Introduction

As an introduction, for some background about SEO, you can look first at this presentation made by Rand Fishkin, the CEO and Co-founder of SEOMoz.

Web audit

As a general rule, a strategic web audit is often the first step of any SEO service. Its purpose  is to web presence of a website  in order to identify  areas where a better technical delivery can be achieved. A comprehensive web audit is the most effective way of ensuring a website to be crawlable, indexable and accessible by both search engines spiders and visitors.

While it often requires technical skills, a web audit needs to take into account the sector in which a company is evolving as well as its strategy towards its competitors. A professional SEO will thus cross technical, web analytics and marketing data to provide the most operational recommendations.

Once fixed the main technical issue and defined a coherent web strategy, the next logical steps is to improve the rankings of a website on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) through on-site SEO.

On-site SEO

On-site SEO refers techniques that are performed on a website,  and are thus called « on-site ». Typically, on-site SEO follows a web audit and focuses on the optimization of the overall architecture, structure and content of a website. In particular, such services as keyword research, analysis and optimization are performed. The latter one usually needs to be combined with effective copywriting. But it often needs to be completed by a link-building campaign in order to be effective.

Off-site SEO

Off-site SEO refers to techniques that are not performed on a website, and are thus called « off-site. » Indeed, to improve effectively the rankings of a website, one needs the acquisition of incoming links, commonly referred to as backlinks. This is often one of the most difficult part of a SEO consultant.

SMO (Social Media Optimization)

More and more, especially since the last update of Google’s algorithm, SMO needs to be performed in order to improve the visibility of a website on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusion

I hope this article gives you a good overview of the SEO process. As you can see, SEO requires mainly skills in order to make your website a success. It often needs to combine analytical, marketing and communication aspects in order to be efficient. In comparison to other traditional marketing services, SEO is still cheaper and far more effective.

Context

The turnout of the European Parliament Elections has been falling steadily since the first elections in 1979 indicating increased apathy about the Parliament despite its increase in power over that period.

In order to reverse this tendency, the European Parliament is increasingly using the Internet to reach out the European citizens online. The year 2009 was particularly interesting for the use of social media like social-networking and content-sharing web platforms.

Online Communication Strategy

Precisions

This short retrospective analysis focuses on the online communication strategy of the European Parliament.
Though I consider myself being a kind of « insider » of the EU Bubble, I don’t belong to the European Parliament and have no relations with their Web Team. That’s why, this analysis is rather a partial interpretation than an exhaustive impact assessment. So, any feedback is welcome!

Strategy

While the official website of the European Parliament played a central role in the online communication strategy of the European Parliament, two fields of online promotion to spread through its message were mainly used:

• SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• SMO (Social Media Optimization)

Finally, one should not underestimate the power of offline communication of the European Parliament which reinforced the impact of their online communication.

Basically, the European Parliament created synergies between its different communication channels the Internet (official website, social-networking and content-sharing web platforms) through interlinking them all together and thus creating multiple online « gates » to its official website.

European Parliament Online Communication Strategy

The European Parliament Official Website

First, it is important to reckon that multilingual European Parliament website played a central role in the online communication campaign of the European Parliament Elections 2009 through informing, communicating and linking to their different web platforms.

The European Parliament Official Website

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

Then, to raise awareness about the European Parliament Elections, the European Parliament did perform a Europe wide Google AdWords campaign directly promoting the European Parliament website and indirectly promoting their presence on other web platforms.

SMO (Social Media Optimization)

European Parliament Social Media Strategy

Content-sharing and social-networking web platforms

Indeed, in order to convey online their message, the European Parliament developed mainly its presence on content-sharing web platforms and social-networks:

• YouTube, to share videos
• FlickR, to share photos
• FaceBook and MySpace, to network with the young generation

Blogging and micro-blogging

Their dedicated blog – EP-WebEditors.eu– played a central role to provide content on the Facebook Fan Page and interact within the EU blogosphere. They also opened a Twitter account – EU_Elections_en – to diffuse efficiently short messages.

Seeding

After having identified key online leaders – mainly EU bloggers – they successfully contacted them to promote their Facebook Fan Page and manage to relay their initiative through effective seeding.

Conclusions

There are three key factors of success regarding the online communication strategy of the European Parliament are:

Integration

The online communication strategy of the European Parliament is integrated meaning that – the European Parliament used all the communication channels available on the Internet to spread through its message.

Production

Then, the online communication strategy of the European Parliament is based on the continuous production and effective diffusion on content. While the European Parliament did produce and diffuse the great majority of the content, they also relayed on the user generated content.

Interaction

Finally, the online communication strategy of the European Parliament was proactive, meaning the European Parliament – with the help of eAmbassadors – actively interacted with social media web platforms to spread through their message

Indeed, it seems that the DG Information Society and Media has created a Fan Page on Facebook entitled “Sea, Sun and SMS” with the objective of promoting the new regulation about roaming lowering significantly the prices of phone calls and text messages (1 July 2009).

After the successful experience of the European Parliament which campaigned in June to raise awareness on the European Parliament Elections 2009, the European Commission is finally exploring the potentialities of social media – which is as itself and excellent news.

In my opinion of eMarketer, and after having  been scrutinizing the online communication in the EU bubble, this initiative is interesting at least for three reasins:  not only the European Commission is adopting a new communication channel thus reaching a new and possibly broader audience, but the informal discussion that has been set up makes it very singular – knowing that no subcontractor would be involved! For the moment, the Facebook Fan Page has reached about 900 fans and seems to generate positive interactions with its open community of roaming fans. Let’s acknowledge it! The chaps of the web team at the DG INFSO have done a good job. I wish them more and more fans!

eMarketing in Brussels area is a complex activity at the intersection of European Union politics, online communication and the usual promotion techniques which are SEO (Search Engine Optimization), SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SMO (Social Media Optimization).

One of the particularity is that European actors are not only seeking to improve their online presence and visibility but also to trigger influence on the Internet. That’s why, as an  eMarketing consultant based in Brussels, I will provide on this blog advices on eMarketing for European stakeholders (PR / PA consultancy, Industry federation, EU Institution, Political Party, Think-Tank or NGO).