Public relations professionals have traditionally concentrated on producing and marketing content and left search engine optimization (SEO) to more technically inclined folks. PR and SEO usually stayed in their separate silos.
Now, boundaries between PR and SEO have blurred, causing the functions to blend or even merge. To be most effective, PR needs SEO and SEO needs PR.
Creation and optimization of digital content is what binds PR and SEO in a symbiotic relationship.
Public relations enhances SEO by building relationships with media outlets, producing high quality and newsworthy content, identifying editorial opportunities, and obtaining story placements. That helps SEO acquire the backlinks that are essential for improving search engine rankings.
SEO enhances the impact of PR by optimizing content with well-placed keywords, links and anchor text in order to achieve better rankings in search engine results and thereby increase website traffic.
Uneven SEO Understanding
In the past, PR pros deferred to SEO specialists in performing the technical tasks for content optimization – or performed the search optimization tasks poorly.
Today, web-savvy PR pros understand keyword research, stay abreast of recent search engine algorithms changes, understand on-page and off-page ranking factors, and are familiar with web analytics and tools like Google Webmaster tools. Most PR practitioners have become more adept at SEO techniques, but may still lack the specialized knowledge and techniques of SEO specialists.
Until PR folks gain all the requisite skills of SEO specialists (or until SEO folks gain the content creation, storytelling, relationship-building, and placement expertise of PR), working collaboratively is vital to achieve both PR and SEO success. Communication, through regular meetings, emails and shared calendars, is essential for the two functions to work together productively and avoid duplication.
“I increasingly see the disciplines of PR and SEO working together,” Murray Newlands co- author of How to get PR for your Startup: Traction, told Forbes. “There are many similarities in skill sets of creating great content and reaching out to other sites to develop relationships. SEO used to be a technical team all on its own. With the strong emergence of content marketing and Google’s changes to its algorithm, that has changed.”
Those search engine algorithm changes emphasized the importance of quality content and natural backlinks — especially links from well-respected websites — at the expense of automated SEO techniques.
John Rampton, president of Adogy, a marketing agency specializing in helping startups, cites these PR and SEO joint activities in the Forbes article.
Content calendars. In the past, only PR used content calendars to create and schedule articles for publications. SEO pros now also use content calendars to plan blogging topics and schedule seasonal content.
PR events. PR and SEO can work together to generate backlinks from the PR stunts and events.
Bloggers. PR can develop relationships with influential bloggers and use them to improve search engine rankings with the help of SEO pros.
PR and SEO can also work together on placements in social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Vine and Instagram.
Bottom Line: The importance of search engine rankings for website traffic means SEO is now an essential part of effective PR. Conversely, the importance of quality content, developing relationships and placement content for publication means effective PR is vital to optimize search engine rankings. To enhance success, PR and SEO must work hand-in-hand creating and optimizing content.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
