When optimizing your website for search engines there are a few rumored tricks that just aren’t worth messing with. Below I’ve listed a few of the most common, and shocking, search engine optimization worst practices.

Hiding keyword-rich text – Sure, you could load keywords in white font on white background or make them too small to the user’s eye and the user wouldn’t be bothered, however, the search engines are smarter than that.

Keyword stuffing – I have shared with you the importance of keywords in your copy. Remember that you do want your keyword all over the place, but you don’t want it in so many places that you start looking suspicious.  For example, don’t use the same keyword in every meta tag and alt image tag.

Just because BP oil is highly searched doesn’t mean you should dedicate a page to it. Dedicating pages to certain keywords is a great idea, so long as you can do it tactfully and with something that is actually relevant to your content.

On that note, when you optimize your content for keywords, remember to make it user-friendly.  Not only does the user appreciate copy meant for them, but the search engines will catch on if your copy starts to sounds strange.

Repeatedly submitting your site to search engines will hurt you in the long run.  Don’t worry; if you submitted it once, they probably got it.

Just because your competitor’s name is searched often, doesn’t mean it will serve you well to add their name to your keywords. That’s just confusing.

Avoid creating duplicates of the same page with little differences between them.  Search engines will catch onto that, to,o and why not put all your efforts into making your one page get to the top rather than a bunch of pages doing OK?

Creating web pages just for search engines also won’t do you well.  On-page SEO is only part of the picture. You will receive very few links to a page that doesn’t serve the user.

Directories=good.  Link farms=bad.

I didn’t even know people use machine-generated pages, but apparently they make search-engine targeted pages to lead to your site. Bad idea!

“Pagejacking” and “cloaking” – To start, it’s illegal. Pagejacking is the act of stealing a highly optimized page from someone else’s site and placing it on yours. Usually it’s then “cloaked” to cover it from the user.

Lastly, purchasing expired domains because they used to have great SEO won’t benefit you either. Google recently changed its algorithm to take Page Rank down to 0 when a page expires (keep that in mind, too, if you’ve been working on your SEO – don’t let your page expire!).

If you’re looking for some more how-to’s rather than how not-to’s, take a look at my previous blog post on how to do SEO by yourself. Also, some of these “tricks” have been gathered from Search Engine Land’s 29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures: SEO Checklist Part 1. I hope you’ll check it out for more information on the topic.

Four years ago the Bailey Gardiner team gathered to brainstorm ideas to get locals back to Seaport Village.  It’s “tourist trap” reputation had seemed to deter the locals and the media had nearly forgotten it existed.  Tasked with creating something that would rock this world, BG landed on a Busker Festival.  It’s OK, no one here knew what a busker was either.

The good news is that BG knows media.  We know that along with puppies, disasters and politics, the media likes the unknown.  Even better news, once the media figured out what a busker was, they liked that too, and so did the locals.

Four years later, we’ve been contacted by the Disney Imaginarium, America’s Got Talent and Universal Studios about our Busker Festival.  We did something right.

So what did we do?  We’ve broken it down for you into five tips for an event that gets attention:

1. Give the media something they don’t already know. Everyday they are looking for stories that will grab the attention of their viewers and make them perk up and say “tell me more!”  Imagine, if you can get the media to do that themselves, you’ve got a shoe in.

2. Shock people. A juggler is neat, but a sword swallower is shocking.  Making balloon animals is neat but swallowing balloon animals is cooler.  Keep this in mind and remember that it doesn’t have to be dangerous, just shocking, like a hot dog on wheels or the world’s biggest beach ball.

3. Make it free. If you can’t make the whole thing free, make part of it free (like the parking, the first 200 visitors, the food, etc.).  Or, consider involving a charity. Not only does the media appreciate covering non self-serving events, but it also sometimes means that you’ll get the help of that non-profit from their volunteers and extensive database.

4. Build the platform for chatter. Establish yourself on social media, establish your network and then give them plenty to talk about: Videos, photos, previews, etc. In the end, you’ll spread the word, you’ll intrigue people and you’ll boost your event’s searchability.

5. Let the families flock and the young people be young. Give the young people beer, turn the music up and let the entertainment be something they wouldn’t take their mothers to.  It’s absolutely possible to separate your event for various age groups to please them all.  Just think of all the family events you’ve been to where you’ve strolled past a beer garden…

In the end, it’s important to remember that time is crucial in getting attention for your event. The Seaport Village Spring Busker Festival just completed its fourth year.  This year, the local TV came to us, thanks to our shocking and unique line-up of performers.  Taking our own advice, BG and Seaport Village spent months leading up to the festival establishing Seaport Village on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and promoting the festival on their blog.  By the time the festival rolled around the internet was littered with access to Busker Festival information, making the event extra searchable.  For the second year in a row, the festival included Buskers After Dark, an 18+ nighttime portion of the festival sponsored by San Diego CityBeat and Yelp to accommodate the younger crowd, and, of course, everything was free.

In case you are wondering if we walk our talk, here are some highlights from the 2010 Seaport Village Spring Busker Festival:

• Approximately 14,000 people attended the festival in 2010.

• During the month leading up to the festival, 22,648 unique visitors came to the Seaport Village website.   That’s more than 5,000 more than the month prior.   Those visitors viewed an average of four pages on the website.

• Bailey Gardiner secured a total of 92 print and online placements and 6 TV placements about the festival.  Highlights include a story on the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego Magazine, Citysearch.com, About.com and AOLNews.com.

• During the month leading up to the festival, Seaport reached its 1,000th Facebook fan, gaining a total of almost 300 fans.   More people interacted with the page as well; 225 interactions vs. 144 the month before.

• Twitter followers reached 1,000 during the festival as well, growing by 75 during the month leading up to the event.

• The primary YouTube video that was used to promote the festival was viewed nearly 1,000 times over two months.

*This post is part of Bailey Gardiner’s Public Relations Tactics series, which highlights tools and best practices to ensure a successful public relations campaign. The series will run weekly.

In my last blog post, I wrote about how to prepare for a TV interview to make sure you could tackle the hardest questions and squeeze in the most important details.  Now that you’re prepared, I’m following up with some TV interview tips to make sure that your body language, position and your mindset don’t trump your thorough preparation.

TV Interview Tips for Success:

• What appears to be a comfortable living room on TV is a distracting set in real life.  Arrive early to take in the scene and familiarize yourself with the distractions such as lighting, cameras and a busy crew.

• Have a cup of water or tea to soothe your throat before the interview.  Avoid carbonation or dairy.

• Expect last minute changes and be prepared to handle them on the spot.  Live TV almost never goes as planned.

• Always look at the reporter, not the camera.  Shifty eyes can make you look suspicious.  Envision that you are having a conversation just with that reporter.

• Turn your cell phone off or leave it with your PR “handler.”  What an embarrassing distraction that would be.

• If you MUST have a note card as a security blanket, don’t hold it.  Tuck it under your leg or next to you in the seat.  If it’s in your hand you will inevitably you’ll find yourself waving it around when you talk.

• If seated, position yourself about three-quarters of the way back and lean forward.  Don’t sit back and slouch, it looks uncomfortable and let’s face it, tacky.

• Have your hands free for gesturing and your feet on the ground or ankles crossed. This is most comfortable, flattering and the least distracting.

• Avoid crossing your arms.

• Use your head, your eyes and your facial expressions to make your words come alive.  So much of communication comes from our body language.

• Enjoy!  Remember that the reporters are humans too and it is their job to make TV interviews run smoothly.  If you stumble, freeze or falter, a good reporter will take care of you.

Lastly, if all these interview tips have your head spinning, remember that being under those hot lights doesn’t come naturally to everyone.  For that reason, it’s very common to put a spokesperson through media training.  Your PR guru should be able to coordinate an in-depth training session with practice interviews and the works to get you feeling comfortable in front of the camera.

Here’s a quick video i took last week in preparation for the Seaport Village Spring Busker Festival last weekend.  I enjoy the 10 second warning followed by a frantic moment from the buskers!  Our lovely client, Megan Capizzi, does a great job in this one!

*This post is part of Bailey Gardiner’s Public Relations Tactics series, which highlights tools and best practices to ensure a successful public relations campaign. The series will run weekly.

So your trusty PR pro just set you up with a great opportunity to share your message with the public in a TV interview. While you know your company better than anyone else, it is important to note that a TV interview is much different from your day-to-day conversations and has its own set of rules and etiquette.

At Bailey Gardiner we work closely with our client Tiffany & Co.’s New York based corporate PR team.  They recently passed us a document reminding us of best practices for interviews and I found many of their points to be worth sharing.  Below I have compiled many of theirs, along with a few of my own, to help you work with your PR pro to make sure you have all your bases covered in preparation for a TV interview.

Proper Preparation for a TV Interview:
• Identify why the reporter wants this interview, not why you want it. This will help you determine what type of questions will be asked.

• Prep for the time you’ve been given and build your points around that, don’t try to squeeze too many points into too short a time frame.

• Learn about the reporter.  Will he or she ask you hard questions, are they high energy and likely to throw you off guard or will they be having a polite conversation?

• Learn about the station or show.  Do they take a political stance that may affect your interview?  Who is their audience? Cater your messages to that audience to maximize the outcome of your interview.

• Take advantage of the pre-interview. This may come in the form of a call the day before or a quick chat 20 seconds before you go on air.  If you communicate your message either in that interview or first thing in your interview, you are likely to steer the conversation in that direction.

• Always put your preparation before the media’s needs. If you feel ill-prepared to make a statement, buy yourself as much time as possible until you can do it right.  Contact your PR pro and be sure that you aren’t leaving the media with a “no comment” unless you absolutely, positively must.

• Less is more.  Simplify your message and be clear and direct.  Know the core points you want to get across and stick strictly to those.

• Support your points with facts, numbers or personal experiences that show the reporter and viewer that you were needed for this interview.  Be cautious not to overwhelm with facts and keep in mind that often while people are watching morning news, they’re only half watching while they get ready for their day.  Too many facts and figures will go right over their heads.

• “Off the record” doesn’t exist.  Whenever in the presence of media, speak carefully. This starts from the moment you reach the studio to your pre-interview and after (cameras may still be rolling).  The media aren’t bad guys but their job is to get all the info they can.

• Use your company name whenever possible. Avoid using “we” and “they” when you can replace it with your company name.  Some interviews are taped and if they are edited, your company name may get cut if not stated enough.

• Anticipate hard questions.  Practice not only your responses but your bridges to the points you want to be making.

Very often, we and other public relations firms get asked to “go big” and “hit the home run.”  We’re asked to miraculously get placements in Oprah and Good Morning America but as you may know, this caliber of public relations success takes time.

This is why it’s so important to make sure your public relations campaign is complete, including not only the big time goal publications, but filling it in with the little guys as well.  Here’s an example:

Bailey Gardiner has been thrilled to begin running the public relations for the creator of gummy vitamins, Hero Nutritionals, over the past few months.  If you aren’t already familiar with Hero Nutritionals’ Yummi Bears, Yummi Bears Organics or Slice of Life, the gummy vitamin for grownups, you must give them a try.  And if you’re wondering why the ladies of BG have shinier hair, an unfathomable amount of energy and glowing skin, you can attribute that to the all-too-tasty Slice of Life!

Our goal for Hero, of course, is to go big.  We’re talking Everyday with Rachael Ray, Oprah Magazine, Shape, Good Housekeeping and the likes. So the Hero Nutritionals team has been fervently sending samples across the country to win over the writers and editors of these major publications.  Just last week Carrie and Maya spent a week in New York where they met desk side with countless editors including those at Woman’s Day, the Today Show, Family Circle, Parents and Health Magazine to share with them, face to face, information and samples of Hero Nutritionals’ products.

So in the meantime, we put forth our efforts in creating a complete public relations campaign by targeting bloggers and websites with niche audiences.  Our best luck thus far has been with the ever-popular mommy bloggers and healthy living bloggers.  Within the latter category falls the even more specialized gluten-free blogs, nut-free, vegetarian and other specialty dietary needs blogs.  With more than 14 placements over the past two months garnered by working within these niche categories, a few stand out:

On January 21st, Stephanie secured inclusion for Slice of Life in a Health.com article on vitamins you’re not getting enough of.  The following week, this article had boosted Hero’s website visitors bringing 159 visits to the site on its own, making health.com the 6th top referring site for the month of January and the 1st top referring site behind search and other Hero Nutritionals’ websites.

A giveaway in FabulousFunFinds.com led to three other postings on blogs that blog strictly about giveaways.  This placement alone, though, brought 47 visits to the site, making it the 14th top referring site for the month of January in just a matter of days.

With both of these placements hitting after January 15th, they make great examples of an often-overlooked part of a PR plan – the very short-term, long tail placements that complete a public relations campaign. We’ll waste no time while Oprah snacks on her gummy vitamin samples.  We believe that placements such as these are imperative in completing a successful public relations plan by finding those purchasers who know exactly what they’re looking for.

When working with your public relations firm of choice, I hope you’ll take these tips into consideration:

• Be sure that your timeline not only fills the team’s or consultant’s retainer fee, but results in placements when you want them (all the time or surrounding one major announcement).

• Make sure your team or consultant is reaching not only the most people they can but the most people that will convert as well.

• Allot room in your budget for social media.  This can boost the buzz surrounding your PR and fill in some of those quiet holes.

• Consider the “outdated” means of publicity as well.  Not all products’ customers are online.  Consider radio, newspaper and even….books.

• Consider more than just your primary product to get you in the news.  Is your spokesperson an expert in his/her field for bylined articles or speaking opportunities?  Do you have such passionate fans that they’ll start social media pages for you?

Do you have more suggestions to add?

I was excited to watch the snowboarding in the Olympics last night.  Just before the first boarder took to the half pipe I watched him pull out his ipod, quickly pick a song, and slide it back into his Burton jacket.  I turned to my husband, “He’s listening to his ipod  while he competes in the Olympics.  I wonder what he’s listening to.”

But the attention last night was on Shaun White, the second boarder of the night.  He’s the biggest name in snowboarding and it was his packaged feature story that led into the evening’s competition.  Anyone who was making a point to watch the Olympic snowboarding had their eyes on Shaun White.  So when he pulled out his iphone just seconds after ending his run, I had to ask, “what could be so important right now that he would need to look at his phone!?”

So I wonder, was apple behind all of this?  If so, I applaud their creativity and I recognize that this is where advertising is going.  Product placement has been around since before Elliot brought Reeses Pieces to ET but what’s changing is that products no longer just have to show up, they have to influence the viewer.  When Louis Vito pulled out his ipod, I made the association that his ipod helped him perform.  He NEEDED his ipod.

A recent Adage article talks about product placement and how common it is becoming in our everyday TV, movie and gaming content.  While it used to be stealth, a Pepsi can in the background of the set or a pair of Nike shoes on the main character, it’s now become a more influential part of our content.  Rather than being built into the content, content is being built around it.  The article claims, “At some point, ads and shows might blur so much that the notion of a ‘commercial break’ becomes a silly, antiquated thing of the past.”  If you ask me, it will be a very long time before commercials cease to exist but without a doubt, product placement will prevail and in more creative and brilliant ways than we’ve ever seen in the past.

It’s really the antithesis of SEO because it leads you to believe that we’re just talking about one word around which to base all of your content.  In most cases, you’ll get nowhere with one word, there’s just too much competition. Today we’re throwing the tricks of the SEO trade out of the window and getting back to the basics to remind ourselves that, aside from stellar content, increasing traffic to your blog is all about the niche keyword.

The goal is to find the “word” (more typically a phrase) that is so niche to your site that very few people use it but just enough people search it, bringing them directly to your site.

If your company has a blog, you are in an excellent position to increase traffic to your blog via search because blogs provide a way for you to get to the top of search results for multiple keyword phrases.  Here’s why: Search engines judge each of your blog posts as a new page.  If every one of your pages used the same keyword phrase, you would be continuously competing against yourself and losing your niche.  By choosing a new phrase each time, you have endless opportunities to get to the top of search results for a variety of niche phrases.

For example: Don’t Drink the Koolaid Blog is all about marketing.  Our keyword phrases may include things like: “search engine marketing,” “public relations” and “San Diego advertising.”  But those are so broad they wouldn’t get us very far.  So, rather than focus our efforts on words that would cause us to compete with every marketing site in the world, we write posts about very specific things like eco-friendly marketing tips, how to use Google Analytics and social media for non-profits. After all, those terms like public relations are going to be included naturally, and naturally, Google will count them towards our SEO.

So next time you write a post, think to yourself, what would someone search that would lead to this post specifically?  It may not be what everyone searches, but for those that do search it, they will be your perfect target demographic.  That is the essence of the niche keyword phrase and this is what will increase the traffic to your blog.

You’ve heard a lot about it, search engine optimization, or SEO.  It’s the concept of tactfully changing your website or blog so that search engines are more likely to put it at the top of their results page when users search for keywords that describe it.  At Bailey Gardiner, we often take on clients’ websites to optimize them for search.  We do everything from analyzing current analytics to niche keyword research to making the changes and requesting inbound links.  While this is a job that can be best done by an expert (and quite truthfully simply requires a lot of time), I wanted to share with you how you can get started on doing SEO on your own.

These tips are most applicable for those with a blog or a website that offers consistently updated content.

Find keywords and take them seriously

Research the best keywords to use (try WordTracker) and incorporate them heavily but without being obvious to the user.  Include them in your URL, your headlines, your hyperlinks and throughout your text.  If your site is full of the same keyword the user enters in their Google search, your site will come up towards the top of the results.  It’s the most basic element of SEO and you will go nowhere without it.

Add content

If you don’t seem to have a place to naturally include those keywords that best describe the niche of your site, then make one.  Consider FAQ’s, Q&As, user reviews and a newsroom.

Submit your content to others’ sites

Offer to guest blog or submit a bylined article.  An inbound link to your site from a credible and same-industry blog or from a respected news source will count with more “points” towards your SEO than a link from a small or unknown site.

Link to yourself

Linking to your own internal pages helps steer the search engines throughout your site.  If you have one page that performs especially well but doesn’t show up often in search results, link to that one often from your own site to give it a boost.

Digg it

Links to your site tell search engines that others value your site.  When you put new content on your blog or website, immediately digg it.  That means going to http://digg.com creating a profile and digging your content.  Remember, this is a social media site so its best to digg others’ content too, but at the very least, it’s putting your content out for the public and sharing it without you having to do all the work.

Bookmark it

This is yet another way to bring inbound links. There are a lot of social bookmarking sites out there but one of the most popular is http://delicious.com.  It allows you to make a list of your favorite sites and share it. This tells search engines that someone values your website.  Each inbound link counts as “points” toward your SEO.

Share it with your networks

My guess was that you weren’t already on Digg or delicious.  My guess is that you are on Facebook, email and perhaps Twitter.  Your content should be shared with those networks as well, with the hope that those links will soar through the social media sphere leading back to your content again and again.

These are a few of the basic steps you can take to get started.  Know that there is a lot more to it and it’s an industry that is constantly changing so to really make a jump from page 10 to page one of Google may not be simply attainable on your own.

For more info on how to do SEO, start with the Google Webmaster Central, where you can download a helpful starter’s guide.

Yep.  We’re talking about social networking again.  We’re talking about it because you’re talking about it.  In fact, I can’t get away from people talking about it.  And one of the most common conversations I take part in, overhear, and judge are those about how to do it “right.” It’s social, meaning it’s casual, interactive and it’s meant for everyone. Naturally, you’re going to get some different views.   That’s OK, a lot of the ways it’s happening are right ways.  But in this post, I’d like to cut to the chase.  I’m going to lie out some foundation for building your social media marketing campaign that I just don’t think you can avoid.  And if you’re doing these things, it’s hard to do social networking wrong.

• Define your social networking goals.

Define your audience (keeping in mind that it may be different than usual) and figure out what you want them to do.  Is it a change in perception? Brand recognition? Sales? Brand loyalty?  Pick one or two, and be sure that every move you make is done to support that goal. Then, figure out how you’re going to measure that goal.

• Make a social media plan

Phases, deadlines, management, it all needs to be addressed.  Think about those things you don’t want to think about: Do you have a painful approval process? How will you break away from that?  Does your communications director have a really dry personality?  Maybe she’s not the best person for the job. How many hours do you have to respond to interaction?  What will you do for negative interaction?  Who is the backup when the one person managing the accounts gets sick?  Make sure you’ve addressed every “if.”

• Are your social networking platforms intertwining?

Social media land is a mighty big land.  If you’re going to have a blog, you might as well have a YouTube channel for when you upload video.  And if you’re going to have a Facebook account, you might as well be on twitter so the two can mingle.  And if you have something to say in one place, I’m sure you can think of a way to turn that into a picture, a video and 140 character post or a discussion topic.  Dive in, but only if it falls in line with your plan.  Each of these platforms isn’t always good for every industry, however, if you fit into one, you likely fit into another.

• How’s your content?

It better be good.  It better be just what your audience is looking for because after all, they’re the ones who decide if they’re going to be social with you.  Throw your finely edited videos, perfectly structured blog posts and photoshopped images out the window if that’s what it’s going to take for you to have good content.  And keep it balanced.  Make it personal, professional, entertaining, smart and most importantly, in line with your goals and overall voice.

• Measure your social media:

I don’t mean you have to use numbers, buy you have to do something.  Report from the very start whatever it is you’re looking for.  One of my favorite things to consider is the outcome rather than the analytics of each individual platform. A good way to do this is to look at your Google analytics to find out which of these sites is actually driving traffic to your site.  It can tell you that those people care enough to learn more or in some cases you can see exactly where they went – a sign up page or a contact page for example. If they did that, then who cares if they did or did not give your status update a thumbs up.

• Never check it off your to-do list:

Don’t stop!  Watch your overall social media work like a hawk.  Are you getting boring?  Are you still growing your fans, followers, and what-have-yous?  Are people interacting with you?  Are you meeting your goals?  You’ll need to tweak, refresh and re-access constantly.

Some great suggestions for online social networking:

We’ve talked about these topics here quite a bit because no matter how much we do, the conversation never stops.  If you’re hungry for more check out these blog posts from fellow BG bloggers:

• Callan breaks it down with a successfully executed social networking campaign by sharing her lessons learned:
• Here’s a good one from Jason. Probably should have been at the start of my post: How to know you’re ready for your social media strategy.
• And Jon writes about five tacticts for bicycle social media campaigns.  You’ll find his insights applicable to many different industries:
• If it’s just Facebook you’re looking for, have a look at Katy’s post on what to do before beginning a Facebook fan page.
• And Maya makes some awesome points in this post about throwing social media rules out the window.

And if you think I’ve missed something, please share.  But, let’s steer away from the minor details.  Remember, there’s no right or wrong way to dispel a negative tweet or no perfect balance of followers vs. following, just be sure you’re looking at the big picture.  

Last night was a big one for Bailey Gardiner.  It was the Oscars of San Diego Public Relations, if you will, the 2009 PRSA Bernays Awards.  Sitting amongst some of San Diego’s most celebrated Public Relations professionals, the team was honored to take home four prestigious awards and one chart-topping achievement for the company’s COO.

Indra Gardiner Bowers was awarded one of four special awards, the Eva Irving Award for Community Service, and well deserved it was.  Indra is currently Vice Chair of the National Conflict Resolution Center.  She’s the Vice President of Sushi, A Center for the Urban Arts, but prior to this, she’s sat on countless boards, countless committees and raised countless dollars for social good.  She’s a giver in its truest form and an inspiration to any leader. I won’t go on and on, because Jon just did in a recent post about Indra (and rightfully so) when she was honored as a nominee at San Diego Magazine’s Women Who Move the City on Wednesday.  It’s been a busy week for Indra.  Then again, what week isn’t?

It’s the leadership at Bailey Gardiner, like Indra’s, that led the company to win hard-earned awards.  Last night, BG took home four:

In the Bronze category of Media Relations, Consumer Products, BG’s work for Se San Diego took home the Excellence Award for a hotel launch that filled the clip books with national placements that make any hospitality Public Relations Pro drool.

For the company’s work with Seaport Village, BG was awarded a Bronze category Merit Award for a feature story placed on the front page of the LA Times Arts section about the art of street performing, coinciding with the annual Seaport Village Spring Busker Festival.

For promoting reputation and brand management, Bailey Gardiner was awarded the Silver category Excellence Award for its work with the San Diego Association of REALTORS®.  The team successfully promoted association President, Erik Weichelt as an expert in the real estate industry and SDAR as the leading association in the area.

Now pat yourself on the back, you’re a wise one, reading an award-winning blog.  www.dontdrinkthekoolaidblog.com was awarded the Award of Excellence in the Bronze Blog category for its effective and creative inception and continued content.

Congratulations to our award-winning clients, to the Bailey Gardiner team and to the San Diego chapter of PRSA.  In the world of Public Relations, there was much to celebrate last night.