As more businesses focus their dollars and energy on their SEO and online presence, the value of public relations for business has started to shift. It used to be that PR was synonymous with stories in the newspapers or appearances on television or radio. Only those who read the paper, or saw the story on live television were influenced by the coverage. Today, all of these PR activities have a nearly eternal, second life online, and these stories will be some of the first things potential customers see when they search for you on Google. News websites typically have a higher credibility level and ranking with search engines due to their status as a news organization and because of the number of views they attract. If businesses understand that referral traffic to their website can be influenced heavily by earned media, then investing time and energy in public relations is a no-brainer. Its the gift that keeps on giving!
If you don’t currently have a public relations strategy for your business and are spending money on Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns and search engine optimization (SEO), you are probably spending too much money. By implementing a strong PR effort, your SEO efforts can become twice as effective and also have the interesting result of both increasing your ranking and decreasing how much you are spending on keywords.
Here are a few white hat strategies for SEO improvement:
- Write relevant content for your business
- Caption images with full descriptions
- Use complete sentences in your writing
- Check your spelling and grammar
- Link to relevant content and references
- Use standards-compliant HTML
- Develop relevant page titles
Winger Marketing works hand-in-hand with SEO firms to maximize the impact of search and public relations. Here are a few strategies we use to align efforts:
- Write and publish keyword optimized byline articles on industry related websites
- Support link building by securing guest blog posts on related sites
- Press release distribution through a wire service
- Create high-quality content and blog posts for our client’s websites
The bottom line is that if you have a digital agency working in one corner and a PR agency in another, you are missing out on huge opportunities to maximize your marketing spend. The SEO guru and the PR expert need to be able to communicate to align efforts and amplify the work that is being done for your business. The potential that PR has on positively impacting a business’s search engine optimization can be threefold. First, it increases brand awareness. Second, PR placements can boost the number of website views you receive. Third, leads generated by earned media website referrals tend to be higher quality.
As a top public relations company and digital marketing company in Chicago, we understand that SEO and PR are “hand in glove” strategies that work for both large and small businesses. Winger Marketing has been recognized as a top Digital Marketing Company on DesignRush. For help evaluating your marketing efforts and maximizing your budget, call the experts at Winger Marketing.