Public relations (PR) and search engine optimization (SEO) go together like peanut butter and jelly: both are good, but they're better together. The best PR teams integrate digital marketing elements like SEO to improve rankings and drive measurable results. Not sure why PR and SEO should be BFFs? Take a look:
- Both can get your business found. I think we can all agree that the most important thing in business today is being found. When a customer searches for a solution to their problem, we want Google and the other search engines to point that customer right to your website. SEO practices like keyword optimization can help point search engines to your content and improve your chances of being in customers' search results.PR can do the same thing! A targeted pitch to the right blogger or online influencer can result in an online article or post that includes those strategic keywords, which then ends up in customers' search results and points them to your website.
- Both can drive traffic to your website. Google Analytics allows marketers to see which sites people visited just before they came to yours. In our experience, visitors most often come from a blog, news site or a search engine. That's because both PR (and the resulting placements on blogs or news sites) and SEO (which helps the search engines find your site) are great traffic drivers.
- Both can improve your search rankings. People using search engines are most likely to click on the top few results. What appears in those top spots? After paid placements, the top organic search results are most likely to be from highly reputable media sources or from content hubs chock full of links, such as blogs, and content that's relevant to the searcher's query.Both traditional PR (resulting in media placements that link to your website) and SEO best practices (such as blogging) will help you appear high in search results and drive new visitors and solution-seekers to your site.
- PR tactics are actually SEO best practices, and vice versa. Conduct an SEO audit on your website, and you'll usually find that you need a blog to improve your SEO and search rankings. Likewise, a thorough communications or public relations audit will also uncover the need for a blog to serve as a communications platform and a way to tell your company's stories. With PR and SEO both clearly showing that blogs are good for business, it's amazing more people aren't blogging!
- PR and SEO build strong links. Issuing a news release online gets your story in front of more viewers - and creates links back to your website that help search engines and visitors find you. Between online press releases and content optimization around keywords and blogging, there's no end to the ways that PR and SEO work synergistically to create more traffic and potential leads for your business.
Need a little help adding SEO to your current PR program? Give us a call and we can work with you to develop a strategic communications program that gets eyes on your content and visitors to your site by incorporating SEO basics for PR.