Paul Dyer, Senior Account Executive,
Marketwire
Paul Dyer is an expert in SEO and other advanced Web technologies. As Marketwire’s new-media
specialist, Dyer brings a breadth of technical knowledge and field experience in social media, search
engine optimization, web design, and Web 2.0 product development. He is a frequent speaker on
SEO and public relations for social media, having recently presented at Bulldog Reporter’s PR University,
PRSA Los Angeles, a national PRSA teleseminar, the University of Southern California Annenberg
School for Communication, the PR Online Convergence Conference, and as part of a professional
development series for several top-100 PR firms.Marketwire is a full-service partner to IR, PR, and MarCom professionals seeking premier distribu-
tion, media management, multimedia, and monitoring solutions. Marketwire’s corporate philosophy
focuses on infusing its business with the following core attributes: precision, adaptability, innovation,
and simplicity. The company delivers its clients’ news to the world’s media and financial communities.Marketwire also offers innovative products and services — including social media, search engine
optimization, dashboard mobile financial, news dashboard coverage reports, exclusive access to
networks such as the Canadian Press Wire Network, Easy IR and Easy PR workflow solutions.Jerri: How are social media changing the way organizations reach their customers on the Web?Dyer:In the Web 1.0 world, organizations built a web page that had information about themselves,
their purpose, their product, or whatever information they wanted to convey to their customers. For
the savvier organizations, there was a halfway point between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in which search
engine optimization of the organization’s main web page took priority for reaching their customers
online. Now in Web 2.0, with social media, organizations have a plethora of online forums where
they can reach their customers. Places like YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Digg, and Facebook are carry-
ing the flag for social media, but niche communities and social sites are popping up almost daily.
These sites are dramatically changing online communications from being primarily “pull” communi-
cations (trying to pull your customers through the search engines) to a push/pull combination that
previously never existed. Organizations can now push their message through these communities,
as well as pull their customers who are conducting keyword and tag-based searches. In the search
engines, organizations are also finding these social media sites do half the SEO work for them.
Sites like YouTube and MySpace have such high volume of traffic and backward links, they can
achieve strong search rankings — normally much stronger than small or startup companies with
little resources. All companies have to do is target their content in these communities for the key-
words they want a search engine presence for.Jerri: And how will that shift in communication affect SEO?Dyer:Traditional SEO focuses on driving search engine traffic to a corporate page. With social media,
SEO can apply to any number of other sites, but the purpose is to build not just a web site, but a web
PRESENCE. This is accomplished by syndicating content in a plethora of web destinations — blogs,
social networks, social bookmarks, image and video galleries, and more. By syndicating keyword-rich303
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