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PAUL BOUTIN — Hiring a publicist is the traditional route to the media attention you need to attract customers and business partners. But are a half dozen press clips a year worth $10,000 a month? Maybe instead of pitching the tech press, you should be flooding the zone on Google. SVUG's pull-out guide to search engine optimization after the jump.

Customers and bizdev managers spend far more time on Google than reading trade mags these days. Even reporters use it for background research. Hiring a publicist to chase journalists to write articles that become Google entries isn't the direct route to their eyeballs.

There's an entire cottage industry built around what's historically called SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO began as a direct marketing method for online retailers, but Search Engine Watch has documented that journalists now reach for Google as their first research tool. On the bizdev side, six-figure deals regularly begin with an intern's Googling for partner-ready companies in, say, the enterprise knowledge management sector. If you don't come up in the results, you miss the deal.

You can hire a search engine consultant , or do it yourself by reading Search Engine Watch and the marketing forums at WebmasterWorld. The hands-on details of how to choose search keywords, format HTML and set up cross-site links to maximize your results page rank easily fill a book, so leave that stuff to the code monkeys. Focus on your top-down search engine PR strategy:

  • Make a list of the industry or product sectors for which you want to appear in a search. What words would someone who's never heard your name be typing into Google? For example, "silicon valley gossip."
  • Does your product solve a common problem like "credit cards stolen?" Add it to the list.
  • Make a list of your competitors. You want to turn up in searches for them, too.
  • Buy some Google ads against these search terms for your company, solution space, and competitors. Buy ads keyed to your CEO's name that link to your site, especially if Google already serves up a painter, a writer, three professors and two realtors with the same name as results 1-10.
  • Optimize your press releases, too, and sign up with a distributor like PR Newswire that will plant them reliably in Google News.
  • Don't forget the bloggers! They post far more pages than the press on any topic, and a few links from A-listers are the best tech PR there is. Where do you think reporters get their story ideas?

All that said, a good PR firm does a lot more than send "story idea for WIRED" emails to freelancers. A publicist can help you hone your message and train you to keep your foot out of your mouth. And despite the growing power of the Long Tail, a single mention in BusinessWeek or Forbes tops a hundred blog posts in Google results (Exhibit A: My day job, Splunk.) Those articles rarely happen without a flack in the mix.

SVUG's search optimization: If you can afford it, hire a publicist with proven business press clips on file (you want InfoWorld, not San Jose Metro) to get you started and pitch your launch. If the hits stop coming, cut your losses and pick up a copy of SEO for Dummies.