PR Helping SEO
PR has long since been recognised as an effective means of enhancing the SEO value of a website for a number of reasons.
- Brand – we know Google takes note of how many people look for your brand online as one of many factors that determine how strong your online ‘brand’ is. More press and publicity means more people looking for you.
- If you’re in the press, whether TV, radio, print or online, there’s a good chance you can leverage this to acquire good, solid, natural links back to your site from high authority press and media websites – as well as links from bloggers, industry specific websites and others who come across your press coverage. Links remain a hugely influential off page ranking signal.
- Brand citations – get people talking about your brand (even if they’re not linking!).
So it’s little wonder that SEOs particularly enjoy working on campaigns where their efforts can be fully integrated with PR efforts.
SEO Helping PR
By the same token, SEO can have a positive impact on PR as well. Optimising a website to ensure it has a high prominence in search for non-brand terms means a wider audience will find that site
We see time and time again how journalists and media researchers use non-brand terms to find potential sources for news stories. Here at Tecmark, we have been approached by a number of journalists seeking to quote us in articles relating to what we do because they’ve found us in Google for a non-brand search.
In addition, SEO tactics can be employed to ensure a high brand presence throughout the entire top 10 in Google for your brand terms. What this means is that when your potential customers research you in Google (by searching your company name etc) the results should show your site and sites where you control the content predominantly.
Social Media – Benefits for Both!
Social media is, of course, newer than SEO but over the past 12 months has been something SEOs have increased their remit to include. This is because search engines have confirmed that they take note of social factors.
PR agencies too have taken to social media as a digital PR activity – and rightly so. You don’t have to look far to find examples of social media being accountable for masses of media coverage.
Making PR, Search and Social Work Together
I genuinely believe that SEO and PR offer one another mutual benefits. And of course it’s in the best interests of the client concerned when everything works together.
Regardless of which party physically handles the various elements of the day to day management of social media (advertising, analysing, audience building, incentivising, engaging, answer queries…) every party simply has to be involved in formulating the strategy behind it, with an agreed set of targets and objectives.
Search, social and PR working together can ultimately result in:
- Better quality digital coverage to a wider audience
- More citations of your brand on and offline
- A more natural and high quality link profile
- A more engaged social audience
- Increased search visibility
Essentially, if you’re paying for the services of a PR agency and an agency to handle your SEO, you’ll get more from both of them by enabling (and encouraging!) them to communicate with one another.
