In today’s digital age, public relations (PR) and search engine optimization (SEO) have become inseparable elements of any successful marketing campaign.
? Read Digital PR Explained: Best Strategies and Tools
PR helps to generate brand awareness and gain media coverage, while SEO ensures that your content is visible to your target audience on search engines. By combining these two, you can amplify your brand’s visibility and reach to attract more potential customers.
What is PR? And How Does it Work?
Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing communication between an organization and its target audience, with the aim of building and maintaining a positive reputation for the organization. PR involves creating and distributing content, building relationships with journalists and media outlets, and managing crises and reputation issues.
PR works by using various tactics and channels to shape the public perception of an organization or brand. These tactics may include press releases, media pitches, social media engagement, influencer partnerships, and events. The goal of PR is to build trust and credibility with the target audience and to establish the organization or brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Overall, PR is a critical component of any marketing strategy, as it helps to establish trust and credibility with your target audience, and can generate valuable media coverage for your organization or brand. By creating and distributing relevant and engaging content, building relationships with journalists and media outlets, and managing crises effectively, you can build a strong reputation and drive business growth.
What is SEO? And How Does it Work?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website and content to improve your visibility and ranking on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
By optimizing your content for search engines, you can attract more potential customers to your website, and ultimately drive business growth.
There are many factors that influence your search engine rankings. A few of them are:
- Quality and relevance of your content
- Structure of your website
- Number & quality of backlinks to your website
- User experience (UX) of your website
By optimizing each of these factors, you can improve your visibility on search engines and attract more potential customers to your website.
SEO can be broken down into two main categories:
- On-page optimization: It refers to the factors that you can control on your own websites, such as the structure of your website, the content on your website, and the metadata that describes your website to search engines.
- Off-page optimization: It refers to the factors that are outside of your control, such as the number and quality of backlinks to your website, and the social signals that indicate the popularity and relevance of your content.
By understanding the principles of SEO, you can optimize your content and website to improve your visibility and attract more potential customers. In combination with PR, SEO can help to generate media coverage, build brand awareness, and ultimately drive business growth.
Reasons Why PR SEO is Important
Now let’s take a look at the most important factors affecting your PR efforts for SEO:
a. Search Engine Trust
Optimizing our website for search engines through various factors results in an improved search engine, trust, and authority.
This means, even if our PR efforts didn’t bring us success, then too, they can help us by improving our website’s domain authority.
b. New Audience
As our search engine authority grows, we start getting ranked in the search engine result for desired search terms and hence gain a new highly-targeted audience.
The audience is relevant to the terms we focus on, which means they are interested in our brand.
c. Brand Identity
When other websites are talking about your brand on a certain topic, then it validates as social proof that you are an expert in that topic.
You can even compete with big brands if the search engine recognizes you as an expert in that topic.
8 Easy Ways to Improve PR SEO
Now, let’s discuss the eight most important tips to improve your PR coverage with SEO:
1. Link-building strategy
Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Backlinks are important for PR SEO because they signal to search engines that other websites consider your content valuable and relevant.
According to Google, link building is one of the top three ranking strategies in 2023. Link building has always been one of the most important search engine factors, ever since Google started.
But all links are not equal. Let’s have a look, at what makes a good PR backlink:
- Follow Links – These backlinks transfer direct authority to the linking website. Hence getting such links from a powerful and relevant website is definitely the go-to path.
- No-Follow Links – These types of backlinks don’t pass any search engine authority and contribute very less to the ranking. But like any other content online, they help us build our brand identity stronger. Also, Google likes a mix of both follow and no-follow links. So, never underestimate these backlinks.
- Sponsored Links – These links are the worst type of links and can have a negative impact on your rankings. We get these backlinks usually through the monetary exchange. Google condemns getting paid backlinks, so try avoiding sponsored links.
If your anchor text contains relevant keywords, then it’s even better.
No matter how much any company/influencers say that link building is irrelevant, it matters more than ever. Backlinks are the currency of the digital world.
Read The Role of Media Monitoring in Identifying Link Building Opportunities
2. Keyword research
Researching correct keywords is a major step before starting your PR campaign.
We use keyword research to identify search terms that have the opportunity for us to rank and bring awareness to our brand. Writing for any random topic within our industry will result in any organic traffic from google, hence wasting our efforts for search engine optimization.
Step-by-step process to perform keyword research:
- List down all major topics within your industry
- Then brainstorm all the major search terms related to them
- Try searching them on Google and find out related keywords
- Use any SEO tool like ahrefs to discover even more search terms
We should target a search volume that we have a chance to rank. And while creating content, search intent should be given priority.
3. Use data to create newsworthy stories
Journalists are always on the lookout for interesting data and statistics that can add value to their stories and engage their readers. By providing compelling data that supports your brand’s message, you can increase the chances of getting coverage in top-tier publications.
To use data effectively in your PR SEO efforts, you first need to identify relevant data sources and conduct research that supports your brand’s message. You can use a variety of sources to find data, including surveys, studies, customer feedback, and industry reports. Once you have gathered your data, you can use it to create compelling stories that journalists will want to cover.
In addition to creating newsworthy stories, you can also use data to provide journalists with insights and trends in your industry. This can help position your brand as a thought leader and a valuable source of information.
But here is a to-do list to consider:
- Choosing the right story – There might be many options for writing a story, but you have to choose the ones that have the most potential. For example, Adam Enfroy writes content for online businesses, and right now he is focusing heavily on AI tools, ChatGPT, etc. Why? Because these topics have the most potential for him.
- Be unique – Covering the same as everyone else, won’t catch attention. You have to put a unique flavor to the topic and try making it newsworthy.
- Content promotion – Make sure to share your content on social platforms, mailing lists, etc, so that it gets an initial boost.
4. Build relationships
In today’s age of the internet, we see creators and brands collaborating with each other. Finding ways to collaborate and building a long-term relationship within your industry by providing value will always prove advantageous for you.
Various ways to collaborate with the community are: Becoming a podcast guest, social media collaborations, roundup posts, guest posts, etc.
If we just keep asking for favors, not many brands/creators will be interested. But if we build relationships by providing them value, then they would be more than happy to help us too.
5. Pitch stories to industry-specific publications
It’s a great way to get targeted media coverage and earn high-quality backlinks. Industry-specific publications are typically focused on a particular niche or industry, and their readers are often interested in the latest news, trends, and developments in that industry.
By getting coverage in front of your target audience, you’ll increase your brand’s visibility and authority in your niche.
To pitch stories to industry-specific publications:
- You’ll first need to identify the relevant publications in your industry. Look for publications that cover topics related to your products or services, and research their editorial focus, writing style, and audience demographics. You can use tools like Ahrefs or BuzzSumo to identify high-authority publications and track their social media activity.
- Once you’ve identified the publications you want to target, you’ll need to craft compelling pitches that align with their editorial focus and provide value to their readers. Your pitch should be personalized, concise, and focused on the publication’s audience. It should clearly explain why your story is newsworthy and why it’s a good fit for their publication.
When pitching your story, be sure to include any relevant data or statistics that support your pitch. Journalists love data, and incorporating relevant statistics and data into your PR pitches can help you create more newsworthy stories. You can use data from surveys, studies, or customer feedback to support your pitch and make it more compelling.
In conclusion, pitching stories to industry-specific publications is a valuable PR SEO tactic that can help you get more coverage and earn high-quality backlinks. By identifying relevant publications, crafting compelling pitches, and incorporating data into your story, you can increase your brand’s visibility and authority in your niche.
6. Improve User Experience (UX)
UX is also one of the top factors mentioned by Google. Having an extremely good design is useless if the website is inconvenient to use. You should always give UX first priority and design second.
In today’s world of small attention spans, it’s extremely important for conveying the correct PR message with the least effort to understand from the side of the user.
Here are some tips to improve your website UX:
- Make your website easy to navigate
- Put social proof to make yourself more trustable
- Improve your copywriting skills
- Use the power of images to tell your stories
- Make a fast-loading website
- Optimize it for mobile, tablet, etc devices
Good User Experience will have a direct impact on your search engine rankings.
7. Monitor your brand’s online reputation
Monitoring your brand’s online reputation is essential for managing your PR efforts and maintaining a positive image.
Use tools like Google Alerts, Social Mention, or Hootsuite to track mentions of your brand or products online. This will help you stay on top of any negative comments or reviews and respond to them appropriately.
By monitoring your brand’s online reputation, you’ll be able to quickly address any issues and maintain a positive image in the eyes of your customers and potential customers.
Using an all-in-one tracking solution provider like Determ can be extremely helpful. You can monitor all key metrics needed to track your PR success.
Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
8. Measuring Your PR Efforts
Finally, it’s important to measure the effectiveness of your PR efforts to see what’s working and what’s not.
Use tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs to track website traffic and backlinks generated by your PR campaigns. This will help you refine your strategy and focus on tactics that are driving the most results.
By measuring the effectiveness of your PR efforts, you’ll be able to refine your approach and ensure that your PR efforts are contributing to your overall business goals.
Conclusion
In conclusion, PR SEO is a powerful approach to boost your brand’s visibility and attract more potential customers.
By combining the principles of public relations and search engine optimization, you can create a cohesive marketing strategy that generates media coverage and improves your search engine rankings.
Use the tips I have shared in this blog to inform your PR SEO efforts and continue to refine your strategy over time to maximize your results.
Remember, SEO is a long-term game, so be patient and consistent in your efforts, and you’ll see the benefits in the long run.
Mayank Singh is a web designer and CRO expert at The Website Times. He helps businesses increase their online revenue by making highly optimized websites for them.
