A Tale of Two Strategies: PR & SEO
December 4th, 2014 by
Last month, I sat in on a webinar with a few fellow Influencers about how to integrate PR into SEO strategy. Given that I used to work in PR and am constantly looking for ways to combine the two industries, attending this was a no-brainer.
Integrating SEO & PR Best Practices
Samuel Scott, Senior Director of SEO & Digital Marketing at The Cline Group in Tel Aviv, took us through how to best integrate SEO and PR best practices into a holistic, integrated marketing strategy. After all, traditional public relations is the best way to build brand awareness and earn quality, authoritative backlinks – the SEO dream.
Authoritative Link-Building
“If I had to choose between your average link builder and an expert PR professional, who knew how to approach and interact with media outlets and presented well on camera, I’d go for the public relations person any day of the week.” -Everett Sizemore, seOverflow.
Now obviously if you have to choose between your average anything and an expert, you’re going to choose the expert. What Everett is saying here is that good PR leads to optimal placements, and that placements lead to links.
PR+SEO In Action
A press release we recently wrote for a client was picked up by WGCL-TV and Digital Journal, two sites with extremely high domain authorities (74 and 85, respectively). Without even really trying, we were able to build the client links on two very authoritative sites! In the week and a half following the press release, overall traffic to the client’s site increased by more than 10 percent and referral traffic increased by nearly 60 percent.
Working Together Makes Everything Better
There are a few things that SEO pros can learn from PR experts, and vice versa:
- What PR can learn from SEO:
- Which traffic from what outlets tend to convert the most and bounce the least?
- Are PR efforts increasing branded searches?
- What SEO can learn from PR:
- From what outlets (and types of outlets) is it easiest to get coverage & links?
- How are reporters and others are responding to the company’s online presence?
Both SEO and PR should utilize data such as placements, traffic, conversions and bounce rate to answer the questions above and further hone their strategies into a single streamlined, holistic, integrated strategy. It’s time to stop thinking about “traditional” and “online” marketing as two separate things – they’re quickly becoming just “marketing.”
If you take one thing from the Mozinar (Moz’s punny-but-cute name for webinar), let it be this: Don’t think about how to get links. Think about how to get coverage and publicity! The links will then come naturally as a result.
