Five Ways to Link SEO with Traditional PR Strategy

3 Minutes
Mark Gregory

The world of public relations has altered dramatically over the past several years as we enter an increasingly digital age.

Traditional PR has had to evolve to include SEO as more and more marketing and customer relations work is being done online. However, what many online businesses forget is that we are still human and as such interaction is at the heart of everything we do. Those companies that are getting it right combine traditional PR with SEO techniques to create a complementary digital marketing strategy that takes on board everything we have learnt about both the digital community and human relations.

The goal is to successfully integrate PR, SEO, content marketing and social media into one effective strategy that engages the reader, sparks conversations and generates interest. Here are five ways in which to link SEO with traditional PR strategy in order to create a campaign that works.

Use PR outreach techniques to amplify campaigns in social media. 

Sharing content on social media naturally expands the reach of that content and encourages people to like, share and follow your brand. Using PR outreach techniques to develop and build relationships with key influencers can amplify that reach even further. Persuading industry partners and influencers to share content not only introduces that content to a wider audience but also increases the potential for links or brand mentions across multiple channels.

Use infographics.

It is said that a picture says a thousand words and nowhere is this true than in the online world. Internet users typically have a shot attention span in the region of three seconds and therefore it is vital to arrest that attention quickly. Infographics are a great way of conveying a lot of information in a short space of time using creativity, colour and flair. 90% of all the information our brains transmit is visual and we process this visual information 60,000 times faster than we process text – taking advantage of this can produce results. Posts containing infographics attract an average of 12% more traffic growth than those without – get that creative team working on evergreen infographics that can be used across channels and re-used again and again.

Email is more efficient than telephone communication.

In the modern world people are increasingly busy and increasingly annoyed when their precious time is interrupted. Where in the past PR strategists may have followed up any content with a phone call, email is a far more effective and less invasive way in which to achieve the same goal. Even where a phone call will be required, sending a courtesy email first prepares the subject and makes the call seem less of an intrusion when it does occur.

Use video content to increase engagement.

Online posts containing video content will receive on average three times more inbound links than those containing only text. In the past the costs of video production meant this form of marketing was out of the reach of many businesses but today there is a wealth of affordable and even free software enabling almost anyone to produce high quality video content.

See social media as a working lunch.

Back in the ‘good old days’ PR employees took journalists and other influencers out for lunch in order to get to know them better in order to be able to pitch ideas effectively. These days this sort of relationship building can all be done online via social media and with the added bonus of being able to already see what types of things people are interested in to create targeted campaigns.

PR and SEO may always remain separate entities but those companies finding the most success are those that have learnt to combine the best aspects of each into one effective campaign. Although they may walk separate paths, PR and SEO agencies are aiming for the same goal and integrating the two means they will get there that little bit faster.

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