SEO for Public Relations - Ultimate Guide

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of improving the online content and technical aspects of a website so it can rank higher on search engines. Public Relations (PR for short) is the practice of managing communications to promote mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and the public. Although very different strategies, understanding SEO vs PR can help you improve your clients business’ public and online presence.

PR

In digital marketing, PR is an all-encompassing idea based around building and improving businesses’ perception to the public eye. Improving how consumers regard your business’ products and services can help improve a company’s reputation. Positive associations with a business will increase the likelihood that individuals will use the services or buy the products.

In past years, PR firms focused on print releases and traditional advertising to spread the word about their clients. In today’s digital world, PR has expanded to strategizing around different online platforms:

• SEO focuses on improving visibility through search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!.

• PPC is a form of digital advertising on search engines by paying for every time an individual clicks on the ad.

• ORM targets directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and the BBB to provide individuals with accurate information while positively promoting businesses.

• Social Media focuses on improving customer reach and engagement through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn and more.

SEO, PPC, ORM, and social media each play a different role but are an important part of helping PR efforts succeed. In essence, if your business has little to no presence in the mentioned online areas, this will directly impact your clients PR efforts.

SEO

Although a more specific facet of digital marketing, SEO has never been more important in today’s day and age. Businesses use SEO to increase the chances individuals will click on their site from an online search. An astounding 5.6 billion searches on Google per day tells us that more and more consumers search online for products and services. SEO is crucial for businesses to keep up! By keeping up with SEO and digital marketing trends, your firm will position itself to help your clients stay visible online. Providing positive and consistent online visibility is a fundamental way to improve your firm’s overall PR strategy.

Another key element that applies to both PR and SEO is links. A link is created when text on a website is turned into a hyperlink that will direct people to a new web page or domain. PR links come from nearly any type of media source where there is opportunity for public content and exposure. They can come from a variety of sources – anything relating to brands, companies, services, and products. The intent of PR links is all about:

• Aligning the content with the image and branding the company is pursuing.

• Building online relationships with other companies that can help promote and grow the business.

• Increasing the amount of positive exposure the brand or business will receive.

On the other hand, the purpose of SEO links is more based on building off-site domain authority to rank higher on search engines. Businesses aim to build a diversified portfolio of links that point back to their domain from high authoritative websites. These types of links signal to Google the site is authoritative and trustworthy which can result in higher search engine rankings.

Both PR and SEO links can benefit your clients strategy in many ways. Although there is a different intent between the two types of links, they work together to positively improve the online exposure of a brand or company.

Similar to SEO, PR has a goal of gaining organic traffic and attention without having to pay for it. However, it’s important to note that PR efforts alone are not comprehensive SEO or link building strategies. Even with this in mind, there are plenty of ways PR can impact SEO in a positive way.

PR can enhance the quality of a website’s SEO, continue to build an online reputation, and create an overall awareness that brings in new customers. Especially when there’s a target audience in mind, having optimized content and effective link building in place, and consistent branding to go along with it all. Here are a few ways in which PR efforts can affect SEO in a positive way:

• Generating Up-to-Date Content: Content is what helps PR professionals spread the word and influence they have for their clients. Relevant content helps create unique stories for any audience and will help generate more traffic and customers to a website.

• Identifying a Target Audience: Any good PR professional knows that it’s important to create content for audiences that are searching for it. Identifying an audience while maintaining well-established relationships with key influencers helps enhance brand credibility with targeted audiences. Additionally, it brings new viewers and potential clients to a website.

• Building Backlinks: Earning and finding links can be a hard task by itself, but utilizing PR can help. Implementing natural, editorial backlinks from credible third-party sites has the power to improve a website’s domain authority over time.

PR affects SEO and SEO affects PR. They compliment each other regardless of differing specialties.

As we’ve discussed, SEO and PR work very well together. One of the best benefits of using SEO for public relations is knowing you’re presenting the right audience with the right content at the right time. Nowadays, it’s not enough to spread the word just through trusted connections. It’s important to build a brand reputation online to help increase PR visibility.

As a PR professional, it’s your job to assist businesses in being found online. SEO is the perfect benefit, opportunity, and partner to help you accomplish that! However, it’s important to understand SEO fundamentals and concepts in order to do so. You can start by learning to generate more backlinks from authoritative websites back to your client’s site. When this happens, the benefit will come from seeing higher rankings from certain keywords and phrases (including keywords related to your client’s brand). When your target audience searches for those keywords, there your client’s business will be – at the top of their search query. With higher rankings, it will create a huge boost to their authority and credibility and improve the way your client’s business is perceived.

If you’re looking to achieve the best results over time in search engine rankings for your clients, it’s important to understand the best practices for using SEO for PR. Whether it’s through increasing exposure, reaching out to different audiences, or creating quality information, there are a variety of PR best practices to understand and implement. Here is a list of SEO best practices for your PR agency to consider using:

1. Identifying Noteworthy Information

Every PR professional knows that in creating an effective press release, there needs to be noteworthy information to go along with it. Press releases specifically can help offer a little more value to your client’s brand by focusing on important news and information within the business’ industry. Identify hot topics and keywords associated with the target audience’s interest. When your client’s focus is based around trending content, their search rankings and click-through rates will increase. These factors make for a more effective PR campaign.

2. Deliver a Positive Customer Experience

User experience is extremely important for SEO efforts which then reflects into your agency’s PR efforts. If a press release doesn’t load quickly for individuals, they won’t bother sticking around to read it. If you’ve gotten an individual’s attention in getting them to click on the press release, it’s also important for your clients to constantly check up on their website’s user experience for more positive results.

3. Share Press Releases Through Different Online Avenues

Find opportunities to publish press releases in different areas of interest for your client’s customers. This can be through directories, other industries that could benefit from their press release, or even on social media. Spreading the word through multiple avenues helps expand their audience’s reach as well as their online reach to help build their site’s reputation.

4. Build Internal Links

Along with finding valuable external links, don’t forget about building an internal link strategy as well. Be sure to have them link to content or resources that could be added into their PR efforts. Internal links help show search engines how press releases fit into the rest of your efforts and their branding as a whole. Being consistent is key and can immensely help your client’s PR and SEO efforts over time.

5. Link Sites in a Natural Way

Just like having natural language, your client’s linking structure should be done in a natural way as well. You could use the name of the website as your anchor text. This helps improve a user’s experience in linking to where they might want to go next. If you’re able to include a keyword into the anchor text naturally, that can help improve SEO efforts as well. However if it makes more sense to use the organization’s name instead of a keyword, be sure to use the organization’s name. If you’re trying too hard to implement keywords that don’t fit, search engines might see this as suspicious and that can have a negative impact on your client’s SEO results.

6. Never Pay for Links

The only time your clients should pay for a link is for a sponsored post or an advertisement through PPC—and you’re still not directly paying for a link. You are paying for the content that was uniquely created to be posted. For your SEO efforts, your agency should never have to pay to add a link to your client’s site. Usually paying for these types of links can bring lower value to their website and not be the best investment for their money.

7. Avoid Excessive Linking

We’ve mentioned how important link building is to your client’s PR and SEO strategy, however this does come with a limit. While it’s important to add links within their content, adding too many links can overstuff the content and diminish the quality of their website and its content as a whole. Ideally, add them once or twice and where it fits best within the content.

8. Include Images, Videos, and Social Content

Using natural language is important for any type of SEO content. One of the best ways to help make your content more digestible is by breaking the writing up into sections and including visual content, such as images, videos, or social platforms. This helps keep readers engaged by inserting unique branding visuals. It also helps build value and optimization into your client’s SEO and PR strategy.

1. Understanding a Website’s SEO Health

Having a healthy, well-optimized site is crucial for building your client’s online presence. Especially when you’re building PR efforts, having an unhealthy website can sometimes be a challenge to improve right off the bat. Some PR professionals will disregard this step and move past this, but if you are incorporating SEO into your client’s PR strategy, it is important to start your efforts here first.

The first step is checking on your client’s website SEO health and to run a website audit. A website audit will let you see and find where their site is lacking and needs improvement. From there, you can pinpoint these issues and fix them to help their site improve over time. Constantly checking these errors is crucial in having a healthy, successful website. Especially for PR efforts, having a healthy website will help it get found more organically when everything is working as it should.

2. Using Quality Links

Along with having a healthy website, it’s important to use quality links that help bring value back to your client’s website. Sometimes when you partner with another business, you can’t choose if they have a healthy website (that’s up to them and how well they maintain their website). With this in mind, it’s important to be mindful of the type of websites that link back to your client’s site. The more valuable links (that have higher domain authorities and better user experience) that link back to your client’s site, the more valuable their site can become as well. Vice versa, if a site connects with multiple spammy sites, it can bring the value and credibility of the website down drastically. It’s important to link with websites that help bring value back to your client’s site.

3. Creating High-Quality Content

High-quality content can be the deciding factor between your client’s site and their competitors. While you’re thinking about what you’re writing, you also have to factor in marketing strategies and language to help customers go through the sales funnel. As any PR professional knows, creating this type of quality content can be a difficult process to undertake and can take time. It’s important to remember that you don’t need to aim for perfection in your content; you need to aim for your client’s rankings to improve. Especially when adding links within the content, be sure to create quality content that will help customers digest the event or business while adding value through optimized keywords. This can take a while to get the hang of, but can be a huge success over time.

4. Aligning Brand Messaging

While aligning brand messaging can be considered a best practice, it can also be a challenge for PR professionals. If your communication is not clear or consistent with the rest of the business, individuals can have a hard time understanding it. This gives customers a reason to click away and go to the next option. Having consistent content can sometimes be a challenge, especially if multiple individuals are working on the same initiatives. However, it’s extremely important for search engines and individuals to understand your client’s brand clearly.

Search Engine Optimization can seamlessly integrate with your firm’s strategy when you partner with a white label SEO agency. This type of partnership can save your PR firm time and money as you don’t need to hire and train an entire SEO team of experts.

If you are looking to work with a white label SEO agency for your PR approach, reach out to our team of professionals today! Boostability’s white label SEO platform makes it easy to integrate SEO within your PR firm’s strategy.

Get in touch with us today to visit to learn more about our white label SEO services!