I chaired one of two major industry meet-ups last week on the opportunity for PR and SEO. These are the key takeaways on the opportunities for public relations teams – both in-house and agency-side.
Last week, there were two events dedicated to PR and SEO, underlining the increasing attention that PR is showing to search marketing. On Thursday, PR Moment ran its Intersection of PR and SEO event, which had a great line-up, but the night before that I chaired the PRCA Digital Group’s Opportunities for PR in SEO discussion at Grayling (London).
I was joined by Grayling’s Alex Judd, Kayleigh Töyrä from Seeker Digital and, providing the in-house perspective, Natalie Arney of Alternative Airlines.
Here are some highlights:
PR needs to own search reputation
Alex heads up Grayling search reputation offering, GCore, and over the first 15 minutes he demonstrated research that he and I worked on earlier this year looking at the branded search reputation of the FTSE 100 firms. Take a look after you’ve read this post.
There is a lot of work to be done here, with many of the UK’s biggest companies not even claiming their business on Google yet!
After Alex’s presentation, we launched into an hour or so of panel discussion around PR and SEO.
Work together
It sounds obvious and simple, but so many organisations are siloed and protective over the data and their remit. The key thing is everyone is working towards the same objectives, so PR consultants need to bring together the constituent parts to agree strategy, roles and ownership, measurement criteria etc.
Earn those links
Google loves links. It sees links as a ‘vote’ of confidence in your site and its content.
Link building is where PR can really add value due to its background in running creative campaigns that generates widespread coverage.
The challenge is converting online coverage – which is already great for brand awareness and perception – into links from diverse and authoritative websites. While there is a whole debate around the rights and wrongs of asking for a link (AKA ‘link reclamation’), the consensus was that if your content merits a link, it will earn them.
This forces us to think about the type of content that our audience will want to share and, more importantly, link to via their own content. We need to provoke thought, interest, debate.
Takeaway from our panel at #PRCADigital last night:
— Kayleigh Töyrä (@KayleighToyra) October 24, 2019
In order for PRs and SEOs to work together and deliver great campaigns that meet technical as well as media requirements, it’s important that the dialogue remains porous and open.@CMRLee @__nca @AlexJuddz @PRCA_UK#PR #SEO pic.twitter.com/i5NthaXIVI
The changing nature of links
News outlets and influencers know the value of a link from their powerful domain to a brand’s site. This is why many will have a policy of either not linking out or linking with a nofollow link.
The good news is that it looks like Google will be learning from hints labels such rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”, meaning that working with influencers will no longer be a thorny area for paid activity, because link-backs can be clarified. Even nofollow links could help (potentially) in ranking – read this Econsultancy blog post for more.
A quick reminder – it’s not just about earning links, it’s key to link internally (where relevant and not over the top) and link out where relevant. That helps Google and it rewards you, so linking out is good for you. I just recommend setting your CMS to launch a new browser when you do so you don’t cannibalise your own traffic.
Don’t be a linking cul-de-sac, share the link love!
Write for humans!
Content is all about context, so it must answer the questions posed by search. Match the user intent. Engage, entertain, involve, educate. Ditch the corporate generic speak.
(PS I train on Writing for the Web so if your team needs any, just give me a shout)
In short, PR can assist SEO greatly. It needs to know who ‘owns’ SEO within the organisation and work with them to unlock the data, content, social, marketing and PR that can help drive up non-branded search and drive more positive branded search results.
We also need to get the technical basics right, so PRs need to know how to do that too.
A massive thanks to the PRCA for helping me set up this panel – I’ve been wanting to for a while. Huge thanks too to Grayling UK for lending us their boardroom, to everyone who came, and, of course, to our panel.
If you don’t follow them on Twitter already, do so here:
Natalie Arney: @__NCA
Alex Judd: @AlexJuddz
Kayleigh Toyra: @KayleighToyra
And me: @CMRLee
We even made a quick vid: