Disaster Planning for Editors Part II

In last month’s post, I reviewed some of the ways editors can prepare for natural (or national) disasters. This month, let’s take a look at disasters of a very different kind.

Public relations disasters
Public relations disasters are, of course, on a far smaller scale than acts of war or mother nature. PR disasters don’t cause loss of life, but they do cause loss of business, reputation, and possibly revenue. A PR disaster might be a precipitous drop in your company’s stock price, the resignation of a CEO, or a scathing customer review that goes viral. Here are some ways you can prepare ahead of time so when disaster strikes, you’ll be able to react quickly:

• Think through scenarios. List some scenarios that are likely to happen to your company. Some examples might be: Your company stock sinks; your CEO, owner, or president resigns; stockholders complain about a company policy; a customer’s complaint goes viral on social media; one of your products is recalled; trolls hijack one of your social media campaigns and bombard the Internet with negative messages about you, etc. There will likely be some scenarios that are very specific to your company’s line of work that you will want to consider as well. What would you need to know in each scenario? How would you want or need to change your communication processes?
• Identify legal and compliance approvers. Communications in response to PR disasters usually require additional approvals beyond that of your regular communications. Who needs to approve stock- or executive team-related special messages, for example? You might need special compliance approval for any stock-related statements, or you might need sign-off from members of your company’s board of directors if you are dealing with a CEO resignation or other high-profile change in management.  Know who the approvers are before you need them to approve anything.
• Meet with your PR and legal colleagues now. Talk about the approaches to communication they would take in situations such as a steep drop in your stock price or an irate customer whose complaints have been picked up by the media. Ask them what you cannot say in these situations and what types of language you must avoid. Ask them what you can do (if anything) to try to help assuage the situation.
• Determine the lines of communication. If a negative review comes through your social media accounts, who is responsible for sounding the alarm, and who needs to be informed?  If the board is about to fire the president or hire a new one, who will give your team a heads up so you can update communications as necessary? Make sure you have established relationships with the people who need to keep you informed and vice versa.
• Start drafting communications in advance. If you take the initiative to draft some templated language now, you’ll have more luck influencing the messaging than you would during a crisis when everyone goes into paranoid mode. Offer to create drafts that could be tweaked to accommodate different events or situations. The drafts should have some of the basic elements you recommend, such as brevity, calls to action, links to more information, and limited legalese.
• Keep an up-to-date content audit file. Every web team should perform a content audit on a regular basis. This audit should result in the creation of a master file that lists all of your content (websites, social media profiles, etc.). The file should include page URLs, titles, keywords, publication dates and author names, and any other data your team needs. If your content audit file is current, you can quickly figure out what needs to be updated following an emergency. For example, if your CEO resigns, you should be able to open your audit document and search on keywords like CEO. You will quickly see pages and sites (executive team bios, quarterly messages, CEO social media accounts, etc.) that mention your CEO’s name so you’ll immediately know how much content needs to be updated.
• Figure out how you will leverage social media. If your company is on social media, how will you address a customer complaint or negative company publicity? Sometimes taking too long to respond to a situation via social media can make things worse for your company, so make sure your social media team has clear guidelines on when to engage or not engage with an angry customer or customer reactions to negative company news.
• Document the plan and train your team. Once you have put together some basic guidelines with your legal and PR colleagues, include this information in your new hire training, content manuals, style guides, etc. — wherever you have documented processes for your communications.

Go through your PR disaster plan a couple of times a year with your team so everyone will have a refresher and know what their responsibilities are if something happens. Hopefully you’ll never need to implement your plan, but you’ll be glad to have it ready if disaster strikes.

Optimization and the Competitive Analysis Audit

by Alan Eggleston

In my last article, I talked about how to conduct a search audit. Those are very useful for determining your site ranking and whether your site is optimized for search. However, they won’t help you position yourself against your competitors as much as a competitive analysis audit will. This article is about how you can do that.

Photo: Pixaby, creative common license in the public domain.

1. Who are your competitors?

First, identify your top two or three competitors (or perhaps it’s one big competitor). Compare your website rankings against theirs for the keywords or keyword phrases for which you optimize your site. If you rank higher than any of them, great! Then you should work on improving your ranking if you don’t already occupy the top spot.

On the other hand, if any of your competitors rank higher than you, you need to analyze why. That means examining their source code, links, and social media.

• Compare search rankings on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and any other search engine that drives significant traffic to your sites. Look for their sponsored ads on various search engines, too. Because results that show up in sponsored ads can bring quick response, you may need to invest in them, too, to be competitive.

• In a competitor’s source code, look for agreement between title tags, description tags, and body text (and on Yahoo, keyword lists); look also for use of alt tags on graphics and images, text links at the bottom of the page, file names using keywords, image names using keywords, and such elements as positioning of keywords in headlines, paragraphs, and so on. Do they use H1 and H2 tags on headlines? In short, what are their SEO best practices? Also, what are their SEO “black hat” practices – do they violate any guidelines*? How can you perform even better on your site?

*In a very competitive market, when someone violates guidelines they put all others at an unfair disadvantage, especially if others are following the guidelines. Be aware that if you report a competitor and they find out, retaliation is always possible, even if you aren’t doing anything wrong. Reporting is anonymous, but that doesn’t mean competitors won’t find out.

• Look for your competitors on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. There are others, too, but let’s start there. Are they engaging customers there and leading them to their website? It can be a big advantage you should consider jumping into if you aren’t already. Look on their home page for icons linking to other social media sites.

2. How do you compare in a search?

Second, look at the meta tags on competitor sites and do a search audit to see who ranks highest for their keywords or keyword phrases. If you don’t use or optimize for their keywords, should you? Does this give them a competitive advantage if you don’t?

• Make sure any keywords you optimize for are true to your business and your message.

• Look for ways to best them for relevancy. For instance, can you mention the keywords earlier on the page than they do? Can you position keywords for a phrase in a more logical order? Is there any “low hanging fruit” you can take advantage of, such as using H tags on headlines where they don’t? Do they not use unique page titles and descriptions on their pages? Optimize better than they do!

• If location is key to your business success or if you’re considered a local business or organization, is your location (most usually city) part of your keyword string and prominent on your home page? If you have multiple locations, do you have location pages to support that?

3. Where else do competitors have a presence?

Third, look for competitors in directories like search engine maps and registries (such as Google Places), business registries (like Merchant Circle and Local First), and industry or professional registries. You should consider registering with them especially if your competitors are there.

• Most directories are free but you can buy higher postings. Look for your competitors in the choice spots. If they show up there, you may need to invest in the same choice spots to be competitive.

• If your site gets a lot of mobile business, make sure you register with Google Maps and Google Places, and even if you don’t get much attention on Bing or Yahoo, register with Bing Maps and Yahoo Maps to make mobile search easier.

• Register for multiple categories where available. For instance, if you’re a hardware store, don’t just settle for hardware. Register for plumbing, electrical, building, and any other area the registry may cover.

4. Keep your eye on your competition.

Finally, conduct your competitive analysis audit periodically. As the saying goes, “This is a marathon, not a sprint.” Your competitors may be doing the same thing and making adjustments that you’ll need to counter. New competitors may enter the market, or competitors who weren’t a factor before may suddenly surface. I would at least compare rankings monthly for a few months and then do a more thorough audit if ranking results are volatile.

Build on Your Own Strengths!

Note: Most small businesses and organizations aren’t SEO-savvy enough to do an audit so when you do one you have the advantage. However, some hire SEO companies to conduct campaigns for them and they will be savvy. The important thing is to learn what your competitors’ optimization strengths and weaknesses are and then counter them by building on your own strengths and reducing your own weaknesses.