In 2011, Forbes came out with an article titled, "PR is Dead." If you actually read the content within the piece, it talks about the future being bright for PR from a digital marketing perspective.
Below, I'm goingto list out 6 ways PR & Social can boost your SEO. If you are in the PR industry, you'll be able to start touting that you can help a website with its SEO presence!
- Backlinks - Google values high quality backlinks pointing towards your website. Long gone are the days of black hat tactics, you will now have to strategically reach out to high page-ranking sites. When your website gets a mention on a highly authoritative website discussing your expertise, this will boost your overall page rank. Over time, if you obtain consistent high quality links, you'll see your page rank improve.
- Strategy - In order to obtain backlinks, you must invest time in an outreach strategy. If you reach out to at least 10 websites per day that you can contribute high quality content that would be useful for their site, you'll hear back from at least one of them! It is just a law of averages. Remember, if you have an idea for an article that would help a website, you'll be more likely to hear back from them.
- Research - Make sure the websites that you are reaching out are high quality sites. If you have a business focusing on apartments in Austin, you'll want to make sure that you are reaching out to websites in a similar field. The real estate or apartment industry in this instance. You can also check the page rank of a website (they are graded on a scale of 1-10) using this tool to determine whether or not it is worth it to make a pitch.
- Quality Content - After reading the first three steps, you are now aware of the value of high quality backlinks and the necessary steps on how to make the proper pitch to relatable sites. Now you need to make sure that you invest in quality content writing! The content should be fresh and unique (part of Google's standards). Quality content does require a time investment, but if you dedicate the hours before or after work or on the weekends, you'll be able to accomplish this without hiring an outsider. Ask yourself, "will people share my article on social media?" If the answer is no, don't bother writing it.
- Connections - If you have connections within your own industry, why not utilize them from a PR perspective? Let's stick with the apartment example. If you meet someone at a trade show or have a friend in the same industry, ask them if you or someone at your company can contribute article content to their website. You'll be in shock how many friends would be more than happy to accept your content. They will actually be looking forward to posting it on their site! Utilizing connections can help launch your PR/SEO strategy more quickly.
- Tracking - Nowadays, everyone should be tracking his or her digital marketing efforts. Within an excel document, start documenting all of your pitches and keeping track of the successes and failures. Monitor which pitch has the highest success rate. Don't forget to track your rank on Google and various other search engines to determine whether or not you are seeing an increase in search engine ranking position and continuously check Google Analytics to see if referral traffic to your website has increased.
Before reading this article, you might not have even known of the benefits that PR can have for you SEO. Follow these 6 steps and you'll start seeing your content all over the web, which in turn will boost your sites web traffic!