SEO and PR Working Together Can Deliver You the Best Google Results
It’s no overstatement to say that the internet has changed almost all our lives. We could argue long into the night about whether it’s been changed for the better or worse, but there can be no argument that it has altered how we all communicate, connect and interact with each other and the world at large. Gone are the days of asking friends for recommendations or trolling through the Yellow Pages looking for what you need, search engines have put an end to that.
Now we’re fully committed into the online world, getting your business noticed through search engines which, let’s face it, probably means Google, takes time and effort. Many people will try and sell you quick-fix claims to push your company up the rankings. The fact is, there’s no magic wand that will help you ascend to the top overnight. There are ways, however, that are proven to work to deliver you the very best Google search results. One of the most successful, yet under-utilised, ways to optimise your search results is to ensure that your Public Relations (PR) strategy and your SEO strategy are working harmoniously together.
Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is a key factor in ensuring that people can find what they’re looking for online. By seeing your details when they search via Google, Bing or Baidu, as close to the top of their results as possible, gives visitors a confidence and trust that is unrivalled. The algorithms that help to define those results are constantly changing, so we must change with them and that includes PR.
When it comes to your website, you may well be practising limited aspects of PR and SEO already, even if you don’t realise it. What you may not be doing is exploiting the connection between them to drive even more visitors to your site. If you add content regularly on your site by way of blogs, ebooks or white papers, then that content will be contributing to your SEO. Google, and all the other search engines, crawl the web in its entirety cataloguing content, but that content may not be ticking the right SEO and PR boxes that are going to help you jump up the rankings.
As we said earlier, the way search engines rank content to deliver search results is constantly changing. In the beginning it used to be about keywords, almost exclusively. Nowadays it is more about the quality of the content, the relevance of the content and how well your site is linked to others. Once you know that, you can begin to deliver content that hits all the right notes. It may be new in terms of SEO, but that is exactly what PR has been doing for years across all media.
By combining these two aspects into one, you can harness the power of both of them and make them work for you. If you’re not already including blogs on your site, it might be time to break out your keyboard and start writing. The world is waiting for new, original, engaging content and you are perfectly placed to deliver it. As more people come to you for knowledge, information and opinion, they will, in turn, become ambassadors for your site, sharing your articles, ebooks and more with their circle of contacts. Word spreads quickly, links are created and shares soon mount up on the information superhighway. Very soon, even if it’s still not as quickly as overnight, your visitor numbers will increase. Add into the mix increased involvement via social media and your PR and SEO machine will be in full effect in no time.