Linking PR with SEO: Taking Strategy to Next Level

Linking PR with SEO: Taking Strategy to Next Level

In the aftermath of Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, something interesting happened. SEO experts started focusing on the public relations team. Yes, a love affair between public relations and SEO has been brewing and we’ve got the scoop on how you can maximize your results by encouraging this match.

Today’s SEO is being reimagined. Links are still an all important piece of boosting your website’s rankings. But these links are now being obtained from different sources. When directories lost their oomph, link farms got blown out of the water, and keyword stuffing became de rigueur, public relations remained the shiny hope to obtain new links and create a buzz around a business’ products and services.

Using PR as SEO Benefits Your Business

In the wake of the search engine algorithm shake ups, search engines have begun trying to offer its online visitors meaningful content in the form of social content to enhance their experience. Today’s internet searcher is savvy and content hungry, consuming and curating content on social media forums and discarding content that doesn’t make sense. To distinguish a brand from the rest, a business now has to create a buzz. Gone are the days you could simply rely on SEO tactics alone to earn those coveted top spots online. Today’s internet users are searching for relevant and newsworthy items, so it’s important that your business’ news is found in these searches. When businesses use PR, they can enjoy increased benefits unavailable from SEO tactics alone. This includes:

• Earned traffic, recognition, and buzz. By enhancing your PR with SEO, a business can gain increased brand recognition, and encourage trust and loyalty among internet users. Public relations offers brands the ability to get their news featured across the web in forums and news sources which make a brand appear in demand. When you enhance this with SEO tactics, you increase the likelihood that your press will be found by internet searchers and that your traffic will go up.

• You’ll increase traffic conversion rates with organic press. When a business releases press releases online, they are pushing this news out to thousands of news outlets, many of whom may pick it up and republish the news online. When consumers stumble across this organic press, it appears more relevant and more trustworthy. Consumers who enjoyed these stories and click on the website’s link are doing so because they genuinely want to know more about the brand, the product, or the services. These organic visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because they are led there by genuine interest, not questionable links in fuzzy related sources.

• Press articles encourage social shares. Internet users love sharing news stories on their social media forums. These publications attract much higher rates of traffic, which means that your content could be shared more frequently, and deemed more valuable to users. The likelihood increases that your article may be exposed to millions instead of the hundreds that your website may attract.

• Enhanced brand image from positive buzz. When a brand wants to attract new clients, it often creates a buzz about its products to do so. Additionally, when a brand has been slammed online, it often resorts to creating favorable press to counter the negative stories online. Public relations can craft and control this image with positive buzz associated with these stories. When you add SEO to this, it increases the likelihood that your article will be found ahead of any negative items.

• Increased quality back links. Press releases are sent to thousands of news sources and are often shown on diverse news outlets’ websites. These news sources generally have high page ranks and huge flows of traffic. For example, a press release which is featured on the LA Times obtains a link from a website with a high page rank, boosting your link profile. When you accumulate these back links, your rankings will go up up up!