Public Relations and Search Engine Optimization have more in common than just increasing awareness for a product, an organization or a website. In fact, they both follow the same objective and complement each other perfectly. When investing in a new website, there is no way around spending money and time in SEO nowadays. But why is this the case, and what do both areas have in common?

Content is most important

Journalists expect the same things from our press releases as visitors of a website: meaningful and valuable information for the respective target audience. Therefore, it is not a surprise that content is of upmost importance when it comes to Google rankings. So how do we find out, what kind of content is most interesting for the website users? One of many ways to get an idea is brainstorming, where you think about all the terms that could be searched for, in order to find our products. Another way is to use googles’ autocomplete, where we type in a buzzword to see what has been searched in context with this word.

Relevant and unique content can bring the right visitors to a website. It also enables bloggers and other website operators to use information from the site or link to it. These links can again increase the ranking. But not every link is equally beneficial!

Link Building

SEO, alongside good content, improves a website’s ranking. Well targeted linking can do its part as well. Here, it is important, to set links leading to subpages on your own website. However, it is advisable not to go crazy with it, but using selectively targeted links that lead to further information on the website. Even links to other websites can increase the ranking of your own site; here it is very important so choose the right site. The more trustworthy and popular the site is, the more a link can increase credibility and ranking of your own page. A small blog for example will have less impact than a well-known website.

For us as a PR agency, this means we should incorporate positive reports about our clients in our own content.

In order to increase visitor numbers on the websites of our clients, it is always great, when a journalist links to the organization in their online reporting or even mentions the web address in a print issue. Blogger relations and communication about the products and the organization on social media are always a good idea.

You will see how broad the topic can be. When you engage in the topic more, you will also deal with topics like meta tagging, AdWords and many more, but for this article, we will focus on content and link setting. The rest will follow 🙂

Merken