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THE COMPREHENSIVE SEO GUIDE FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS

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Today, integrating public relations activities with digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for businesses looking to maximize their budgets and create the greatest possible benefit from their marketing and public relations efforts.

Public relations professionals have the ability to create immense SEO value for their clients by making small alterations to their current strategies, such as press releases, events and media appearances. By adding in SEO value, public relations firms can transcend the traditional, and build on existing skills to maximize a client’s budget.

SEO is important because search engine rankings can be directly tied to sales. With billions of search engine queries every month, a lack of digital visibility can leave a business invisible to consumers. Search engine rankings are specifically important because the difference between first and second or third rank click rates is substantial. Research from Compete.com illustrates that 53 percent of clicks go to the top result. The second sees 15 percent of the action, the third 9 percent, the fourth 6 percent, dwindling all the way down to 4 percent to round out the top 5. Over the course of time, the difference between being ranked first and second can mean thousands of potential customers and sales.Strategically blending SEO and public relations can increase search engine rankings for a variety of popular keywords. This upward trajectory in strategic keywords can give businesses a noticeable and measurable advantage over competitors.

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The difference between blogger outreach for SEO compared to reaching out for public relations is placing the importance on visibility by a target audience versus the value of the link. Public relations professionals who are looking to add value to their current efforts should consider the quality of links established through blogger outreach and content syndication. Search engines put more value on links that come from relevant, authoritative and established websites and are surrounded by pertinent content.

Think outside the box: Public relations professionals should widen their target blogs to assist in finding and earning more valuable links. For example, even though a target audience may be customers who buy baby shoes, businesses shouldn’t limit themselves to mommy blogs. Instead, the outreach should expand to fashion, luxury clothing, parenting, retail and gift giving blogs. By expanding the search area while focusing on the most read and most authoritative websites, public relations professionals can create more SEO value than if they focused solely on the target audience.

Go local: Search engines index the content that surrounds links and have the ability to apply that information to search results. This means that links from location-specific publications will receive more value from searchers looking for local businesses. For clients with physical locations, building local links can create value by improving local search engine results, prompting consumers with a specific purchase in mind to visit store. But, not all links are created equal, so all efforts should be focused on quality websites with relevant readership. No-follow links in sponsored posts: If a client of a PR agency wants to sponsor a post on a specific blog, it’s important to make sure the links are no-followed. While this will prevent most, if not all, of the SEO benefits from the links, it will help prevent potential negative backlash from Google and other search engines. Search engines specifically forbid paying for links, and businesses that have been caught have been severely punished in the past. So, to prevent this, PR professionals who pitch sponsored posts should implicitly request that all links inside the content be no-followed.

BLOGGER OUTREACH



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Normally press releases are used to try and attract media attention or get out a specific message, but by using them strategically, public relations professionals can also improve visibility for their clients in search engine results.

To optimize press releases for SEO, public relations agencies need to make some simple, yet very important, changes to the content of their press releases.

Create content that is relevant to search engine users and targeted audiences: Google is constantly aiming to reward quality, informative content. Specifically the Panda and Penguin updates were designed to make high-quality content worth the effort, and pushing low-quality posts into the past. For press releases, this means that the content of the release must be something that search engines users will want to read, write about, share and organically promote. Everything from the headline, to the body, to images and links should convey a singular message, express why this announcement is important and make it easy for members of the public or media to disseminate the information.

Include links to dedicated pages: When referencing specific products or services, press releases should link directly to dedicated web pages that include more information. If the media decides to create content based on a company’s announcement, it will give them easy access to the link, which they might decide to reuse. Businesses should also make sure there are operational pages where consumers and media members can learn more about the announcement. Because search engines determine authority and relevance based on both the number of links and the content surrounding the links, the more links to a dedicated page about a specific product or announcement, the more likely that page will show up in organic search results.

Actively promote content: Google updated its guidelines in 2013 to say that links in press releases that are republished in full will not help SEO efforts. So, instead of simply publishing announcements on a company blog or PR Newswire and waiting for a response, PR managers should work to distribute it like any other piece of well-crafted content. This means creating and using personal relationships to create awareness of the announcement, and hopefully media coverage.

PRESS RELEASES



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Media appearances, both print and television, have the ability to create SEO value for clients on top of the original visibility. Public relations professionals have the ability to leverage media appearances to create links. The goal is to leverage each media appearance into as much visibility and recognition as possible. The key to doing that is to not just rely on the media to spread word about the story or information, but to be proactive and use digital channels like social media and content marketing to spread the appearance, and its message, as wide and far as possible.

Create content to earn links: Use quotes from the media appearance to create multiple blog posts around the topic of the conversation. Businesses can then either use this content on the company blog or pitch the content to influential websites as guest blogs. Each placement should include a link back to a company’s website, helping both drive traffic and link profiles.

Share on social media: Newsworthy information is exactly the type of content that is made to be shared on social media. Therefore, people who happen to miss the broadcast or issue may find it interesting. Because of that, businesses should make it as easy to find as possible. B2B focused companies should also make sure to share any media appearances on LinkedIn because of its focus on professional users. LinkedIn Groups can be especially valuable because they target self-identified users who have an interest or expertise in a specific topic who would find the information interesting.

YouTube is a great place to put a video of the entire appearance. The YouTube page can be optimized through transcripts, links back to social media profiles, and strategic chosen titles and descriptions. While sharing the YouTube link won’t directly help a company’s search engine ranking, it will help promote the video itself, making the company more visible.

Leverage Past Content for Future Placements: Media appearances can be used as leverage when pitching future content to online publications. By having the client’s name in a traditional publication, that client can then be positioned as an expert in the field and used as a source for content created by third parties. Content can then be created around a client’s quotes that respond to counter points-of-view, opinion pieces about the same overall topic or high-level industry-related pieces.

MEDIA APPEARANCES



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Sponsorships and events can be leveraged into SEO value through the strategic use of social media before, during and after the event. By creating a social buzz about an event ahead of time and content that’s easy to share after, events can become a catalyst for creating links. Those links are the goal for public relations professionals who are looking to add value to their current offerings because links are what search engines use to determine search engine rankings and even small movements up in rankings can mean large jumps in site traffic and sales.

Before the Event

Promote the event using social channels, specifically targeting industry and conversation influencers. These influencers can be found by searching for the leaders in specific industries, finding their social media accounts and reaching out to them about the event. For example, the team behind a food event should contact the most followed chefs in the region, while the leaders of store grand opening may want to target local media mainstays from both radio and television. Reach out to these influencers directly and ask for them to preview the event, attend it in person or write an honest, non-promotional review about what they think.

There is speculation that search engines, specifically Google, include social signals as part of their ranking algorithm. Therefore, earning social mentions about an event may be an effective way to increase the event awareness and, in turn, the client’s SEO profile.

During the Event

Connect the physical world with the digital world to increase both social and other digital mentions. Use digital photo booths that allow people to post the pictures directly to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. A raffle or coupon giveaway that requires people to check in or mention the event on their social media accounts is another way to connect the two worlds. Again, social signals have the ability to impact search engine rankings, so public relations professionals should strive to build as many social links back to the event and the client as possible.

After the Event

Once the event is over, public relations teams have little time to capitalize on any buzz that was created. Public relations teams should create unique content to surround the event including fact sheets, infographics, videos and personal stories that can be shared about the event. This content can be sent to influencers who mentioned the event online or attended in person to create blog posts and reviews, which will help a company’s link profile, boosting search engine rankings.

EVENTS AND SPONSORSHIPS



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Eighty-five percent of companies will face a crisis that negatively impacts their brand during the next five years according to Oxford-Metrica. A SEO strategy has the ability to impact the digital reputation of clients much the same way that traditional crisis communications strategies repair reputations offline. Protecting a digital reputation is as much about promoting the positives as it is about diminishing the negatives. No public relations effort will fully remove negative comments, reviews or articles from the Internet, but by using SEO techniques, those negative results can be pushed to the rarely seen second or third page of search engine results.

Tools for managing negative SEO include keyword research, existing and new content creation, and link building.

1. Keyword Research: The main objective of keyword research is to create a list of keywords where a client’s digital reputation may be impinged to focus on. Start with the most searched for keywords that give results about the client. The more frequent the keyword is used, the more important it is to push down negative content.

2. Content Creation: This step requires the promotion of both existing content, as well as creating new content that will positively set up your company in the future. One way to do this is to try and reach out and have bloggers write original content about the company, product or service and then promote that new content using social media or the company’s blog. The idea is for search engines to find positive content to index and rank for the specific keywords previously researched. If the new content is from more authoritative source, writers and pages, it should rank higher than the negative content.

3. Link Building: Links are one of the factors search engines use to rank the relevance, popularity and authority of different websites. To create a better digital reputation, businesses can build links to positive reviews and content, which will move them up in the ranks, pushing down undesirable results.

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS



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CONCLUSIONTraditional public relations strategies, when integrated with proven SEO strategies, can offer immense value to clients in almost every sector of the economy. By not integrating basic SEO techniques into public relations activities, public relations professionals are diluting the value being offered to clients, and could lose those clients to other agencies that are offering integrated SEO solutions. Blogger outreach and taking SEO into consideration when crafting press releases, events and sponsorships, media appearances and crisis communications efforts should all be used by public relations professionals. By doing this, they can maximize their client’s budgets and create more value from each activity.

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