You have started a business, yet even after implementing planned sales strategies, there was no increase in profits, sales, and leads. You visualize how you can climb the rankings in your industry and build your company’s reputation at once.
Fortunately, with the proper use of SEO Public Relations, you can achieve two marketing goals at the same time.
What is the difference?
If you’ve been implementing marketing strategies, you know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Public Relations (PR) have different goals.
Traditionally, SEO’s primary focus was on technicalities: keywords, backlinks, sitemaps, etc., while PR’s fundamental role was communication in traditional media.
Although PR and SEO differ in focus, both stand at a common ground: to increase your business’s credibility and authority.
How did the SEO PR start?
Through the years, Google made drastic changes with its core updates on search engine algorithms, and many website owners suffered drops in the rankings.
It all started when Google prioritized user experience. These changes reflect content relevancy, and to rank at the top, you must write valuable and insightful content. While SEO played a bigger part in online branding awareness, PR’s primary function of producing great content was the intervention SEO needed.
With this development, more companies have shifted from temporary optimization tactics to building the best user experience they can offer on the research phase of the customers. They have also considered understanding customer’s sentiments and correcting their (customers’) pain points while using their brand.
How do PR and SEO intertwine?
Forbes connotes PR as the persuasion business and PR specialists are storytellers. With PR, you ensure that you create valuable content, and here’s how SEO comes into the picture. PR augments SEO by establishing your brand’s credibility and authority through informative and useful content. These will help your business reach your target audience when they use the internet in searching for information.
Blending SEO and PR can meet two marketing strategies at the same time: spread your message through PR campaigns and build long-term visibility online through SEO.
Here’s how you can make the best out of SEO Public Relations when SEO and PR work together:
1. Manage Content Effectively
Content binds PR and SEO together. They create content for different audiences, but when PR and SEO blend in aligning the content with the theme and timing, it’s easier to manage stories coming in and out. It ensures that the brand has a consistent message.
Both can agree on aligning your business’s messages and stories in terms of your current priority. This also works best for seasonal events—SEO plans for content ideas, while the PR generates links and attention to earned coverage.
2. Amplify Content
Another way that SEO PR can join forces is to share created content and amplify it by repurposing them. It’s practical for the PR team to pitch a republished content to its covered media in creating more links for the search team and expanding SEO efforts without spending more resources than to go through all the trouble of creating new content.
3. Optimize Links in Earned Media
SEO PR can optimize the links that have ranking keywords in all of your earned media coverage, including non-paid stories and company press releases, and ensure they’re using the right URL to link them to.
However, both teams must consult with each other in making sure they’re not interloping links from paid sponsorships to avoid search engine penalties.
4. Enhance Backlinks
In case your company launches an event, your PR team would likely reach out to your earned and trusted media and invite prominent members, including social media influencers to talk about it.
Your trusted media influences the audience’s interest, which will convince the local paper that your event is worth covering. The local paper will publish an online article, which will then be beneficial to your SEO. Because a local paper is considered an influential website in your region, every backlink from their article to your website will help you rank in that target area.
The more shares or backlinks you get from authoritative sites, the higher the rank your website reaches.
Conclusion
PR and SEO can work well together these days. You reach your PR goals when you get people talking about your brand and products and services. On the other hand, SEO is most effective in bringing the right message in front of the right audience organically. That’s how the two blend incredibly together. After all, both aspects ensure that your message reaches as many available channels as possible to gain attention and increase brand awareness.
