How to Use SEO and Public Relations Together

Promoting a business can be done in a variety of ways, but simply putting an “open for business” usually isn’t enough. Implementing a modern and well-informed internet marketing campaign can benefit your business by attracting new customers and promoting a professional image.
The old saying, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” applies to internet marketing. It is important to diversify advertising mediums. If done correctly, combining traditional and emerging forms of marketing can be very effective. The purpose of this blog is to highlight the benefits of doing just this - combining traditional public relations (PR) with the emerging field of SEO.

Traditional Public Relations

If you were enrolled in a class called “Public Relations 101”, you would learn that traditional public relations focuses on communicating and promoting company news and events through news outlets such as local and national papers. Marketers and reporters alike would target journalists and editors to get their story to page one. But with the rapid development of the internet, this practice has severely dwindled.

The Modern Press Release

With the rapid development of the internet, the field of public relations has changed but some aspects are still very useful. Press release distribution networks can be found all over the U.S. and internationally. These online services make it possible for a press release to circulate to a far greater number of news outlets. But the truth is, media pick-up is hard to come by.
But although competition is fierce, a major benefit to the availability of press release services is cost. These days implementing public relations into your marketing strategy is cost effective - even for the smallest operation.

SEO and Public Relations

Even though your announcement about a great new service your company is providing might not glean much media attention, circulating a press release about it has some serious advantages such as promoting your brand. Other articles on this site have emphasized the importance of understanding and adapting to the Google’s “rules”. Understanding how Google views the connection between PR and SEO will illustrate just how useful combining the two is. Recently news has been released that Google has filed a patent which demonstrates the parts that role brand mentions, links and implied links have in effecting a site’s authority. Although reading Google’s updates is always a great idea, we’ll save you the trouble this time. According to Google, whenever your brand receives a mention in a story (even if the story is not directly linked back to your website), Google interprets is as an “implied link”. This implied link can positively benefit your site’s ranking and authority. This openly demonstrates that there is true value of practicing PR and SEO. Using them together can benefit your company’s website traffic, not to mention promote your brand. So long story short, write about your business and write often!