than pure SEO, incorporating as it does (in addition to traditional aspects of SEO like keyword research, competitor analysis and link building) social marketing, blogging, news releases and online articles.

SEO, Social Media and WPO

7 ways to make SMO work in the post-Google age by iMedia Connection

Contending that “The days of search engine optimization (SEO) as a critical audience-driving strategy for digital publishers are numbered. Forward-looking marketers need to educate themselves about a far more meaningful and effective way of bringing audiences to media destinations—social media optimization (SMO),” Ben Elowitz makes some excellent points (content is again becoming more important than technology) and provides some helpful guidance for driving more traffic through sites like Facebook and Twitter. But the truth of course is that SEO and SMO are both important and need to be practiced as part of a WPO strategy.

From SEO To Social Media, Getting All Channels To Drive Traffic by MediaPost Search Insider

Derek Gordon notes that “From newsletters to advertising, PR to social media, it’s no secret that a good marketing strategy leverages every available channel to drive traffic to Web sites…And all it really takes is (an) old mantra: work together,” and supplies some excellent tips for what is, effectively, WPO.

The Fabulous Collision of Search and Social by Social Media Today

Rohn Jay Miller offers keen insights into what he terms the “collision between social networks and search engines,” writing that social networks are remixing search in three key ways: through social content evaluation (“If a lot of people on Twitter like Bill Bob Thornton’s grilled chicken marinade, the link to his Website will move up in the SERPs”), social content results (browsing social updates or viewing user-generated content served up in Google results) and social network search (searching within Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter instead of using a traditional web search engine).

5 reasons why social media is good for SEO by Success Works

The delightful Stacey Acevero contends that “what most (marketing and PR professionals) don’t realize is that social media is in fact great for SEO and can help boost your search engine rankings,” then explains how this connection works, e.g., “Social media encourages the sharing of multimedia, and multimedia is shown to increase time on page. PRWeb did a study which concluded that including multimedia in news releases increases time on page by an average of about 30 seconds. Imagine what that could do for your blog and social media posts.”

Optimizing Social For SEO: A Three-Step Beginner’s Guide by MediaPost Search Insider

Frequent best-of honoree Janet Driscoll Miller lays out a three-stage process for making social and SEO work together, starting with claiming your company profile on the major social networks (at least Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, SlideShare and YouTube) and then connecting those accounts through a Google profile.

Social Content Seeding for SEO by Search Engine Watch

Pointing out that as the major search engines have incorporated social signals into their rankings, “now you need more than just backlinks to rank. You also need tweets, likes, and other ‘votes’ from social users to let search engines know that your brand is relevant,” Guillaume Bouchard explains how to produce content that is “shareable” (e.g., because it is unique, inspirational or entertaining) and encourage sharing on networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Online Reputation Management and WPO

6 Ways to Manage Your Online Reputation by Content Marketing Institute

CB Whittemore points out that “Using digital and social tools leads to more links to your website, better quality visits  and more indexing,” and offers half a dozen helpful tips for online reputation management, such as “Your goal is to ‘own’ as many first page search results as possible (yep, that’s pretty much the definition of web presence optimization) for your name and/or your company’s name with content you’ve created or positively influenced…Complete and robust social profiles allow you to own more of those page one results. Claim your profiles (on sites like LinkedIn, Google+, SlideShare, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter) and make sure they consistently describe you and your company.”

Online Sentiment and Link Building by Search Engine Journal

Julie Joyce identifies six social networks where every business should at least have a profile (note though that these are oriented towards local, consumer businesses; Google+ and YouTube are more important for B2B firms than are Google Places, Bing Local or Foursquare) and outlines a process for tracking and responding social content and product reviews to avoid making a negative first impression in search.

Me, Myself and I: Helping to manage your identity on the web by Google Public Policy Blog

Andreas Tuerk explains how Google has attempted to “make it easier to monitor your identity on the web and to provide easy access to resources describing ways to control what information is on the web,” since your “online identity” is shaped not only by your postings but also by tagging and what others write about you.

HOW TO: Manage Your Online Reputation Using SEO by Mashable

Reporting that “Of the almost 80% of U.S. hiring managers who had searched for candidates online, 70% of them said they had rejected a candidate based on what they found in his or her search results,” Sarah Kessler provides a four-step process for improving the results of those searches, such as posting positive content: “Profiles on social networks are powerful tools for this purpose, as results from large sites like Facebook and Twitter often carry more SEO power than a single post on something like a personal blog.”

gShift Labs is the first (at least that I’m aware of ) integrated software package for managing web presence optimization (WPO). Given that WPO is the fusion of SEO, social media, interactive PR, and online reputation management, that’s a tall order. But based on a good look at the product, gShift has a great headstart on meeting the challenges of this discipline.

Unlike pure SEO management tools (e.g., Web CEO, SEO Powersuite), social media monitoring tools (e.g., Radian6, Alterian SM2), or inbound marketing suites (e.g., HubSpot), gShift isn’t a point solution, but a single integrated tool to manage all aspects of WPO.

What sets this software apart is its approach as much as its functionality; the people behind gShift understand that SEO, online PR, social media, PPC advertising and other tactics are each pieces of the larger web presence puzzle. They aren’t silos, but tactics that need to be used in a coordinated manner to maximize and optimize an organization’s online presence. gShift is the first software built from the ground up with that approach in mind.

Features

gShift enables marketers or agencies to track unlimited websites, web pages, social media accounts, external pages (e.g. media mentions), competitors and countries. The only limit is on keywords tracked, which is the basis of gShift’s pricing (see “Limitations and Concerns” below).

The software doesn’t provide a way to automatically segregate branded from unbranded search keywords (which would be nice), but this can be set up manually using “Campaigns.” Campaigns are gShift’s method for creating different keyword groups to track (e.g., by product line, country, competitor, etc.). The ability to show country-based rankings (e.g., U.S. results for a company.com site, Canadian results for a company.ca site) is helpful.

gShift automatically tracks organic vs. paid vs. mobile (an increasingly important segment) traffic and goal conversions for each. Yes, you could do this from Google Analytics (GA) as well (in fact, gShift pulls a fair amount of its reporting data from GA) but gShift presents it all in one spot, attractively graphed out.

Backlinks remain a key component of SEO. gShift displays backlinks by site, backlinks by page (very helpful), backlinks by competitor, and even provides a list of “recommended backlink” sources. For your website, gShift will display your top backlinks by authority and referral visits, along with changes in backlinks over time.

For your competitors, the software identifies their target terms (anchor text in backlinks), top backlinks and ranking. From a pure competitive research standpoint, gShift isn’t quite as robust as a tool like SEMRush (which provides AdWords keywords and click costs in addition to complete target organic keywords), but it does offer significant integrated functionality nonetheless.

The ability to track external pages is another nice feature. gShift enables you to set up external pages to track in different categories: Press Releases, Blogs, social media accounts, videos, and shortened URLs (e.g. bit.ly URL links). It also finds and shows you “other pages in your pool,” referring pages you may not know to track. The software displays traffic, conversions, bounce rate, social shares and search rank on assigned keywords for all of these pages. Again, most of this data (other than search rank) could be pulled from GA, but gShift makes it much easier and faster to track these metrics.

SEO is a core element of WPO, and gShift covers this pretty well. It provides daily rank checking (but charges weekly—see “Pricing” below), with comparison to the prior day’s, week’s or month’s rank highlighted in green (improvement), yellow (no change) or red (decline). The tool offers page-level auditing (specific page+keyword combination), showing what’s done and supplying recommendations for optimization improvement across a wide range of attributes (meta tags, keyword density, alt tags, headings, code fixes, etc.). Helpfully, gShift also rates the relative difficulty of each recommended task.

For any given keyword, gShift will show the top ranking page on your site by search engine (though it won’t identify the page with the highest internal gShift score for that keyword, which would be another nice feature). gShift has partnered with WordStream for its integrated keyword research functionality.

In addition to the keywords you are tracking, gShift will display recommended keywords from GA as well as all keywords that have produced at least one goal conversion. What’s more, gShift recently announced capability that gives search marketers a pretty good idea of what’s behind the “not provided” keyword data in GA, by showing you which pages are being accessed along with the top keywords driving traffic to those pages.

gShift features extensive social media tracking capabilities as well, pulling analytics from Twitter (e.g. number of mentions and retweets), LinkedIn and YouTube all into one spot. For your videos on YouTube, gShift displays rankings for those videos on specified keywords with YouTube’s search function as well as Google rankings for those videos by keyword phrase.

Again, most of these social media metrics are freely available, but gShift saves the time and effort of tracking them all down from their native sources. gShift currently provides about 75% of the data available natively from the top social networks, with more metrics on the product roadmap (e.g. expanded LinkedIn metrics are anticipated to be added within the next 30-60 days).

The power of gShift lies in its efficiency for reporting (GA-type site data, social media metrics, and ranking plus performance of external assets like guest posts or news releases all in one tool), its SEO improvement functionality, and its actionable on-site and off-site metrics. Reporting is flexible; gShift enables administrators to add explanatory or analytical text comments to virtually any metric within a report.

Few (if any) other SEO and/or social media management tools provide the type of detailed data about a blog post, web page, external article or news release that gShift does because other tools don’t “ask the right questions.” Competitive tools tend to be more siloed, while gShift takes a web presence optimization-centered approach.

Background

gShift Labs co-founders Krista LaRiviere and Chris Adams come from a digital marketing and software development background. In the early 2000s, they developed the Hot Banana web CMS product, which was acquired by email service provider Lyris in 2006.

Future Plans

gShift aggressively updates the product with new features. Among plans for coming releases are “engagement signals,” which will display, for example, how many people have commented anywhere (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) about a specified blog post or other piece of content.

Competition

gShift’s closest competitor is possibly SEOmoz, a powerful SEO suite which just recently added social monitoring. From a straight SEO standpoint, it’s hard to beat the deep functionality of SEOmoz. However, what gShift may lack in depth in this area, it makes up for in ease of use and overall user experience. Put another way, gShift is arguably a better tool for marketers looking for reporting on site and external asset performance, and optimizing those assets for improvement. SEOmoz provides more raw technical data for hands-on webmasters.

Limitations and Concerns

Backlink checking is limited to the “top” 500 backlinks for any site, page or competitor. For internal site pages, that’s generally more than sufficient, but home pages on even moderately popular websites can have far more than 500 backlinks. There’s no way to know what’s missing (other than using a separate backlink checker tool).

The internal keyword tool shows monthly volume, but doesn’t indicate ranking difficulty—a key oversight. It does little good to know how popular a keyword phrase is without also knowing if it’s feasible to try to rank for that phrase. This should be high on gShift’s list of features to add, but for now, users will have to utilize a separate tool or technique for this function.

Pricing

In my opinion, gShift’s pricing is a tad high (for the SMB market) and the model is unnecessarily convoluted. The software is priced on the basis of “keyword rankings” (KRs). A KR is one keyword, on one website, in one country. And each keyword rank is automatically checked on a weekly basis, so a single keyword consumes four KRs in a month (or five in some months, one would suppose).

gShift’s baseline Small Business package (500 keyword rankings at $99 per month) sounds pretty reasonable, until you realize how quickly that can add up. 100 keywords, checked against one website in one country consumes 400 KRs per month. Add all of those keywords to one other country and that’s another 400 KRs. Check 20 of those keywords against three top competitors and that’s another (20 x 3 x 4 =) 240 KRs. In order to really make inroads into the SMB market where this product fits best, the pricing should ideally be somewhat lower and a whole lot simpler.

Bottom Line

While gShift Labs doesn’t necessarily provide the single best tool specifically for SEO management, or backlink checking, or keyword research, or social media monitoring—it is the only software currently available that combines pretty darn good functionality in all of these areas in a single platform.

gShift Labs is the first software vendor to approach SEO, online PR and social media as parts of the integrated whole of web presence optimization. Small to midsized businesses in the B2B space who want to maximize their online footprints and opportunities to be “found” when prospects are searching for what they offer should definitely evaluate gShift Labs.

FTC Disclosure: gShift Labs provided no compensation in any form for this review.

My last post, What is Web Presence Optimization, and Why Should I Care?, laid out the definition of and rationale for a web presence optimization (WPO) strategy. But what do the real-world results look like? Here are four case studies demonstrating how WPO does more than get a company or individual onto the first page of results in search—it helps them own the first page of search results.

(Keep in mind that search results change constantly; all of these examples were accurate at the time of the search screen captures.)

TAB Products – “Hybrid Records Management”

TAB Products is a provider of records management software, file folders and other filing supplies, mobile shelving, and health records management products through its AMES division. As shown below, the company dominates search results for hybrid records management (managing paper and electronic files together in a single system). The company has integrated its SEO and online PR efforts for WPO.

Jill Konrath – “Selling to Big Companies”

Author and sales trainer Jill Konrath combines her website and blog with content marketing, online PR, social media and AdWords to dominate both sides of the front page of Google for the phrase “selling to big companies.” If you were struggling with how to effectively sell to large organizations, who would you call?

Kinetic Data – “Extend the Value of BMC Remedy”

Business service management software developer Kinetic Data builds products that extend the value of one of the top IT management platforms, and the company dominates search for that phrase by combining an optimized website with blogging, social media, online PR and content marketing activities.

Workface – “Realtime Customer Engagement Platform”

Through a combination of SEO, online PR and social media, customer engagement platform vendor Workface dominates the first page of Google for that term along with “realtime.” Turning customers into fans always helps with WPO.

Obviously, dominating the first page of Google in this manner is affected by factors (including Google’s ongoing changes to its algorithms). But being strategic about web presence optimization—utilizing SEO, online PR, SEM, content marketing and social media in a coordinated manner—can pay significant dividends in terms of search visibility.

Web presence optimization (WPO) is the art and science of being found online. As indicated in the masthead of my blog, it has both an explanational definition (The fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, reputation management, content marketing and social PR) and a reasonal one (Being omnipresent on the web for the search phrase that uniquely describes you or your organization.) It’s the evolution of search engine optimization (SEO), or alternatively,  SEO on steroids. It is a structured approach to getting your name, company, product or service found online when people are searching for what it is you have to offer. And getting found is the necessary first step to winning that business.

Graphically, it looks something like this:

Why Does It Matter?

As Vanessa Fox puts it in the subtitle of her book Marketing in the Age of Google, “Your Online Strategy IS Your Business Strategy.” Consider the following points:

• • More than 80% of considered consumer purchases (e.g. for high-value, high-involvement products) now start with search, and more than 90% of B2B purchase cycles begin online.
• • Search is no longer just Google and Bing; the second- and third-largest “search engines” by volume of searches are YouTube and Facebook. The internal search functions of social networks LinkedIn and Twitter also have higher volume than most second-tier search engines.
• • Your web presence is no longer limited to your website and blog (as important as those remain). Prospective customers may first find you on a social network, in a blog post written by a key influencer in your market space, on a content network like YouTube or SlideShare, in an online business directory, in an online news release, or in any number of other web venues.

For many businesses, particularly on the B2B side, if your buyers can’t find you online—you don’t exist. Web presence optimization provides a structured approach for maximizing your “findability” online.

As online strategy increasingly is business strategy, web presence optimization (dominating the search results for your name and unique tagline) is now more important than ever. So I figured it was time to update my inaugural post on this blog, What is Webbiquity? How to Be Everywhere Online based on four questions that often come up:

• • Why is web presence optimization important?
• • Where do I start?
• • Do I have to do everything?
• • How does business reputation management differ from personal reputation management?

Here once again,  for visual types, is web presence optimization in picture form.

Why is web presence optimization important?

Because more than 80% of consumer purchases and 90% of b2b buying cycles now begin with search. If your potential customers can’t find you, they can’t buy from you. Conversely, the more your name dominates for relevant searches, the more likely prospects are to buy from you, because you look like the expert, the “big dog” in the industry (even if you’re really only a small dog).

Also, keep in mind that search is no longer just Google. The second and third largest “search engines,” based on volume of searches, aren’t search engines at all: YouTube and Facebook. If you’re not there, searchers aren’t finding you there.

And finally, your website and blog are no longer the only places that buyers may find you. Social media, online PR and user-generated content sites open up a new world of places to be “found.”

Where do I start with web presence optimization?

As in most things—with the basics. Make sure your website is search optimized by following established SEO design principles (and avoiding common SEO mistakes).

If you don’t have a blog already, start one. It’s not only great for search, but showcases your (or your company’s) expertise, helps humanize your company (blogs are more informal and less promotional than corporate websites), and encourages reader interaction.

From there, make sure that your presence is search-optimized on the “big four” social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Don’t just “be there;” make sure your profiles and content reflect a consistent brand message and value proposition. And that you are interacting with your networks on those platforms.

Spread your profile around (more places to be found!). See the reputation management question below.

Promote your content (though not only your content, but other content your readers/followers/fans may be interested in) on popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, delicious, Reddit and StumbleUpon.

Then you can move on to whichever more advanced tactics are relevant to your business.

Do I have to use all of the elements of web presence optimization?

No, not all of these tactics make sense for every individual or business. For example, small service businesses typically don’t get a lot of media coverage, so a social PR effort doesn’t make a lot of sense. Microsites are advisable only if they don’t dilute the search authority of the main business website. Search marketing isn’t for everyone (though it works well for many businesses, increases your “domination” of page one in search, and is worth a trial for almost any business that can drive some type of conversion—either a lead or a direct sale—from it).

The diagram above is meant to be comprehensive, to show all of the tactics that can be employed. Do what makes sense for you or your business, based on your strategy, time and resources.

How does business reputation management differ from personal reputation management?

For businesses, it’s important to have a presence in key high-end directories, such as CompanyPond, LookupPage, Hotfrog, and AboutUs.org. Crunchbase is an important place for any technology-related company to have a profile. Businesses that primarily serve a specific geographic area will want to have a complete and up-to-date profile in key local directories including Google, Bing and Yahoo! (through getlisted.org) as well as YellowPages.com, Local.com and Brownbook.net.

Individuals can expand their online presence through sites like VisualCV, their Google profile, Naymz, Netlog, Retaggr and BusinessCard2.

Smart companies will take advantage of both corporate and personal reputation management for their key people by using both types of sites, linking to the corporate website and blog from individual profiles on LinkedIn and other sites, and using tools like Workface which help promote a company through its people and humanize the business.

For a comprehensive list of profile sites, check out KnowEm.com.

Web presence optimization takes time and effort, but owning your key phrases in search maximizes your chances to be found when your buyers are looking for what you have to offer.

Personal branding is a hot topic for entrepreneurs and solo consultants, but does it matter to large enterprises? Oh yeah.

Consultants and small business owners get the concept of personal branding, because in one-person or very small companies, one person is the “corporate” brand. Having optimized profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as well as personal profile / reputation management sites like Google Profile, Plaxo, LookupPage, VisualCV, PeoplePond and BusinessCard2 is crucial to optimizing one’s business online presence.

But isn’t it different in large enterprises where there’s already a strong corporate brand associated with high quality, great value, outstanding service, prestige or some other positive attribute? Not at all. That brand image matters little in social media. If anything, personal branding for key public- and customer-facing individuals is even more important in big businesses than in small firms or one-person shops.

First, if you want to talk to the “CEO” of your local bakery or neighborhood bar, you can likely just walk in and often find him or her on the premises. You can’t do that with executives at GE, IBM, Ford, etc.

Second, “social” media is by definition a person-to-person (or person to many persons) activity. You can have a conversation with a person, or participate in a conversation in a group of people, but you can’t talk to a “company,” which is merely a soulless, bodiless legal entity.

Third, while you can certainly buy many types of products from companies (e.g. books from Amazon, coffee from Starbucks, electronics from Best Buy), there are many products and services that purchased from individuals, even though there may be large company behind them. If you refinance your home, you work with a mortgage banker—an individual—even though that person may work for a large bank. Insurance is typically provided by large companies, but sold by individual agents. Ditto for other financial services, legal services, cars, motorcycles, heavy machinery, exotic travel, some types of luxury goods… You purchase something supplied by a company, possibly a very large company, but you buy from an individual person.

In that sense, the individual’s personal brand becomes, to you, the corporate brand. Your experience with that individual, good or bad, influences, often strongly, your perception of the corporate brand.

So, big companies have an interest in making those individual interactions as positive as possible. It’s essential to hire good people, of course, but it goes beyond that. Often, a bad experience isn’t the result of a having a bad agent, broker, salesperson, customer service rep or consultant, but rather from a mismatch between the individual buyer and seller. The transaction is more likely to be positive if the connection is appropriate based on geography, area of expertise, hobbies or other factors, possibly even age (e.g. a couple nearing retirement may prefer not to work with a twenty-something financial planner).

How is this achieved? Through personal branding. It’s easy to investigate companies and product attributes online, without ever giving up your contact information. Why shouldn’t you to be able to “shop” for the individual you’ll eventually buy from or work with as well? You should, of course. And smart companies, big or small, who recognize that in a social media world, their people are their differentiation, will find ways to capitalize on personal branding.  Read more about this in Why Personal Branding Matters to Big Companies, my guest post on the Workface blog.

by TomPick and guest blogger Maria Verven

Almost every PR pro over a certain age remembers press kits–actual physical folders stuffed with a company’s recent press releases, management bios,  a corporate fact sheet, a few case studies, and maybe an article reprint or two.

They were expensive to print and ship and awkward to lug around—for both PR people who produced them and the journalists who ended up with them. They were bulky, killed lots of trees, and of course weren’t searchable.

And there was the constant balancing act: include too much information, and nothing will get read (it will seem overwhelming). Too little , and the writer won’t understand how cool and unique your company really is. Yeah, no one today mourns the press kit, but they were the best technology available at the time.

As the web took off and corporate sites proliferated,press kits (or at least elements of them) were moved online. Searchability improved, trees were saved and shipping costs plummeted. Online newsrooms are a dramatic improvement, but even today many are sub-optimized; it’s not at all uncommon to see websites where the “news room” or “media page” is little more than a list of press release links, with perhaps a PDF of some media coverage and some sketchy management bios.

The best online newsrooms go well beyond that and really take advantage of the web medium. Combining rich content with careful organization and search capabilities,  they enable PR pros to provide the media, analysts and bloggers with a vast amount of information without seeming overwhelming.

The ultimate online newsroom should house everything media are looking for in one convenient, easy to navigate spot. It ideally should include:

• • The primary media contact’s name and contact information (including social network profile links). This is preferably one single individual, but can be multiple names (e.g. based on division, product line, purpose etc.) if absolutely necessary.
• • Links to news releases (current year and archive of past years). If your company produces a lot of news releases, also provide the ability to view by topic (e.g. product line, financial releases, personnel announcements, etc.).
• • Links to media coverage and bylined articles.
• • A company backgrounder or fact sheet (see below for detail).
• • FAQs (real ones, that real media people would care about).
• • Management team bios and photos (downloadable JPGs in high-res and low-res versions for print and web). Bios should specify each executive’s area of expertise and best topics for quotes or interviews.
• • Story ideas (again, thoughtful ones).
• • Upcoming events / sponsorships / speaking engagements (with speaker bios included).
• • Links to white papers, PowerPoints, videos, ebooks, infographics, and other company-generated content and thought-leadership assets.
• • Links to analyst (industry and/or financial) research and coverage.
• • A link to the company blog(s).
• • RSS feeds for press releases and blog posts.
• • Downloadable JPG images in hi-res and low-res formats. These include the company logo and other important images such as the company headquarters building, product photos, software screenshots, photos of executives at industry events, etc.
• • Links to all of the company’s social media profiles (LinkedIn company page, Facebook, YouTube channel, Twitter etc.).
• • A search-friendly URL structure with “news” included, e.g. news.company.com/section/pagename or company.com/news/section/pagename (where “section” is the content type: news releases, bios, images etc.). See the 2011 Online Newsroom Survey (PDF) from TekGroup for more guidance here.

News releases should always be in HTML format for searchability. If PDF or printer-friendly versions are offered, these should be stored in a separate subdirectory that is excluded from search in order to avoid duplicate content issues. Releases should be presented in reverse date order and links should include the headline, date and one-line summary (preferably Twitter-friendly 115 characters or less). Again, current releases should be displayed on the newsroom main page with a link to archives, and the media contact name should be easy to find on every release. Also consider creating social media releases (which can include videos, images, links and other items) using a tool like PitchEngine.

One thing that’s often overlooked: updating the media contact name on older releases if that name changes. You don’t want to direct media to contact former employees or your old PR firm (!).

The media coverage page should highlight the two-three most recent articles, with an archive section for the rest (assuming the company gets that much coverage).

The company backgrounder needs to be factual, objective (non salesy) and written in the third person. It’s best to provide both a short version (often just the news release boilerplate) and a longer version that includes more company history, competitive differentiation, and how the company’s products and/or services help customers solve problems (backed up with facts).

Management bios should include information on how long that person has been with the company, key responsibilities, any outside leadership roles held, and social media profile links.

To develop story ideas, start by looking at looking at editorial calendars from “A tier” publications in the industry and look for recurring themes. Make it clear which executives are the best sources for each topic.

Upcoming events and speaking engagements should include the date, name of the conference or event, a description of the company’s participation in the event, and links to the conference website and the speaker’s bio (if applicable).

All content should (of course) be search optimized, with the ability to limit the search to just information within the newsroom section of the site.

It almost goes without saying, but important news should be shared via the company’s Twitter feed, Facebook page and other important social media outlets. All newsroom content should be easily sharable using social media buttons for the most popular sites and networks (tools like AddThis, ShareThis and Meebo make it easy to add these buttons to any site or page). Use and link to social content sharing sites for your media assets as well, including YouTube and Vimeo for company videos, SlideShare for presentations, Podcast Alley and iTunes for audio, Flickr for photos, plus Scribd and Docstoc for PDF files.

The days of the press kit are far behind us, and there’s no need to simply replicate that old format online. The ultimate online newsroom can simultaneously provide far more information and yet give each reporter exactly what he or she is looking for.

Maria Verven is a PR and content marketing executive with KC Associates, a Minneapolis-based b2b technology PR and marketing agency. She’s well-versed in the “new rules” of doing PR, with expertise in social media, SEO (search engine optimization), content marketing, social media and blogging.

Web presence optimization (WPO)—using tactics like SEO, PPC, online PR, social media, content marketing and reputation management in a coordinated fashion to maximize your online visibility and business results—is the core theme of this blog. It’s also frequently written about in popular blogs and online publications, though strangely almost no one uses the term. It’s almost like a big game of Taboo, Catch Phrase, Password, or even Red Green’s Possum Lodge Word Game; all of these writers are describing the concept of WPO, but are apparently forbidden by some cosmic rule book from using the actual phrase.

Or maybe it just hasn’t caught on. Yet. Whatever.

But fundamentally, 1) there are now far more online venues than just your website or blog where you and/or your company be found (social media pages and profiles, articles, videos, etc.), and 2) there are more ways for people to search than just Google and Yah-Bing (YouTube is now the second-largest search engine and Facebook SEO is its own emerging discipline).  WPO is about capitalizing on these trends, so learn how to integrate your social media, search, SEM, content marketing and other interactive marketing and PR efforts to optimize your web presence here in some of the best articles and blog posts on (shhh! Don’t say those words!)  of the past year.

Web Presence Optimization Tips and Tactics (Though They Don’t Call Them That)

4 tips for higher rankings through better links by iMedia Connection

Great content naturally attracts links, but Matt Malden points out ways to go beyond that by blogging, sending a regular email newsletter, using Twitter, social networks, YouTube and other sites to expand your online presence.

Social Media Affecting BtoB Buying Behavior by The Proactive Report

Sally Falkow reports research on new influences in the B2B buying process (e.g., 59% of b2b buyers engage online with peers who have addressed similar challenges; 48% follow industry conversations on the topic; and 37% have posed questions on social networking sites), then emphasizes that your “content must be visible as your prospective customer moves through all the possible sources of content” including social bookmarking sites, forums, blogs, your website and in the industry press.

How to use search to shield your brand from negativity by iMedia Connection

Eric Papczun delves into three key components of online reputation management: SEO (long-term promotion of content in search), paid search (SEM—addresses immediate needs), and social media (message distribution and brand engagement).

Don’t let your social media presence crush your brand’s future by iMedia Connection

Eric Papczun follows up on his post above with more guidance to help “dominate search engine results pages” including leveraging alternate domains, creating a corporate presence on social networking and content-sharing sites, and search-optimizing your press releases. He also lists several tools to help track and monitor your brand reputation online.

Why B2B Marketers Should Leverage Flickr by Search Engine Land

Andy Komack explains why business marketers should use Flickr, the social photo-sharing platform, what types of images to upload (e.g., product photos, diagrams, infographics, trade show pics etc.), and how to leverage Flickr through blogs, articles, Facebook and other tools.

Tools to Include in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy by CompuKol Connection

Michael Cohn supplies an excellent list of “useful and effective tools that will help you create a buzz for your business,” from social networks and photo-sharing sites to wikis and review sites.

Social referrals: How to attract this vital currency by iMedia Connection

Noting that, for an increasing number of websites, “referral traffic is as significant from social networks as it is from search engines, making social the next search,” Liza Hausman details three components of what she terms “an effective on-site social optimization strategy:” social connectivity, the connected experience (e.g., making it as simply as possible for visitors to share your site content across multiple social networks), and social analytics.

The best 159 social websites by Populair

Social media profiles and content promotion are key elements of WPO, and here is an excellent list of social sites across various categories including social networks, answers and knowledge, social travel, local social, social phone apps, business social, events and more.

Social Media and Search

Social Media and Search Optimization Integration by SEO Wizardry

Frequent best-of contributor Pete Hollier details the social media optimization (SMO) process, explains how a corporate website and blog integrate with social bookmarking and social networking, and shows how SMO and SEO efforts support each other.

Titles, Tags & Tweets: the Role of Search in Social Media Marketing by PR-Squared

Todd Defren emphasizes quite properly that when it comes to titles, headings and tags for blog posts or other social media content, descriptive words (i.e., what your audience is likely to be searching for) are far better than “clever” titles. He also advises, “many brands will supplement their blogging with Blogger Relations, YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook, etc…the content created for one outlet, e.g., a YouTube video, ought to be promoted across any other frequently-used channels.  Tweet about the video.  Post it to the Facebook Wall.  When appropriate, let key bloggers know about it.” Hmm, sounds a lot like WPO.

How search can boost your social media campaigns by iMedia Connection

Vanessa Newkirk shows how insights gained about your prospective customers and the search keywords they use from social media, SEO and SEM efforts can be applied across all of these online marketing activities to make each one more effective.

B2Bs Tap Social to Boost Search by eMarketer

In a recent survey, 44% of B2B marketers said that their social media activities have had a positive effect on search performance for their websites (a figure that is likely much higher in reality, as another 27% respondents admitted they “don’t know” what effect social has on their search results). This makes sense, as SEO success is driven by links, and social media sites can be a rich source of relevant links. The top two goals B2B marketers identified for social media are building brand awareness and increasing website traffic.

How to adapt to the evolving search landscape by iMedia Connection

Jonathan Shapiro shares some thoughtful, strategic insights on how search is evolving, how social media impacts search, how social+SEO+PPC efforts can work in tandem, and how to utilize off-site content, (e.g., YouTube) to enhance your brand presence online.

Why Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers by eMarketer

“Is 2011 set to be the ‘year of Facebook,’ even among search marketers?” That’s the opening question here, and recent research indicates the answer is a clear “yes.” SEO and social media program integration is the top organic search priority, while social media advertising is the paid search priority; at 46%, it’s ranked well ahead of tactics like local search advertising (18%) and mobile search ads (11%).

Online Reputation Management

20 Common LinkedIn Mistakes Online Job Seekers Make by New Grad Life

Though aimed at job seekers, this post provides an excellent checklist for anyone on LinkedIn to review. Among the common mistakes to avoid: not creating a personalized public profile URL, not making your headline (and profile summary, and specialties) searchable by including key search words, not proofreading your profile for typos and grammatical errors (ouch!), not personalizing your invitation-to-connect messages, and more.

5 Ways to Weave LinkedIn Into Your Marketing Mix by TopRank Online Marketing Blog

Noting that LinkedIn has more than 60 million members, including executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies, Michelle Bowles presents five excellent techniques for optimizing your personal marketing through LinkedIn, such as optimizing your profile, leveraging third-party apps such as Slideshare, and promoting your LinkedIn profile through other channels (your blog, email signature and business cards, for example).

Google on Manipulating Search for ORM by Outspoken Media
***** 5 Stars
It can happen—negative commentary about you or your company gets posted online. Maybe it’s valid (e.g. an instance of less-than-optimal product or service delivery; no organization or person is perfect) or maybe not (e.g. a disgruntled ex-employee seeks online revenge), but either way, it’s potentially damaging, particularly if it appears prominently in search results. Rhea Drysdale walks through several steps you can take to push the bad stuff off the front page of Google by creating and promoting positive content—profiles, blog posts, news, favorable reviews, and other items.

Welcome to Webbiquity! What exactly is that? Briefly, Webbiquity, or web presence optimization (WPO for those who prefer TLA’s), is the fusion of SEO, social media, interactive PR, online reputation management and other disciplines to make an individual or organization ubiquitous on the web for their name/brand and unique descriptive phrase. If SEO is about getting your website onto page one of Google, WPO is about owning that page.

For example, Jill Konrath is webbiqitous for the phrase “selling to big companies,” holding all 10 spots on the front page of Google for that phrase. The results include her website, blog, a link to her book of that title on Amazon, and articles she’s written. Ardath Albee is almost as dominant for her unique phrase, “marketing interactions,” placing in 7 of the top 12 spots on Google, including the top four. And if you Google “sales management thought leader” in quotes, six of the top ten spots belong to the same sales leadership guru. Interestingly, a Google search for “world’s largest online bookstore” doesn’t display the most obvious result anywhere on page one. Maybe a company with $20 billion in sales and a $600 million annual marketing budget doesn’t need webbiquity, but smaller enterprises without Super Bowl-size advertising budgets can certainly benefit from it.

From a historical perspective, the web a decade ago (or even a bit less) was still primarily a broadcast medium with limited inactivity. Although in theory anyone could own a website even then, the web presence of most commercial organizations was limited to their own websites and whatever had been written about them by professional publishers and analysts, plus a few directory listings. The last few years have, of course, seen the emergence of social media and an explosion of user-generated content. A company’s website is now only one of myriad places where customers, buyers and other interested parties can find information about it.

This new environment has created the conditions for web presence optimization: using all of the tools now available to make a company as “findable” as possible not only for branded searches but also for key phrases that uniquely describe the enterprise and its offerings. Using these tools properly means not only dominating search, but also presenting a clear and consistent message across channels, wherever buyers or industry influencers may find you.

Specifically, web presence optimization is about achieving webbiquity using the tools show in this diagram, including social networking, social bookmarking, blogging, interactive PR, video and content marketing to disseminate the company’s message as broadly as possible. Just as importantly, companies need to maximize the search value of these different tools and platforms by taking advantage of the linking and cross-linking opportunities they provide.

So, for example, social media releases–part of interactive PR efforts–point readers to company microsites and its media sharing (images, video, presentations etc.). Media sharing accounts are connected to Twitter, which is also used to promote content marketing. Reputation management sites point the organization’s Twitter account as well as social networking profiles. And everything links back the enterprise’s website and blog.

The end result is that when customers, prospects and influencers (bloggers, journalists, analysts etc.) are looking for information on your industry, they find you everywhere. Your story and messages are bolstered by your webbiquity. You have the opportunity to become a valued resource in your industry. Further, the interactions you have with these various constituencies across social networking and other media platforms demonstrate that your people aren’t just smart, they are also helpful and responsive.

This is obviously a high-level view of the elements of webbiquity. Future posts here will delve more deeply into the tools and tactics that can help you and your company “be everywhere online” for your brand and industry discussions.