PR played a key role in the latest BrightonSEO conference as the two symbiotic disciplines continue to integrate. The three speakers in the afternoon session were perfectly placed to cover the topic from both sides.
Here are the key takeaways…
PR stunts are making a comeback
Laura Hampton from Impression was up first, discussing how PRs need to think like SEOs and vice versa, and integrate PPC to increase reach even more. One of the tactics she advocates is the use of PR stunts.
Laura cited the example of a bathroom suite company that recognised that many people enter ‘suite’ as ‘sweet’ on search engines, so the brand created a chocolate bathtub as a stunt, which was really effective as a photo-led stunt.
Rich Leigh said something similar in his recent conversation with Cision. Check his slides out here.
Link value is changing
As my former colleague Fran Griffin of Honchō stated in her speech, tier one journalists are not obliged to link out – in fact, no publishers are obliged to link out – but mentions matter anyway.
We’ve talked about implied links for a while but this week, reports indicate that Google will start to recognise rel=”nofollow” as a hint. PR has done its job by getting the coverage, Fran reiterated. It’s up to the journalist as to whether they include a link.
Check out our post on link reclamation for more about the rights and wrongs of asking journalists for links. As Claire Gamble of Unhooked said in her speech, a lot of this depends on your personal relationship with journalists, but it may be policy that they can’t link out.
Measurement
Everything online is measurable. Integrated marketers need to consider both PR metrics (but not AVE!!!) and SEO metrics. “Be measurable, be tangible, be provable,” as Hampton says.
Impression uses two sets of goals when planning campaigns; owned goals and shared goals.
Owned goals:
- Number of links
- Quality of links
- Topical relevance of links
- Positioning of links
Shared goals:
- Ranking improvements
- Traffic improvements
- Revenue growth
Offline events are good for SEO
Gamble focussed on how offline events can help drive links and attention. People’s time is precious. You have to make an event worth their while – what’s in it for them? Think about how they will benefit and how the timing suits your audience.
Find a hook for media to become more visible. What will encourage people to take pictures? Is your event instagrammable? Think about beautiful or unusual venues and provide props that people can take pictures with.
Include a professional photographer to provide rich, media-quality assets to journalists. This echoed a message I conveyed in my content marketing training the day before – the more press-worthy content we can give to journalists, the better the chances are that we can get coverage and attention. And links…
This will help you build trust and relationships – we need to think of the bigger picture.
To conclude, as Griffin iterated, good PR isn’t always ideal SEO, and as Hampton says, it’s not enough to say simply “we need more links”. In fact, Griffin says it’s time to stop labelling digital PRs as ‘link builders’.
If you’re a PR and would like to understand how search marketing works, check out our SEO for PRs training.