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If you work in marketing, you hear about SEO (search engine optimization) all the time. If it’s not your boss telling you “we need to improve our search engine rankings,” it’s the self-proclaimed marketing guru on LinkedIn sharing a post about “the top 5 ways to boost SEO.” Moral of the story, SEO is critical to the success of your marketing strategy—you know, we know it, everyone knows it.
But one thing you may not know is how vital public relations (PR) is to your SEO strategy. A solid public relations program can significantly enhance your search engine ranking. As such, it’s important for marketers to understand the symbiotic relationship between SEO and PR. So let’s learn a thing or two. 👇
Public Relations vs. SEO: What Are They?
Public relations is the ongoing act of establishing a brand or individual’s presence in the media and the public eye. It’s all about having your story told the way you want to tell it through mainstream media outlets such as magazines, podcasts, industry events, and the like. The primary goal? To enhance visibility, establish credibility, build stakeholder trust, and foster long-term success.
Moz defines SEO as “a set of practices designed to improve the appearance, positioning, and usefulness of multiple types of content in the organic search results.” In short, search engines (such as Google) use varying algorithms to determine which websites and associated pages are the most relevant to search queries. Then, these search engines take the most relevant and high performing web pages, content, video, images, business listings, etc. and rank them in order of relevance.
Since organic search is the most common way for people to look for answers to their questions, products and services, having a killer SEO strategy for your business and associated website is crucial.
PR + SEO = Higher Search Engine Rankings
A good public relations strategy maximizes your brand’s reach and awareness. It also generates a surplus of online content that will help fuel search results. Let’s dive into the ways PR can drive better SEO outcomes for your business.
Earned Media Provides Backlinks to Your Site
Earned media is the most credible and surefire way of promoting your brand. It's the Forbes article you discovered on LinkedIn this morning featuring a new cannabis beverage. It's the podcast episode you listened to where an industry expert shared their best tips for packaging cannabis products. Typically, earned media coverage will include a link to your brand’s website. This is called a backlink.
Backlinks signal to search engines that a website is trustworthy. The more trustworthy your site is (the more backlinks you secure), the more likely your website will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
A few ways to secure backlinks to your site leveraging PR is to:
Contribute hot topic bylines to major media publications
Work with a PR professional to secure interviews with journalists and reporters so they may mention your expertise in an article
Continuous Link Building Bolsters Your Domain Authority
Link building is a great way to improve your search engine optimization. Linking out to your media coverage will not only enable your blog readers to find your earned media, it can also help boost your site’s domain authority, which helps your site rank higher in search engine results pages.
Do this by adding your media wins throughout your website. Showcasing awards, placements in major publications, and the like will also help increase your brand’s credibility.
PR Boosts Brand awareness
The more brand awareness you generate, the more articles and media written about your brand, and the more opportunities you have to show up in search results and drive traffic to your site. It’s a winning cycle of:
PR ➡️ SEO ➡️ Website Traffic
Content Generation Fuels Search Results
Where do you go when you need to “look something up”? Google, of course. In fact, Google processes 5.9 million searches every minute. That being said, you need to create content that answers your target audience’s most burning search queries. Thus, developing a PR strategy focused on showcasing your industry expertise and your brand’s prowess for solving your ideal customer’s issues is paramount. Only then will your brand pop up in relevant search results.
The best way to accomplish the above is to:
Work with a publicist to identify opportunities for you or the chosen talking head of your brand to generate thought leadership content distributed via the media
Develop and share thoughtful content targeting your ideal customer’s pain points
Final Thoughts
So, there you have it. SEO focuses on optimizing your content to rank higher in SERPs, whereas PR fuels your SEO efforts and amplifies your brand’s presence via earned media, backlinks, and content generation.
If you want your brand to stand out in today’s competitive market, you can’t have one without the other. It’s time to embrace the power of PR. Get in touch with us to get started.
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